In today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* Topic: Critical Voice vs. Creative Voice
* Dean’s put out a call
* In today’s post at the Kill Zone blog
*
* The Numbers
Quotes of the Day
“[N]othing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great ever came out of imitations. The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” Anna Quindlen
“I plucked hissing, thrashing, horned tomato worms off the plants and tossed them in a
bucket, secretly terrified of their alien aggression. Every Paradise has its serpent.” Patrick Dorn, from his story, “My Father’s House” (To read the full story, visit https://www.patrickdorn.com/ and subscribe to his newsletter)
Topic: Critical Voice vs. Creative Voice
Ugh. I had an ugly day yesterday. Of course, everything’s relative, and I’m only talking about writing here, not digging out from under mounds of snow or putting up with power outages. If you still are, I hope that ends for you soon.
Really there’s no reason to mention this, except to maybe show you what can happen.
On Friday, I was writing along fine, but that niggling little voice in my head (creative subconscious) said something didn’t feel right. Like I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere. Usually when I hear that voice, I stop writing, back up, and read to see where things started feeling weird. But I didn’t.
Note: Be sure that niggling little voice is your creative voice and not your critical voice. There is a distinct and recognizable difference. The critical voice is always loud and always negative, always trying to stop your writing cold.
Consider the example I’m giving you right now. When I let the critical voice in for a second, it caused this temporary stoppage while I dug back, found it, and pitched it and all that came after it.
On the other hand, the creative voice is always quiet and soft, more of a nag, and it will say something’s wrong (you took a wrong turn somewhere), but it won’t try to stop you writing. I could easily have come back and just kept writing, and the nagging little creative voice would have continued.
So on Friday, instead of stopping, backing up and figuring out where I’d made a wrong turn, I kept going.
So at the end of the day on Friday, I left it as-is, but I left it knowing I’d have to find that wrong turn the next day.
Then yesterday when I came in, I read back through everything, the whole 10,000 words, and the wrong turn leapt out at me. At a particular point, I “thought” (critical voice) about a new direction and took it. Naturally, that affected everything that came after it.
So I started the writing day yesterday by highlighting and cutting around 3300 words. That was almost everything I’d written on Friday. I wrote them, so they count, but to avoid confusion with the word count they’re now appended to the end of the story. When the novel ends and before I send it out to first readers, I’ll delete those words.
I also added maybe a thousand words of it back in and wrote 3170 words of new stuff. But when the dust and smoke cleared, my net gain yesterday was in reality was only 809 words.
Quite a day, and not one I want to repeat anytime soon. Or ever. Anyway, the story’s back on track and racing along on its own again.
Dean’s put out a call for more Cave Creek short stories for his upcoming anthologies. If you’re part of the Shared Worlds class, you know that.
So I might have to set the novel aside for a day or two to write another story for him. I haven’t heard back from him about the first one I sent, which is always a good sign.
But today I’ll continue the novel. Then maybe tomorrow I’ll revisit the other story I wrote for Cave Creek (or the novel) and write a second short story.
In today’s post at the Kill Zone blog, James Scott Bell asks “Who is on Your Writing Rushmore?” Interesting to think about. My own Mount Rushmore of writers, genre aside and for sheer storytelling skill, is hands-down Stephen King.
Ernest Hemingway is a close second, then Mark Twain and Raymond Chandler. Why? Because those writers seldom or never provide me with an excuse to stop reading. Having pulled me into the story, they seldom or never allow me to surface.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “The Ultimate Guide To Creating Compelling Antagonism In Fiction” at https://writingcooperative.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-creating-compelling-antagonism-in-fiction-c2888bc5de5d.
See “Stephen King’s Surprisingly Simple Secret To Success” at http://dyingwords.net/stephen-kings-surprisingly-simple-secret-to-success/. Please, please, please don’t say “I can’t learn from King; I don’t write horror.”
See “Day Three: Writing a Novel in Half a Month” at https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/day-three-writing-a-novel-in-half-a-month/.
See “Who is on Your Writing Rushmore?” at https://killzoneblog.com/2021/02/who-is-on-your-writing-rushmore.html.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 820 words
Writing of The Journey Home: Part 7 (novel)
Day 1…… 6065 words. Total words to date…… 6065
Day 2…… 3887 words. Total words to date…… 9952
Day 3…… 3170 words. Total words to date…… 13122
Total fiction words for February……… 74924
Total fiction words for the year………… 172401
Total nonfiction words for February… 14300
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 39630
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 212031
Calendar Year 2021 Novels to Date…………………… 3
Calendar Year 2021 Novellas to Date……………… X
Calendar Year 2021 Short Stories to Date… 1
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 57
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 215
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31