In today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Welcome
* We’re Searchable
* The Novel
* Of Interest
Quote of the Day
“I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.” Ray Bradbury
Welcome
Been awhile since I issued a formal welcome. Welcome to Frank T, Marcy C, and anyone else who has joined our Journal family recently. Glad to have you aboard, and I hope you find the Journal useful.
We’re Searchable
I’ve mentioned before that the Journal archives are fully searchable right on the Journal website. Just type your topic into the search box in the sidebar and a number of posts will pop up.
Some good examples of search terms are characters, creative subconscious, critical mind (or voice), dialogue, five senses (or five senses exercise), Heinlein’s Rules, pacing, scene, setting, structure, writing into the dark and many, many others.
But remember, the Journal used to originate over at my author site. You can also search the archives there using the search box in the sidebar.
In fact, only yesterday, I sent links to a few posts to a mentoring student. To find those particular posts I entered “human traits” into the search box, then did another search for “passive construction.”
(If you’re interested, the posts were “Human Parts Do Not Have Human Traits” and “Human Traits and Human Parts” as well as “Passive Voice” (for that one, skip down to “Okay, on to passive voice—”.)
Finally, if you’d like the convenience of having all the posts in one place, you can download all the archives in fully searchable PDF format by visiting https://hestanbrough.com/the-daily-journal-archives/. You can download the archives from a particular year or all of them.
This is free instruction, folks. Free knowledge that you can absorb. The only investment you’re making is in yourself and your own future. You invest your time to read, study, and practice what you learn.
Best of all, what you learn will seep into your creative subconscious. So once you’ve learned to trust yourself and your characters, you can apply what you’ve learned from me and others without so much as a conscious thought.
You really don’t have to consciously think about applying the writing craft anymore than you have to consciously think about adding a period at the end of a sentence. You’ve learned it, and you know it, so just do it.
Just trust your characters to convey the story (albeit through your fingertips) that they, not you, are living, and storytelling will become effortless and fun.
The Novel
God I’m tired of living with this thing. (grin) I hope this will be the last update on this particular novel.
I didn’t write at all yesterday. A doctor appointment in the middle of the day basically took the whole day. In the morning, my anticipation of the appointment was too strong, and in the afternoon I just got lazy and watched some BBC.
Anyway, after writing 13 novels in 7 months in 2021 (over 840,000 words of fiction) and then losing my ability to write for close to a year, I’m looking very forward to finishing this one and finally replacing the zero in “Calendar Year 2022 Novels to Date” with a 1. Hey, you have to restart somewhere.
Talk with you later.
Of Interest
See “Celebrate 45 years of Voyager with these amazing images…” at https://www.space.com/voyager-spacecraft-best-images-solar-system.
See “Pulp Speed in Indie Publishing” at https://deanwesleysmith.com/pulp-speed-in-indie-publishing/.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 540 words
Writing of Blackwell Ops 8 (tentative title, novel)
Day 19… 2117 words. Total words to date…… 41729
Day 20… 2025 words. Total words to date…… 43754
Day 21… 1770 words. Total words to date…… 45524
Day 22… 3296 words. Total words to date…… 48820
Day 23… 3259 words. Total words to date…… 52079
Day 24… 2712 words. Total words to date…… 54791
Day 25… 1068 words. Total words to date…… 55859
Day 26… 1003 words. Total words to date…… 56862
Day 27… 1222 words. Total words to date…… 58084
Day 28… 1515 words. Total words to date…… 59599
Day 29… 2030 words. Total words to date…… 61629
Total fiction words for August……… 12809
Total fiction words for the year………… 65305
Total nonfiction words for August… 12140
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 118380
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 183685
Calendar Year 2022 Novels to Date…………………… 0
Calendar Year 2021 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2021 Short Stories to Date… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 66
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31
Disclaimer: Along with discussing various aspects of the writing craft, I advocate a technique called Writing Into the Dark. WITD is “the only way” to write, but it is by far the easiest, most liberating, and most fun.
“You really don’t have to consciously think about applying the writing craft anymore than you have to consciously think about adding a period at the end of a sentence. You’ve learned it, and you know it, so just do it.”
Amen to that, Harvey.
Thanks, Bob. That realization is what helped me understand I really could write into the dark back when I was first starting. It got me over the critical mind hurdle.
If I applied punctuation and built sentences and all that without consciously thinking about it, then of course I could apply writing craft elements without thinking about them either. After all, we’ve have been absorbing Story since before we even knew there was an alphabet.
Storytelling is a natural, instinctive act. If we weren’t taught so stringently that plotting and criticism and rewriting were necessary, we would never bother with them. As a result, our stories would be far easier to write. They would also be better, by which I mean original and unique to the writer’s own (creative subconscious) voice.