In today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* The Writing: Trust the Creative Subconscious
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quotes of the Day
“It got me thinking that recurring elements aren’t annoying; they’re linguistic fingerprints.” Johnny B. Truant (See Of Interest)
“[P]utting recurring elements in a story or art can provide a sense of familiarity to your audience. It gives them something to latch onto, making your work memorable.” Johnny B. Truant
“Today a massive rain storm hit Massachusetts hard, resulting in over 200,000 areas without power, including my neighborhood. … I did managed to squeeze in 1, 177 new words of fiction…. I dusted off my Olympia portable to bang out the word count by candlelight. Not exactly what I had planned for Day 1 of the sprint but I will take it!” Frank Theodat (See Of Interest)
Now THAT’S inspirational! So what stopped YOU from writing yesterday?
The Writing: Trust the Creative Subconscious
Yesterday I mentioned a new lesson I learned. To let chapters be whatever they need to be for length and not worry about it. After all, there is the story of the novel, and then there is the story of the chapter.
For that matter, there are the smaller stories of separate sections within a chapter. Most of my chapters are further separated into sections, so those provide the reader with plenty of white space to “rest.”
Doing that isn’t permission to go slop-wild. It’s adherance to letting the overall story remain in the capable hands of the characters.
That same day and during that same writing session, I also received a stout, very plain reminder to always obey the creative subconscious.
I had written in Blackwell Ops 15 that my female lead has “Mayan” features. Yet she has lived in Mexico most of her life, in an area where Aztecs, not Mayans, dominated.
The same character is also the female lead in my current novel. Two days ago, during that same writing session, I “caught” that distinction and wrote Aztec (conscious mind). Then I went back to Blackwell Ops 15, opened the Word document and changed Mayan to Aztec.
I was about to upload the revised document to D2D and Amazon when I remembered: Although she had lived in Mexico since she was an infant and considers herself a Mexican, she was actually born in Colombia.
Now. Where she was born has no bearing on the story. She might as easily have been born in London, Cairo, or Albuquerque.
But she wasn’t. In the story that flowed through me from my characters, she was born in Colombia. Yep, she was a descendant of Mayans.
So yes, I changed Aztec back to Mayan in the Blackwell Ops 15 document, sheepishly closed it, and returned to the current novel. There, I bowed to the wisdom of the characters:
- because for them, where one of their own was born mattered a great deal indeed, and
- because she was born where she was born, not where the stupid writer’s conscious, critical mind thought she should have been born.
You are only the writer, the recorder of your characters’ stories. You run through the stories with them at their invitation, but what you “think” does not matter to the story itself.
Always trust and obey your creative subconscious. It knows what matters or will matter in the story the characters are giving you.
In my own writing, I fell far below my daily goal. Instead of writing much of anything new, I chose to cycle back through the entire novel to relieve the straining chapters I mentioned yesterday. As a result I added only a little over 2000 words today.
Fortunately, tomorrow, as ever, the goal resets to zero. (grin)
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Sprinting to 2024 Challenge – Day 1 Reporting I encourage you to sign up for Frank’s free substack newsletter
It’s Not Repeating Yourself. It’s Your Fingerprint.
Bringing Forward. FAILURE MUST BE AN OPTION For writer Frank Theodat, failure was not an option. (grin)
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 650
Writing of Tarea-Garcia 1
Day 1…… 4968 words. To date…… 4968
Day 2…… 3677 words. To date…… 8645
Day 3…… 3307 words. To date…… 11952
Day 4…… 4467 words. To date…… 16419
Day 5…… 4193 words. To date…… 20612
Day 6…… 2061 words. To date…… 22673
Writing of “The Love of Charlie Task” (blue)
Day 1…… 1079 words. To date…… 1079
Fiction for December…………………… 72803
Fiction for 2023…………………………. 473637
Fiction since August 1………………… 358013
Nonfiction for December……………… 14820
Nonfiction for the year……………… 270400
Annual consumable words………… 737819
2023 Novels to Date……………………… 10
2023 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2023 Short Stories to Date……………… 8
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………… 81
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)…… 236
Short story collections…………………… 31
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Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.