The Journal: Just a Thought

In today’s Journal

* Just a thought
* Today
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Just a thought— As I told a mentoring student this morning,

“There are two kinds of writers: The first kind are those who live on high in an ivory tower. They dress in heavenly robes and exert control over every aspect of their characters’ lives as the characters move at the writer’s command (begrudgingly) through the trenches of the story.

“Then there are those writers who aren’t afraid to get dirty and don’t WANT to control others’ lives. Those are the fortunate ones. They don jeans, a t-shirt and sneakers, then roll off the parapet into the trenches and race through the story WITH the characters, just trying to keep up. Now and then, those writers take a break and go over the previous scene to add anything they missed as they were trying to keep up with the characters. And when they get back to where the characters are waiting, they all race off into the next scene. That writer would be me.” (grin)

Today I spent the first two hours browbeating (grin) a mentoring student. Sometime during that discourse, I suddenly remembered I have a short story due by tomorrow at midnight (gasp!) if I’m to keep meeting my weekly challenge.

And I’ve also decided to take much of today off for a silly side trip with my buddy (gasp!). And I have NO IDEA what I’ll write for that short story (gasp!). Oh no! How will I ever get the story done in time to meet my challenge and not break my streak!

Well, not gasp. Not really. I know it takes only a few hours to write a short story, and I have a BUNCH of hours (about 47 as I write this) between now and midnight Saturday night.

My characters are living their lives (their stories) 24/7/365 even when I’m not paying attention.

All I have to do is drop in on them, pick a character with a problem in a setting and write an opening to ground the reader (suck the reader into the story) and then keep writing until the character leads me to The End.

Easy-peasy. Yawn. Stretch.

In fact, it’s SO easy-peasy that I’m adding a level of difficulty. I’ve decided, in the few hours I have remaining before I have to leave to meet my friend, I’ll ignore the need for a short story and add to the novel instead.

Well, after I’ve checked for items for “Of Interest” and posted this Journal. Barring emergencies, I’ll write the short story tomorrow.

Witing into the Dark: It’s a great life. Just sayin’.

I finally got to the novel at 4. I wrote about a thousand words in the first hour, then went to the house for a brief break. By 6:20 I’d written another 1200 words. Not bad, considering I thought today might be a nonwriting day. (grin)

So I missed my daily word-count goal (“failed”), but I failed to success. Off to play for the rest of the day

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “The Best Small Presses Publishing Crime Fiction Today” at https://crimereads.com/the-best-small-presses-publishing-crime-fiction-today/.

See “I’m Just Sayin’: “Buy Print” vs “Buy Paperback” at https://prowriterswriting.com/im-just-sayin-buy-print-vs-buy-paperback.

The Numbers

Fiction words today…………………… 2278
Nonfiction words today…………… 540 (Journal)

Writing of The Three-Year Turn (novel)

Day 11… 3442 words. Total words to date…… 36545
Day 12… 2278 words. Total words to date…… 38823

Total fiction words for the month……… 48412
Total fiction words for the year………… 113956
Total nonfiction words for the month… 16990
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 48250
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 162206

Calendar Year 2020 Novels to Date…………………… 2
Calendar Year 2020 Novellas to Date……………… X
Calendar Year 2020 Short Stories to Date… 5
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 47
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 201
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31