In today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* Topic: Why I won’t write…
* A pretty good day
* The Numbers
Quotes of the Day
“Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan….” The business that preserves the author’s (Dr. Seuss) legacy, as reported by CNN (there’s a shock)
Note: Doesn’t sound like “preservation” to me. Cancel culture can bite me. Bunch of disgusting brave fighters of blind kittens…..
“PG predicts that, in the long-standing tradition of human nature, one hundred years in the future, someone, somewhere will be loudly condemning the unforgiveable insensitivity and primitive stupidity of the clods and Neanderthals of 2021.”
Topic: Why I won’t write a series of “typical day” posts to include in a book on how to write a novel in 9 or 10 or 15 days
Dean finished his “How to Write a Novel in Half a Month” posts yesterday with a 41,000 word novel.
It gave me an idea (duh) for a similar nonfiction book, but I won’t write it. 1. Too easy. 2. Too boring.
That’s why I don’t write a lot of my day-to-day, moment-to-moment nonsense in this blog. It would be a repetition, day after day, of this:
Rolled out at 3:30. Turned on the coffee maker (prepped the day before). Dished up a morning meal of canned food (Purina Shreds, she likes salmon and similar stuff) for my little daughter cat.
While she was distracted with eating, I let the silverback chihuahua dog out of his kennel for a morning constitutional outside. Gave him a treat when he came back in, whereupon he disappeared into the bowels of the house to eat it, then circle three times and curl up for a nap, probably on the big brown fluffy pillow next to the French doors in my bedroom. That pillow will be warmed by the sun when it eventually comes up.
By then the coffee pot had made 4 cups, just right for my first mug. So while the chihuahua was doing chihuahua stuff and the daughter was still eating, I put on my jacket (it was 40° outside this morning) and my ball cap and my slippers.
Then I padded back to the coffee pot, took the lid off my mug and put in a teaspoon of french vanilla creamer and a packet of sweetener and poured the mug full, slapped the no-spill top back on it and let myself out the back door to walk 150 feet to the Hovel. Roughly five minutes had elapsed.
Spent the first hour of my morning sipping coffee and reading and responding to emails, then reading and linking-to items for “Of Interest.” Then I wrote this and finished waking up with a few games of spider solitaire, all on my business computer.
Around 4:30 I took a handful of allegedly necessary pills (I took them about 20 minutes late this morning as I re-read this). Now I’ll post this, update my spreadsheet to reflect yesterday’s fiction words and this morning’s Journal entry, then save the post to my ongoing Word doc.
Then I’ll make the trek back to the house to wrap a blanket around my daughter, who’s usually curled up in the corner of my recliner napping by then. Then I’ll attend to needs in the bathroom, then pour a second mug of coffee (and turn off the pot), then head back to the Hovel to move over to my writing computer.
Throw in three or four more trips to and from the house for various reasons, punctuated with a maybe twice weekly trip to the grocery store, and you have my typical day.
See why I won’t post my day to day movements for the 9 days to 2 weeks it takes me to write a novel? I was bored almost to tears just writing this.
But the routine remains the same, which is why they call it a routine. So if you want, you can cut and past the above and stick it to your wall with tape and then check my numbers below to follow the progress of the actual writing if you want to know how Harvey Stanbrough writes a novel in however many days. As if.
Had another pretty good day of fiction writing yesterday, though not quite as good as on Day 1.
Talk with you again soon. (Oops. I hit publish before I added my numbers. Apologies to those who get this immediately via RSS. I’ve updated it now.)
Of Interest
See “Promote your books on Booksniffer” at https://authors.booksniffer.com/promote-your-books-on-booksniffer/. Free to sign up.
See “Last Day of Writing a Novel in Half a Month” at https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/last-day-of-writing-a-novel-in-half-a-month/.
See “6 Dr. Seuss books won’t be published anymore because they portray people in ‘hurtful and wrong’ ways” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/6-dr-seuss-books-wont-be-published-anymore-because-they-portray-people-in-hurtful-and-wrong-ways/.
See “11 Techniques for Transforming Clichéd Phrasings” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/11-techniques-for-transforming-cliched-phrasings/. Not bad advice (“drill down” = focus, “mix up the senses” = uss all five of the POV character’s senses, etc.)
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 790 words
Writing of The Journey Home: Part 8 (novel)
Day 1…… 4891 words. Total words to date…… 4891
Day 2…… 4495 words. Total words to date…… 9386
Total fiction words for March……… 13613
Total fiction words for the year………… 212621
Total nonfiction words for March… 3320
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 49350
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 261971
Calendar Year 2021 Novels to Date…………………… 4
Calendar Year 2021 Novellas to Date……………… X
Calendar Year 2021 Short Stories to Date… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 58
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 it both regularly and publicly, I will continue to do so.