A New Story, and the Writing

In Today's Journal

* Quote of the Day
* A New Short Story
* BookFunnel
* The Writing
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quote of the Day

"After you learn to write your whole object is to convey everything, every sensation, sight, [smell, sound, taste,] feeling, place and emotion to the reader. To do this you have to work over what you write." Ernest Hemingway

A New Short Story

"No Better Day (expanded)" (a Hemingway-ish story) went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. It's free.

This is one of those very rare stories, in that I don't usually revisit stories I wrote before. I originally wrote the first version of this one years ago. But the story idea continued to intrigue me, so in the past few months I wrote it again.

No other title would suit, so I added "expanded."

If you enjoy the story, please click Like. Comments are welcome too. Both help 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.

BookFunnel

If you want to market your work, I strongly recommend you open a BookFunnel account. If I remember right, it's free. If it isn't, it doesn't cost very much. (If it did, I wouldn't have an account.)

What grabbed my attention and caused me to mention this is

1. Vin Zandri is a big believer in BookFunnel, and you can't argue with success, and

2. BookFunnel has all kinds of training videos on how to use the platform. And when you can't attend 'live' you still get to watch them later. If I was younger and a little more energetic, I'd be all over that.

The Writing

Another slow day yesterday. The novel's bulging at the scenes, about to break loose.

Most days I write 3000 words and get 3000 words. On other days I write 5000 words and get 3000 words.

Two days ago, I wrote a sticky scene, one in which I couldn't quite get the description right. I could see, hear, and smell it but I couldn't quite get it right on the page.

I wrote and wrote, cycled over and over it, and finally slung it against the wall and started over.

Yesterday it finally came true and clean and raced off into the next scene without so much as a wave. As I knew it eventually would. You just have to keep coming back.

Note: All of that was while in the creative subconscious. Be careful to keep the conscious, critical mind out of your writing.

Every novel writes differently. That's part of the fun and the frustration.

For those of you in the Stephen King Challenge

(1000 wpd), I've recommended setting your daily goal at 11oo or higher.

My words-per-day goal is 3250. My current wpd annual average is 3112, but multiplied by 365 that's still well over a million. Which is why I set my goal at 3250 in the first place.

See? Striving for 3250 words on the day keeps my annual wpd average from dipping too low to make a million words on the year.

Of Interest

Here's something special for you.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 530

Writing of Blackwell Ops 39: More Paul Stone

Day 1…… 2789 words. To date…… 2789
Day 2…… 3308 words. To date…… 6097
Day 3…… 2019 words. To date…… 8116

Fiction for March…………………….. 19625
Fiction for 2025………………………. 205456
Nonfiction for March……………........ 6950
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 60880
2025 consumable words…………….. 259826

Average Fiction WPD (March)……... 2804

2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 5
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 9
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 109
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 279
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.