In today’s Journal
* Welcome
* A New Story
* Raising the Bar
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Welcome
Welcome to Remy and any other new subscribers or readers of the Journal. I hope you will find it useful.
Get the Archives and other free downloads at the Journal website. Just click the links and a PDF will download in a new page.
I also recommend reading “I Believe in You” and “Fear”. Can’t hurt, and it might help.
Oh, and check out this half-hour video where bestselling author Vin Zandri and I are chatting about writing on The Writer’s Life.
A New Story
“Seven Minutes in Belfast” published yesterday on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. This one is a short story I wrote in the Blackwell Ops world.
To subscribe, click the link above and then the Subscribe button at the end of the story. You’ll receive a new short story every Friday, and it’s free.
Below the Subscribe button, there are other short stories you can read in most genres. Enjoy!
Raising the Bar
Challenges are good. They’re a great way to push yourself (gently).
Over and over again I hear from those in the ongoing Bradbury Challenge that it and having a place to report their results has helped them shove aside the critical voice and practice writing. Anyone can jump in or jump back in at any time. The “deadline” is Sunday at midnight Arizona time.
I need challenges too. Probably because of my background, I enjoy them. And of course, in writing challenges, there are no actual, real-world consequences anyway. Whether you make it or miss it, each day the word count goal resets to zero. So why not take a shot?
Yesterday I decided to increase my daily word count goal “officially” to 4000 words per day of clean, publishable fiction. Making 3000 words per day, which was my goal for years, has become relatively easy for me.
But writing 4000 words per day pushes me a little. It makes me stay a little longer in the chair, or come back “one more time” to achieve the goal. That’s what I mean about pushing gently.
Yesterday, after posting a 6000+ word day the previous day, I struggled a little to make my 4000 words. But when I checked my novel word count against yesterday’s total and saw that my goal was only around 600 words away, I thought What’s another half-hour? No biggie.
So I got up and walked around a little, then returned to the chair to make my goal. The story took over, and when the smoke cleared, I’d written almost a thousand more words and surpassed my goal by over 300 words. Again, clean, publishable fiction. I don’t count words I put on the page, then cut.
Whatever your goal is, that’s all it takes. A few more minutes in the chair or coming back one more time. If you’re stuck, just write the next sentence that comes, and the next, and the next. Soon you won’t be stuck any longer, the story will be flowing again, and you will have surpassed your goal.
I realize not everyone has the amount of free time I have. For many, a day job and children necessarily take priority. But my children are long-since grown and gone. I lost them in increments. My grandchildren and great grandchildren live too far away to visit often.
And my day job, you could say, is writing and publishing this Journal. But that process is also a great warm-up for my fingers for the fiction writing I do after this thing is posted.
And I love answering your questions in emails or comments or, when I think they would be valuable to other writers, in the Journal (anonymously, of course). So if you have questions, ask them and share the wealth.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Inspiration: Find It, Use It From my friend, accomplished writer Robert J. Sadler
Episode No. 859: Jennifer Wilcov
How Improv Made Me a Better Writer In case this is of any value to you
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 650
Writing of Blackwell Ops 15: Solana Garcia
Day 1…… 3034 words. To date…… 3034
Day 2…… 4389 words. To date…… 7423
Day 3…… 4327 words. To date…… 11750
Day 4…… 4058 words. To date…… 15808
Day 5…… 6103 words. To date…… 21911
Day 6…… 4330 words. To date…… 26241
Fiction for December…………………… 32730
Fiction for 2023…………………………. 433564
Fiction since August 1………………… 319019
Nonfiction for December……………… 7340
Nonfiction for the year……………… 262920
Annual consumable words………… 692977
2023 Novels to Date……………………… 9
2023 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2023 Short Stories to Date……………… 7
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………… 80
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)…… 235
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.