The Journal: Atticus to Rival Vellum

In today’s Journal

* Happy Birthday
* Atticus to Rival Vellum
* Impostor Syndrome: The Wes Crowley Saga vs. Lonesome Dove
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Happy Birthday

Happy 36th birthday to my youngest son, Roy. (grin) Feel better soon, Son.

Atticus to Rival Vellum

I wanted to get this out there in case it interests any of you. Apparently Atticus is a new cross-platform writing and formatting software program that rivals Vellum, which is only for Macs.

At the moment, the program is still relatively inexpensive, and all updates, etc. are free. See “Atticus – New Formatting Software for Writers” at https://killzoneblog.com/2021/11/atticus-new-formatting-software-for-writers.html.

I’m personally satisfied with the .epub I download from Draft2Digital, so I won’t be purchasing Atticus, but if I was younger in this process I probably would. I recommend you take a look and see what you think.

Impostor Syndrome: The Wes Crowley Saga vs. Lonesome Dove

Have you ever dealt with impostor syndrome? I’ve heard it said that all writers struggle with it at one time or another. I’m not sure I believe that (“all” is a lot), but the syndrome or a close cousin settled over me recently as I thought about returning to my writing ‘puter.

Why? Well, when I set out to write my very first novel, Leaving Amarillo, the two main characters (Texas Rangers) were based very loosely on the idea of Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call from the film version of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.

In Leaving Amarillo, I introduced the world to Western Z “Wes” Crowley and Otis “Mac” McFadden. They started out as partners. And to my surprise, that’s where their resemblance to McCrae and Call ended.

Over the years, Lonesome Dove was followed by two sequels—Return to Lonesome Dove and
Streets of Laredo—and finally two prequels: Dead Man’s Walk and Comanche Moon. (By the way, for my money, the best film from a Texas Ranger standpoint is hands-down Comanche Moon, and the best Gus McCrae is Steve Zahn. He was more Gus than even Robert Duvall was.)

In the Wes Crowley saga, I followed the original trilogy with three prequels, then six sequels. Even with all that, there was still a gap of about 15 years in the storyline, so then I decided to tell some of Wes’ stories from that gap. I have four more titles in that “Gap” series. So far.

Anyway, off and on over the years I’ve wondered exactly how similar my Wes Crowley Saga was to McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove series. So out of curiosity, on Thursday and Friday, my wife and I pulled out the two prequels (each a multi-episode mini-series) and the original Lonesome Dove film and spent all of two days watching them in chronological order. (We probably won’t bother with the sequels. Or we might watch them tomorrow just so we can say we finished the whole thing.)

I bring all this up because as we watched, I kept expecting to see similarities between McMurtry’s work and my own. I think I expected the stories to be similar because my Wes Crowley and McMurtry’s Gus McCrae seemed so similar.

But I should have known better. For one thing, I wrote all of those novels into the dark. And for another, Wes Crowley was just me, living vicariously in the late 1800s through the story. Wes’ partner Mac McFadden doesn’t have a real-life counterpart, and he certainly wasn’t the strictly upright Captain Call of Lonesome Dove.

So I’m pleased and relieved to report that, aside from both stories beginning in Texas and featuring Texas Rangers, horses, guns and Comanches, there were no similarities. The stories are completely different.

All of which I mention as a preface to saying this: Sometimes facing a fear provides the greatest self-validation.

Talk with you again later.

Of Interest

Nada.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 620 words

Writing of WCGN 5: Tentative Title (novel)

Day 1…… XXXX words. Total words to date…… XXXXX

Total fiction words for November……… XXXX
Total fiction words for the year………… 623282
Total nonfiction words for November… 2050
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 180540
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 803822

Calendar Year 2021 Novels to Date…………………… 13
Calendar Year 2021 Novellas to Date……………… 1
Calendar Year 2021 Short Stories to Date… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 66
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.