The Journal, Monday, 10/16

Hey Folks,

Here we go. The first day of the rest of my writing life. (grin) And I’m going to start it in Sierra Vista at a brake shop. So my restart on writing might be one day late. We’ll see.

In major news from the department of Well That Sucks, via The Digital Reader, see “CreateSpace to Close its Web Store” at https://the-digital-reader.com/2017/10/13/createspace-close-web-store/.

Note that this estore closure does NOT affect CreateSpace’s other services. For more on that, I recommend you read the original announcement at CreateSpace: https://www.createspace.com/Help/Index.jsp?orgId=00D300000001Sh9&id=50139000000oxUN.

The biggest immediate impact is that CS pays (well, has paid) an 80% royalty for books sold directly through its estore. Amazon, true to their greedy form, pays a whopping 60%.

This will further widen the gap between authors who already sell a lot of copies and authors who don’t sell as many. I predict it will also burden already struggling print cover designers and interior layout folks.

This causes me to rethink (again) whether going to paper with my books is really all that important. The dwindling royalty makes the $100 I spend for cover and layout considerably larger. Hmmmm.

Damn. And the thing is, I just want to write. So maybe that’s my answer too.
***

Wow. If ever I needed something to soothe my nerves, it was this afternoon.

The day began with my little girl bringing in a packrat. She doesn’t kill them. She just watches them. I’m convinced she’s looking for a friend, someone who will play with her. (In the front yard, she runs with [not chases] rabbits.) But whatever.

I had to get the thing out of the house.

I thought I had done that, and several minutes later I let her outside again. But the idiot packrat remained close by where I let it out.

She grabbed it by the scruff of the neck (like carrying a kitten) and headed for her safe place, under the bed in our bedroom.

So I followed her in there, ran her and her stepsister out, then conducted a meticulous search for the packrat.

Turns out she took her little friend with her and let it go out in the yard. So over all, that was about an hour and a half I’ll never get back.

Then the trip to Sierra Vista to get the brakes repaired on my son’s car. On the phone it was to take about three hours if I could get it there before 9 a.m.

I got it there at 8:15. It was on the rack by 8:20. And it stayed right there on the rack for four straight hours. Then it descended and went next door for an oil change. I finally got back home around 1:30.

Will I write today?

Um, no. I would love to suck the south end out of a northbound cigar, but I won’t do that either. If I did, the frustration would still be there, only then it would be smokey and frustrating. (grin)

No, I’m gonna do zip for the rest of the day, watch a ball game this early evening, then sack out.

And I’m not going to tempt Fate again by saying something stupid like “tomorrow I start writing again.” That’s just crazy talk. I’m seeing that tempting Fate doesn’t generally work out well for me.

So I’ll write again when I sit down and write again. Then, once again, I’ll be a writer. Until then, I’ll be a something-elser.

Back tomorrow.

Of Interest

Via The Passive Voice, see “FBF [Frankfort Book Fair] marred by violent political altercations” at http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2017/10/fbf-marred-by-violent-political-altercations/.

Frankly, I was surprised TPG didn’t comment on this article, as he often does. So anyway, I’ll comment.

The first-ever book-length poetry collection published as an ebook was mine. It was (is) called Lessons for a Barren Population, and it was nominated for the Book of the Year Award at the Frankfort Book Fair in 1996 or 1998. It didn’t win.

And now that great fair, like everything else, it seems, is all gone to politics. Why don’t people just get over themselves? Frankly, when someone begins to opine about something of which they very obviously have zero first-hand knowledge and zero practical experience, I stop listening. Or as I like to put it, “Your right to free speech doesn’t guarantee you an audience.”

Also from The Passive Voice, for a story idea, maybe, see “In the future” at http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2017/10/in-the-future/.

And from Harvey’s Department of Well, No Sh*t, see “School District Pulls To Kill a Mockingbird: It ‘Makes People Uncomfortable'” at http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/10/14/mississippi_school_district_pulls_to_kill_a_mockingbird_because_it_makes.html.

My opening comment concerning the source department was meant for Arne Duncan, who saw fit to tweet about this toward the end of the article. Ahem. Pretty cheeky tweet IMHO.

Fiction Words: XXXX
Nonfiction Words: 720 (Journal)
So total words for the day: 720

Writing of Pulp Novel 5 (a Stern Richards novel)

Day 1…… 1080 words. Total words to date…… 1080
Day 2…… 2167 words. Total words to date…… 3247
Day 3…… 1370 words. Total words to date…… 4617
Day 4…… 1840 words. Total words to date…… 6457
Day 5…… 1193 words. Total words to date…… 7650
Day 6…… 1407 words. Total words to date…… 9057
Day 7…… 1180 words. Total words to date…… 10237
Day 8…… XXXX words. Total words to date…… XXXXX

Total fiction words for the month……… 12462
Total fiction words for the year………… 446608
Total nonfiction words for the month… 8500
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 161183
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 607791

The Daily Journal blog streak……………………………………… 686 days
Calendar Year 2017 Novels to Date………………………… 9
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)………………………………………… 27
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)……………………………………… 4
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……………………………… 182