In Today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* The December Run with Harvey Challenge
* The Novel Wrapped, But in an Ugly Way
* Steven Pressfield and The War of Art
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quotes of the Day
“Truly great novels are driven by unforgettable characters.” Jake at Writem
Finally, something on which I and the writer(s) at Writem can fully agree. (grin)
“Staple it to the inside of your eyeballs, folks: All good fiction is character-driven.” Harvey Stanbrough, the opening sentence of Chapter 1 of Writing the Character-Driven Story, the now unpublished book largely included in Writing Better Fiction
The December Run with Harvey Challenge
Just thought I’d mention this.
Four brave writers decided to jump into this goofy challenge. Their goal is to write 65,100 words for the month of December. (If they started with December 4, that’s 2325 words per day.)
None of those who jumped in have opted to report weekly numbers yet, which is fine. I just wanted to drop a note here to say I hope they’re running away with it.
And life happens. If it happens to you, don’t get disheartened. Instead, get back on the challenge the next day or at your next opportunity. You never know what you might achieve.
The Novel Wrapped, But in an Ugly Way
This segment is mostly for those of you who follow The Numbers below.
As it turns out, at the beginning of the day yesterday I cut 2138 words (cut words are not included in The Numbers below) from the novel and recast the ending from scratch.
I also cut the 6771 words from the novel that will be included only in the novella, Mina Vera Prifti. So those words are reported, but not in the novel.
It got confusing. My spreadsheet is wonderful, but it’s only as accurate as the data I feed into it.
And I’m going for a major annual goal of published (not publishable) words of fiction this year.
If I reach that goal, next year I will go for ‘pulishable’ fiction. That cumulative running total will include both published words of fiction and words I cut but keep in a separate file for possible ‘brought forward’ use in another fiction.
So to get my cumulative numbers for December back on track, I nuked that section of my spreadsheet back to Ground Zero. To do that, I included the only short story I’ve written this month (1501 words), a novella (12058 words so far), and the novel (28501 words).
To get my cumulative annual total on track, I also cut BO-32 out of November (over 3000 words). All of that reset my December and annual totals and made them accurate again.
I mean, I wanna make my annual goal this year, but if I get there, I don’t want an asterisk or any lingering doubts hanging over it.
And yes, I learned a lesson: From now on, I’ll write each story, novelette, novella, and novel separately in its own file and its own document. Duh.
So to get back to Ground Zero and even everything out, I’m reporting the actual final word count of the novel, minus the huge cuts (8909 words).
I’m also listing the new novella (Mina Vera Prifti) that derived from this novel. (The ‘words brought forward’ there are included in the novel and therefore are not counted again in the cumulative count.)
By the way, the words shown on ‘Day 1’ for that novella are actually the new words written to date over the past several days. There is more to write.
As I did with the earlier will-be novella, The Imp, I will also set Mina Vera Prifti aside until after the beginning of the year and complete it then.
So after all that, all the totals in The Numbers below are correct. And thank goodness the novel is finally spell-checked, off my desk, and winging its way to my first reader via email.
Today I’ll write my story for this week’s Bradbury Challenge and (time willing) start the next novel.
Steven Pressfield and The War of Art
I originally wrote and posted a different version of this topic back in 2015. This version is significantly updated.
This segment isn’t really about Steven Pressfield so much as it’s about his book, The War of Art.
If you’re a writer, this book should be on your desk or on your computer or ereader or both. I have a copy on my desk, and I have a copy in my Kindle. I read parts of it from time to time just to slap myself around a bit.
Even as a child playing team sports during recess, I’ve always been immune to so-called ‘pep talks’ and all such psychological nonsense. It just never affected me in any kind of positive way.
Then Pressfield came along with The War of Art and completely screwed up my smug notions that
- I could not be affected by outside influences, and
- I had any idea at all what I was doing when it came to setting priorities.
The War of Art reminded me that time is a precious commodity. That we should use time wisely, and that doing so means setting priorities.
I never want to become ‘have been’ a writer who no longer can ‘find’ the time to write. The time is right there in front of me, but it vanishes a little more every second.
And don’t kid yourself. YOU set your priorities. Situations and circumstances and other people can pressure and influence you, but the final decision is still yours.
Of course, like everything else, setting priorities incurs a cost. When you prioritize one activity or person, you automatically move other activities or persons lower on your list of priorities.
For now, just know The War of Art is great therapy. It is hands-down the best no-excuses catalyst for writing fiction I’ve ever seen.
You can buy the ebook or paperback (or both) at Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You can also buy it in any of several editions at Black Irish Books, the publishing company Steven formed with his editor, Shawn Coyne.
You can even hear from Steven Pressfield himself, writer to writer, in this brief video.
Even if you don’t know Pressfield’s name, you almost certainly know of his work. The Legend of Bagger Vance was his, and he’s written several books about warriors and wartime situations.
For my money, though, writing The War of Art is why he was put on this earth.
Now, since I’m going on about Pressfield, you can find his website here. I haven’t visited for a long time, and these days he’s offering The Daily Pressfield, which “is 365 days (plus a bonus week” of motivation, inspiration, and encouragement.”
Note that this is a book, not a newsletter. But it might be worth checking out.
Long ago, I was a subscriber to his older website, but I soon found that I had to take a LOT of what he recommended with a very large grain of salt.
Oddly, considering all the help I’ve gotten over the years from The War of Art, I found a lot of what I considered very bad advice on his older website. Stuff that would unnecessarily slow me down as a writer, stuff that would feed into the old myths I’d worked hard to finally drag myself out of.
So caution on that. But this new The Daily Pressfield might be worthwhile.
Talk with you again soon.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 1220
Writing of Mena Vera Prifti (Erotic Fantasy novella)
Words brought forward…………….. 5287
Adjusted total to date (6771)…….. 12058
Writing of Blackwell Ops 32: Harry Tidwell
Day 1…… 3528 words. To date…… 3528
Day 2…… 3136 words. To date…… 6664
Day 3…… 4540 words. To date…… 11204
Day 4…… 6376 words. To date…… 17598
Day 5…… 3196 words. To date…… 20794
Day 6…… 3763 words. To date…… 24557
Day 7…… 3811 words. To date…… 28368
Day 8…… 3308 words. To date…… 31676
Day 9…… 1609 words. To date…… 33285
Day 10…. 4125 words. To date…… 37410 done
MINUS CUTS…………………………… -8909
Adjusted total…………………………… 28501
Fiction for December………………… 42060
Fiction for 2024………………………. 961175
Nonfiction for December…………….. 10990
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 373560
2024 consumable words…………….. 1,162,302
Average Fiction WPD (December)…. 4087
2024 Novels to Date…………………….. 18
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 32
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..… 102
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 269
Short story collections……………………. 29
Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.