A Story, NaNoWriMo, a Survey
Weird. I clicked the wrong icon in my browser tray and sent this post to the old “(Almost) Daily Journal” instead of to TNDJ. So the hangers-on over there will see it, but here it is again for those of you subscribed to TNDJ. If this is a duplicate for you, my apologies.
In Today's Journal
* Woohoo!
* Your Results Might Vary
* NaNoWriMo Is Shutting Down
* A Quick Survey
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Woohoo!
Yesterday, about the time I finished cycling through what I wrote in the novel yesterday, a friend invited me to write a short story for a pulp fiction paper anthology that's supposed to come out this summer.
So I took a little over two hours to write that (it mostly wrote itself) before I took a short break, then went back to the Hovel to write more on the novel.
I love it when things like that happen.
Your Results Might Vary
If you write short fiction, especially if that's your primary creative vehicle, I hope you're also
submitting each story to paying magazines, journals, anthologies, and other markets,
publishing each story "wide" separately, and
publishing each story in five- or ten-story collections, or both.
I used to do all of that, and I had pretty good success with it.
Then I entered my own personal Stage 2. I started writing novels. I still wrote short stories too, but I stopped submitting them around and I stopped publishing them individually. I published them only in my own themed collections.
These days, I'm in kind of a Stage 3. I don't remember when I last published a collection of short fiction. These days I focus my efforts on writing novels. These days when I write a short story, I do so strictly for fun.
These days I write a short story because
maybe I really enjoy a character or characters from a novel, so I write a short story to play with them a little longer.
Or maybe I'm invited to write a story for a magazine or anthology.
Or maybe I write a story for the Bradbury Challenge.
Or maybe I just get the urge to write a short story for whatever reason.
But aside from the "invitation" stories (if they're accepted by the venue that invited me), once the story is written, it goes into a folder on my laptop, and from there eventually is published very narrowly on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Then I forget about it. And if an invitation story isn't accepted, I shrug and publish it in the Stanbrough Writes Substack too.
For me personally (this might or might not apply for you) not worrying about designing covers and publishing the short stories separately enables me to keep the writing of short stories a fun, quick, enjoyable pastime.
Not worrying about publishing them also keeps me away from the "what's the use?" attitude that has plagued my friend Dean recently (see Of Interest).
NaNoWriMo Is Shutting Down
In case any of you are interested:
The State of NaNoWriMo - A Community Update - March 2025 Audio, about 27 minutes. Turn up your sound.
Of course, you can set out on your own to write 50,000 words of fiction in any month you choose. In fact, if you would like to do that, pick a month, let me know, and we'll set up a challenge for it.
Instead of reporting your words to NaNo, you can report them to me. If you're wondering, and if you want to use a daily goal, the required daily word count (on average) to reach 50,000 words in a month would be 1667 words per day.
Or you could always jump into the Stephen King challenge in any month and participate in that. That's only 1000 words per day.
A Quick Survey
As I mentioned yesterday, I’m thinking of serializing some of my work, and maybe even serializing a novel as I write it. If you’d like to see that, please let me know.
So you’ll know what you’re getting into, if I serialize a book 'live' as I write it, it will be a Blackwell Ops novel. Blackwell Ops is a worldwide network of professional assassins. So that would be the genre we'd be playing with: Assassinations and Romance.
If I serialize an older work, it will be either Blackwell Ops, Mystery, SF, Western, or Action-Adventure.
So if you would like to read a serialized novel free, probably 2-3 chapters per issue, please leave a comment or let me know via email at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. (If you're reading this in Substack, you might need to copy/paste the email address instead of clicking on it.)
If you respond, feel free to let me know which genre(s) interests you.
I’m looking for numbers here. If you’re interested, be sure to let me know. I can’t count votes I don’t have.
If enough people are interested, I’ll be back soon to tell you how and where to subscribe. If not, welp, I'll figure out something else fun to do.
Please share this via your social media, etc.
Of Interest
Play, Don’t Pitch: Connecting with Your Fans Yeah, it's a little confusing: Market, market, market. No, wait. Don't market there! Maybe useful stuff.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 800
Writing of "No Way Alive"
Day 1…… 3138 words. To date…… 3138 done
Writing of Blackwell Ops 41: León Garras
Day 1…… 1847 words. To date…… 1847
Day 2…… 3410 words. To date…… 5257
Day 3…… 3452 words. To date…… 8709
Day 4…… 2915 words. To date…… 11624
Day 5…… 2311 words. To date…… 13935
Fiction for April……………………….. 11974
Fiction for 2025………………………. 278924
Nonfiction for April………………........ 3480
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 85010
2025 consumable words…………….. 357424
Average Fiction WPD (March)……... 3991
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 7
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 11
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 111
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 281
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.
If you are able, please support TNDJ with a paid subscription. Thank you!
If you’re new to TNDJ, you might want to check out these links:
Oh, and here’s My Bio. It’s always a good idea to vet the expertise of people who are giving you advice.
Questions are always welcome at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. But please limit yourself to the topics of writing and publishing.
Hello, Harvey! Good for you for the short stories. I am still at the stage where I wrote more short fiction than novels. I don't mind, trying to enjoy the process, and there will be novels when the time comes. (and they will come, of course)
I liked Nanowrimo. It was a world wide event, and in Hungary, I got friends thanks to participating in the local events.
And I would be interesting in the serialization. Action-adventure.
Greetings!
Hmm meant to comment here before. Anyway, yes I was sad to lose the nanowrimo opportunity. I liked the summer camp 🏕 the best. Always thought that was fun. You could exchange postcards from camp and even gift boxes. Silly stuff and I didn't always do it but when I did it was fun. Guess we can camp out at home and eat smores while writing anytime. 😁. Sarra Cannon does a free virtual writing getaway each quarter with live writing sprints all day on youtube during the 3 day event. With a different destination each time. Just had one on Maui this month. 🥥 🌴 🍹