A New Story, and First Things First
August 30, 2024 by Harvey
In today’s Journal
* Note 1
* Note 2
* A New Short Story
* First Things First
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Note 1
If you missed yesterday’s post, “The Inexorable Rule of Writing Fiction,” I’ve added it to the Gifts & Archives page on the Journal website.
Or you can download it right here in pdf.
Note 2
Because I inadvertently failed to say yesterday that this series of posts will be only for paid subscribers, I’m sending this one to everyone too.
If you’d like to continue receiving this series of posts, please consider switching to a paid subscription. It’s only $5 per month or $60 per year.
To do that, either click Upgrade to Paid below (if you see that link) or click Donate Here and set up a recurring donation of $5 per month OR make a one-time (annual) donation of $60 via PayPal. Thank you!
A New Short Story
“Authenticity” goes live today at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out.
If you enjoy it, tell Everyone. If you don’t, shhh! (grin)
First Things First
If you want to write true, authentic fiction, I recommend you make writing a commitment.
Not because you “have” to but because you want to enjoy the process of writing fiction and have fun conveying the stories of your characters. If that’s the case, you need to build a routine, a habit.
Chances are, like everyone else on Earth, you have a life and certain commitments.
But if you want to write fiction, carve some time out of every day to do that. It might only be 15 minutes or a half-hour here and there. If you’re fortunate, it will be more.
Then remember if you want to be a writer, you must write.
So use the time you carve out to actually put new words on the page. Time is your most precious commodity. Please don’t waste it.
Writing into the dark—writing authentically—might be scary at first.
As you learn to push down your fear-fueled critical voice, at times you might break out in beads of sweat. Your heartrate might even increase. After all, you’re taking a risk. Your conscious mind doesn’t like you to take risks.
It will do everything it can to stop you from walking across a busy highway.
It will do everything it can to keep you from accidentally leaning your hand on a still-hot stove.
And through your critical voice, it will do everything it can to keep you from writing fiction.
After all,
maybe some readers won’t like what you write. (Um, but some will.)
Or maybe other chores beckon you each time you sit down to write. (Do them later.)
Or maybe any number of other unreasoning fears will conspire to stop you from writing. (Practice pushing them down or ignoring them and write anyway.)
For some ways to overcome critical voice, see Quiet the Critical Voice and Write Fiction. It’s currently on sale for only $7 at this link. ($9.99 everywhere else)
For awhile, you might have to fight this battle every time you sit down to write. But that won’t last.
Each time you overcome your unreasoning fears, you’re sending a message to your creative subconscious that you trust it.
And each time you overcome those fears, it will become a little easier to overcome them the next time.
Eventually—and sooner than you expect—there will be only the freedom and sheer fun of writing authentic fiction.
When you finally break through, you’ll find the battles were more than worth it. And you’ll wonder why you never tried writing into the dark before.
There’s only one caveat:Although TNDJ is as close as you’ll ever get to a fiction writer’s bootcamp, this is something only you can do for yourself. I can tell you how to do it, but I can’t do it for you.
The best way to start writing into the dark is to sit down at your computer, take a deep breath, and DECIDE you aren’t going to listen to your negative, critical voice as it tries to convince you of all the things you can’t do.
You have to push down that voice, repeatedly at first and less often as time goes by, and write whatever comes. Don’t think about the story or try to figure out what happens next. Just write the next sentence that comes, and the next, and the next.
Soon you’ll find yourself fully immersed in the world of your characters’ story, and you’ll love it.
A word of caution—Critical voice, once pushed down, does not give up altogether. Chances are excellent that eventually the story will “slow” or “bog down” or you’ll feel “stuck.”
When that happens, the remedy is easy: Remember that you trust the story and you trust the characters. Don’t think about what will happen next.
When the story seems to slow or bog down or you feel stuck, again Just Write the Next Sentence and the next and the next. Soon the story will be racing along again. As simple as it sounds, this really does work.
Critical voice will also sometimes crop up when your story is finished.
One writer emailed me only yesterday to say he’d finished 61 short stories (that were not fanfic so they could be published) but he’d published only 20 of them.
He added that “Some of them could be redrafted, some of them should be forgotten, and so on.” And he asked my advice.
I wrote back, “PUBLISH THEM.”
Yes, maybe you can redraft (meaning write again from scratch) something you feel isn’t working quite right. But “some of them should be forgotten” is pure critical voice.
Even if you don’t like a story you’ve written, that’s only one opinion. Other readers will enjoy it, but only if you believe in yourself and publish it so they can see it.
Don’t prejudge for readers. Publish your work and let readers make up their own mind.
To see my personal experience on this with a story titled “Old Suits,” read this post. To get to the meat of that one, scroll down to the paragraph that begins with “Third, re ‘No harm done’” and read those four short paragraphs.
Since I first started writing fiction in earnest in early 2014, following Heinlein’s Rules and writing into the dark have carried me happily along through 94 novels, 9 novellas, and over 240 short stories.
Some of you already know what I mean. For those who don’t, there’s only one way to find out: Try writing into the dark.
At the beginning of this post, I suggested making writing a commitment. Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll be back with a post on how to begin doing that.
Talk with you again then.
Of Interest
Lee Child Talks Writing (podcast)
Episode 962: Troy “The Dude” Lambert Speaks! Do not miss this.
The Numbers
The Journal………………………………1130
Writing of Blackwell Ops 28: Ariana Ramos
Day 1…… 2583 words. To date…… 2583
Day 2…… 1339 words. To date…… 3922
Fiction for August…………………….….… 47432
Fiction for 2024………………………….… 563264
Fiction since October 1………………… 779482
Nonfiction for August……………………… 26570
Nonfiction for 2024……………………… 273580
2024 consumable words………………… 750005
2024 Novels to Date……………………… 12
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 5
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………… 94
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 242
Short story collections…………………… 29
Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer, but please try this at home. You can do it.
On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies. They will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
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I got my Rambo Headband on, my combat boots tied tight and my k-bar between my teeth!
I have given myself 15 reasons not to do this, and I still have tomorrow to get through, lol. I'm making a punji-pit for my conscious voice, and then let it hunt me!