In Today’s Journal
* My Quote of the Day
* Correction
* If You Missed the World Series
* Subscription Drive
* The Novel
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
My Quote of the Day
“Don’t get too full of yourself. On a National Geographic Map of the Known Universe, our nearest neighbor—Proxima Centauri, part of the Alpha Centauri star system—is only 1/4 inch away.
“Yet if Earth suddenly exploded and disappeared into mist, not only would anyone at Proxima Centauri not care, they wouldn’t even know. That’s how important we are with all our silly problems.” Harvey
Or as I wrote in a poem one time, “The universe moseys past, its hands in its pockets, wondering what all the fuss is about.”
Correction
George Bernard Shaw is not the correct attribution for the Quote of the Day from yesterday’s issue of TNDJ.
For me, the thought itself far outweighs who first said or wrote it, but correct attribution is still important.
To see what I learned about this quote, visit Quote Investigator.
This is one reason I prefer using my own quotes. (grin) Of course, eventually, someone somewhere will say, “Hey, Stanbrough never said that.” But if the listener gets the gist, I won’t care even if I’m still around.
If You Missed the World Series
Here are highlights of Game 7 Video, 11 innings in not quite 9 minutes.
As an aside, Howard Cosell once quipped on-air that “Baseball is five minutes of excitement crammed into two-and-a-half hours of boredom.” (grin)
(Note: I remembered that quote as being “two minutes of excitement crammed into four hours,” but whatever.)
Back in the day, teachers would actually listen to the Series in their classrooms on radio.
Subscription Drive
Okay, it’s that time again.
I publish TNDJ almost every day. Most days it takes a couple of hours to slap it together, add it to my Journal website, then spell-check it in Word, then copy/paste it to Substack. There I read over it one final time before posting it live.
I don’t mind doing that free of charge for those who need it. That said,
- if you aren’t a paid subscriber but could afford to be (it’s only $5 per month or $60 per year), and
- if you receive value from what I post in TNDJ,
- please step up to a paid subscription.
As an added incentive, if you email to let me know, I’ll send you any of my fiction or nonfiction books free of charge in your preferred ebook format. As an alternative, I’ll offer a free critique of the opening of any short story or novel.
If you can’t upgrade to a paid subscription, please at least share TNDJ widely and often.
Thanks! I appreciate it.
The Novel
I wasn’t sure how yesterday’s fiction word count was going to work out.
I’m in a late chapter, and I was writing along just fine.
Then the characters threw me a knuckle ball (vs. the simple curves they often throw me) and the only way to catch it was to go all the way back to the beginning of the novel and cycle over the first four chapters.
I never mind another cycling session, but for that one I had the knuckle ball in mind so I had to constantly kick the critical mind to the curb.
Anyway, that all worked out before around 1:30 p.m. and I went back to the white space to continue writing.
So I still made my daily word count goal and it looks like the novel will wrap soon.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Tips for Overcoming Writerly Self-Doubt Conscious, critical mind, anyone? The best and truest advice I can give you is to push down that critical voice and Just Write the Next Sentence.
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 630
Mentorship Words…………….. 220
Total Nonfiction…………………. 850
Writing of Blackwell Ops 50: Sam Granger | On Rocky Ground
Day 1…… 1440 words. To date………… 1440
Day 2…… 2986 words. To date………… 4426
Day 3…… 3523 words. To date………… 7949
Day 4…… 3315 words. To date………… 11264
Day 5…… 4128 words. To date………… 15392
Day 6…… 2990 words. To date………… 18382
Day 7…… 3330 words. To date………… 21712
Day 8…… 3572 words. To date………… 25284
Day 9…… 3101 words. To date………… 28385
Day 10…. 3469 words. To date………… 31854
Fiction for November……………………… 10142
Fiction for 2025…………………………… 672183
Nonfiction for November.………………… 3820
Nonfiction for 2025………………..……… 243290
2025 consumable words………………… 907904
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 16
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 36
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 120
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29