In Today’s Journal
* We Might Have an Anthology
* A Personal Recap of May
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
We Might Have an Anthology
As of 10 a.m. yesterday I’d received 18 entries from 13 writers for the Echoes of Hemingway short story contest.
And as I write this (with submissions officially closed) I’ve received 22 entries from 15 writers. Woohoo!
Congratulations to all of those writers for believing in themselves enough to write and submit a story to the contest.
Now, for some of you, you still need to believe in yourself enough to Defend Your Work. Never let the thought cross your mind that you ‘hope’ your story’s ‘good.’ That sends a vote of no confidence to your creative subconscious.
Believe in your characters and your story and they will believe in you. Your story will definitely be good to some readers, and that’s all that matters.
Anyway, I decided early-on I wouldn’t start reading until June first (today), so I will. But with the influx of stories I was sorely tempted to set my novel aside and just read.
I’ll get back to writers personally over the next two or three days.
A Personal Recap of May 2025
and maybe a few changes in my personal schedule.
In my own writing, May was the traditional March: in like a lion, out like a lamb. Over 111,000 words of fiction in April, but only 85,000+ in May.
May was also a time of personal epiphany.
I started May with a words-per-day average (for the month) of 3960. Of course, that number fluctuated as I moved through the month, rising as high as 4698 and eventually bottoming out in the 2700s.
For some, even 2700 words per day wouldn’t be bad, but for me it identified a miserable, lackluster effort.
The good news is that my average words-per-day on the year as of May 30 was only down to 3076 wpd. That will still clear my annual goal for the year to write at least 1,100,000 words of fiction. If I can maintain it.
But I also had a major epiphany: I don’t really care.
Why? Because as much as I love accomplishing new goals and reaching new heights in my writing, those accomplishments and heights are only temporary. I enjoy them, maybe even revel in them a little, and then they slip away into the past.
In the micro-view, that’s one of the best things about working toward a daily goal: Whether you exceed it or fall short, the next day the slate is wiped clean and it resets to zero.
So there’s a good chance my priorities have shifted a bit, by which I mean things that used to matter don’t matter quite as much.
So maybe I won’t publish TNDJ every day. I can only pass along what I know, and other than the real-time, down-in-the-weeds, nuanced stuff, I’ve already passed along all of that. As an aside…
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Oh, and here’s My Bio. It’s always a good idea to vet the expertise of people who are giving you advice.
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And maybe I won’t fret quite so much over hitting my daily fiction writing goal of 3250 words per day.
Maybe I’ll chill a little more. Stay up a little later and get up a little later.
I’m even thinking of taking a break from writing novels after BO-45 is finished to concentrate on writing short stories for awhile, just to keep my skills in that world. We’ll see.
Maybe turn out a few new short story collections. I have a bunch of (over 100) uncollected short stories.
As I keep saying, if you’re a fiction writer, what you write isn’t important. Each story is only a few minutes’ or hours’ of entertainment. THAT you write is what matters.
For me personally, even that I write matters less than it has in the past. For the past 11 years, I fully expected to face plant on my laptop as I typed ‘the end’ on my last novel. (grin)
Yet a couple of days ago, I heard myself ask my wife whether maybe I should ‘retire’. It was almost an out-of-body experience.
In true “Save a horse; ride a cowboy” style, she shrugged. “You could. It’s up to you.” Bless her heart.
She knows my stupid mind moves at light speed, and that what I’m considering in This Very Instant will be shoved aside by a grouchy or ecstatic or wise-guy or luscious-babe character in the next and I’ll be shoulders-deep in another story and the notion of not writing will flash to black so fast it’ll make the Big Bang blush.
So again, we’ll see.
Of Interest
What If I Fail? “Your daily motivational punch in the face” (grin)
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: “Charity” As always, excellent stuff for your characters.
Were Hitler’s Luftwaffe Pilots Wired on Speed? My initial thought was “Doesn’t matter, does it?” But this article is filled with great information for writers re the effects of meth and the effects is has on the human body.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 890
Writing of Blackwell Ops 45: Sam Granger | Ghost Trail 2
Day 1…… 2637 words. To date…… 2637
Day 2…… 3648 words. To date…… 6285
Day 3…… 3483 words. To date…… 9768
CUTS…… -4437 words. To date…… 5331
Day 4…… 3212 words. To date…… 8543
Day 5…… 2715 words. To date…… 11258
Day 6…… 2044 words. To date…… 13302
Fiction for May………………………… 85039
Fiction for 2025………………………. 463452
Nonfiction for June……………………. 890
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 127040
2025 consumable words…………….. 583982
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 11
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 27
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 115
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 297
Short story collections……………………. 29
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.
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Questions are always welcome at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. But please limit yourself to the topics of writing and publishing.