In today’s Journal
* Traditional Publishing Sometimes?
* Again I got a question
* The novel
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Traditional Publishing Sometimes?
A few days ago, Dan Baldwin mentioned in his weekly blog that sometimes traditional publication is preferable. You can find his Tips of the Week on his website at https://fourknightspress.com/.
If I’d written a children’s book, I might want to go the traditional route. If that’s you, if you write children’s books, you might want to check out “57 Children’s Book Publishers that Accept Direct Submissions” at https://authorspublish.com/57-childrens-book-publishers-seeking-submissions/. As always, of course, read the fine print carefully.
There are also a couple of first-page critiques offered over at the Kill Zone blog (in “Of Interest”). Though I don’t generally recommend submitting work to critique groups, I recommend glancing over these to glean any gems they might drop that you might find useful in your own writing.
Again I got a question about why I talk so much about writing into the dark, especially when it flies in the face of so much conventional “wisdom.”
Well, because it’s freeing. It enables the practitioner to stop living with unreasoning fear, or at least to repeatedly overcome that fear. Aside from that, I can only say I’m an excited convert.
I used to do all that other stuff: outlining, consciously thinking my way word by word and sentence by sentence through what I was writing, submitting partial manuscripts or outlines to critique groups, etc.
I can’t honestly say I ever really rewrote any of my fiction, though I did revise outlines as if my life depended on it. But I never rewrote because I never produced anything in the first place. By the time I got to the point of actually writing the story I was bored with it because I’d already written it in the form of an outline.
I don’t know what else to say except that WITD works for me and I know it can work for anyone else who decides to try it and then resolves to stick to that decision. I guess I am to fiction writing and WITD what Saul/Paul was to christianity.
I am also honest, and melodramatic as it might sound, I can only profess what I know personally to be true.
That said, everything’s up to the individual writer.
The novel is racing right along, even with me having to check back in earlier novels to be sure I have the right name or a character’s correct physical attributes, age, etc. I think I’ve never had more fun writing a novel than I’m having in writing this one. And that’s going some. (grin)
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “Gabagool and Malpropisms: Dialogue Lessons from The Sopranos” at https://countercraft.substack.com/p/gabagool-and-malpropisms-dialogue.
See “First Page Critique – A Jealous God” at https://killzoneblog.com/2021/05/first-page-critique-a-jealous-god.html.
See “First Page Critique: The Meaning of Life” at https://killzoneblog.com/2021/05/first-page-critique-the-meaning-of-life.html.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 480 words
Writing of Wes Crowley (novel, tentative title)
Day 1…… 3089 words. Total words to date…… 3089
Day 2…… 3871 words. Total words to date…… 6960
Total fiction words for May……… 28622
Total fiction words for the year………… 399901
Total nonfiction words for May… 7970
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 92830
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 492731
Calendar Year 2021 Novels to Date…………………… 8
Calendar Year 2021 Novellas to Date……………… 1
Calendar Year 2021 Short Stories to Date… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 61
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31
Disclaimer: In this blog, I provide advice on writing fiction. I advocate a technique called Writing Into the Dark. To be crystal clear, WITD is not “the only way” to write, nor will I ever say it is. However, as I am the only writer who advocates WITD both publicly and regularly, I will continue to do so, among myriad other topics.