A New Short Story
In Today's Journal
* Quote of the Day
* A New Short Story
* Bradbury Reminder
* The Publishing
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
"The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do." Galileo Galilei
A New Short Story
"The Tear as Process" (a magic realism horror story) went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. It's free.
If you enjoy the story, please click Like. That helps with my Substack algorithms. Then tell Everyone else.
Bradbury Reminder
Today is Saturday. Just a reminder to get your Bradbury Challenge story info in to me before the Journal goes live on Monday.
Remember, if you finish a story earlier in the week, you can send the info to me early too. It never hurts to avoid pushing the deadline.
The Publishing
This morning I got Russ' input back for Blackwell Ops 37: Temple-Schiff, applied it, and published that to D2D and Amazon. Good to have it off my desk. It wraps the Jack Temple subseries.
Yesterday I compiled Punctuation for Writers and Writing Realistic Dialogue & Flash Fiction in an omnibus. Today I'll add Quiet the Critical Mind to that one, then get the omnibus out. I'll let Writing Better Fiction stand on its own.
All false modesty aside, as I read through PFW and WRD, I was struck by how good they really are. By how much valid, in-depth information I included in them way back in 2011, long before I started putting 'next-level' tips in TNDJ. They're chock full of gems.
If you don't already have either PFW or WRD yet, or if your critical mind is plaguing you and you haven't read Quiet the Critical Mind yet, I recommend you get them, either individually or in the omnibus. To save money, go through my online store.
Or (shrug) continue with Strunk & White and other regurgitations like that and ignore anything that doesn't proliferate the myths.
The process of compiling the information for that omnibus bothered me a little. I'm beginning to understand why Stephen King et all keep to themselves and their own writing.
Anyway, onward and upward. Today I'll finish that omnibus and maybe compile one or two of the fiction omnibus collections, then get back to my own fiction. I love being lost in those worlds.
Of Interest
Romance Isn’t the Same—But It’s Still Everything
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 510
Writing of
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date…… XXXXX
Fiction for February………………….. 37682
Fiction for 2025………………………. 159047
Nonfiction for February…………….... 11960
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 43940
2025 consumable words…………….. 196467
Average Fiction WPD (February)…….. 2899
Average Fiction WPD (Annual)……..… 3612
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 4
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 7
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 108
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 277
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.
PFW is one of my all-time favorite writing books. That book was THE one that finally made punctuation make sense to me, especially those pesky commas. It's one of the few books on writing that has come into my writing library and actually stayed. I don't loan it out, ever, but it's at the very top of the short list of books I tell any writer to get if they are struggling with punctuation in any way.