All About the Bradbury Challenge
June 24, 2024 by Harvey
In today’s Journal
* The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
* About the Bradbury Challenge
* A Finger-Wagging Admin Note
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
To take part, write at least one short story per week, then submit the story title, word count, and genre to me each week for publication in the Journal on Monday.
The whole point is to have fun and grow as a writer. You can join or rejoin the challenge at any time. There’s no cost. You can even do it on your own, without reporting numbers to me or anyone else.
During the past week, in addition to whatever other fiction they’re writing, the following writers reported these new stories:
Vanessa V. Kilmer “Rolling Around My Head” 4569 Speculative
George Kordonis “The fly in the ointment, 2667 Suspense
Adam Kozak “The Greatest Good” 3760 General Fiction
About the Bradbury Challenge
A few of notes about the Challenge
As some of you will remember, I started reporting results from your efforts at the Bradbury Challenge here well over a year ago.
I’ll keep doing so every Monday morning until a week goes by without me receiving any reports. So congrats to those of you who persevere and hang in there.
But I’ve thinned the Challenge down a little and brought it back into line with the spirit of the original challenge Ray Bradbury issued: to write one short story a week for a year. He reasoned that nobody could write 52 bad stories in a row.
For a time, I reported on the progress of novels and novellas. I posted words written during that week plus the cumulative total. Last night I even received an essay (nonfiction) from a writer I respect.
But that only reminded me that I had weakened the challenge before. I had made exceptions and reported weekly progress on longer works (novellas, novels), and eventually even opened the Challenge up to vignettes.
A vignette is a slice of life. It’s the part of an overall story you might hear if you walk past an open window while two people inside are talking. The vignette contains characters, setting, and conflict, but it contains no resolution.
Of course, novels, novellas, vignettes are perfectly valid forms of fiction, but none of those conforms to the spirit of the original challenge issued by Ray Bradbury.
So from now on I’ll report only short stories in the Challenge. I won’t force my own word lengths on you. If you write a complete story (setting, characters, conflict and resolution) within one week, you’re welcome to submit your info for the Challenge and I’ll report it.
If you’re writing longer fiction, especially consistently, I applaud you. But keep track of that yourself. I recommend using a spreadsheet, or at least something like I do in Numbers below for each new novel I write.
On another note, one writer mentioned, “It’s come to the point where I can’t finish the week if I don’t write a story.”
That is a very good thing. The whole purpose of a streak is to drive you back to the computer to keep the streak going. Good on you.
But as I told him, continue to guard vigilantly against the critical voice: One of my own biggest regrets as a writer is that I ended my story streak at 72 weeks—intentionally.
In my case, the critical voice snuck up from Brooklyn in the voice of one of my favorite characters. It said, “Hey, you got better t’ings to do, y’know? Like your novels?”
If I hadn’t listened to him, I’d have a LOT more short stories and collections in my inventory today, not to mention who knows how many more novels or novellas that sprang from all those unwritten stories.
I tried to restart my personal challenge two or three times, but with that 72 hanging over me, I never again developed a streak of more than 10 or 12 stories in a row. So I advise you to guard against that.
Always look forward as a writer. Always consider positive possibilities and keep writing. You just never know what might result from a longer streak.
A Finger-Wagging Admin Note
One writer chastized me for my use of the parenthetical “(grin)” in yesterday’s post. He counted them and reported that I used “(grin)” eight times. He wrote “It is a shame, because otherwise I would have read the piece to the end.” Finally, he wanted me to consider whether I might find a better way to convey that “emotion” than with a “grin” in parentheses.
My response to that concern was negative. For one thing, I wasn’t attempting to convey an emotion. I was attempting to convey that I grinned at that particular moment as I was writing.
But to each his or her own. If that usage bothers you, in my personal opinion, it shouldn’t. For one thing, yesterday’s post admittedly had little if anything to do with writing. It was more of an amicable chat with presumed friends or neighbors over a virtual backyard fence.
Though in retrospect, I suppose that post did contain at least a few seeds for scenes. But I admit that was not my intent.
Had I actually, physically grinned one too many times while conveying that same anecdote over an actual backyard fence, I suppose that person would have walked away and found something else to do. Which is fine. That is a personal choice over which I have no control and would have lost zero sleep. Shrug. I gotta be me.
But on a much more important note—Warning: I’m gonna get all stodgy and professorial for a moment—the whole purpose of parentheses is to “quiet” the information inside them.
The parens convey subliminally that the information contained within them is not essential to the overal information contained in the sentence of paragraph in which the extraneous (parenthetical) information appears.
So you can skip over the parenthetical information and miss nothing. And any reputable textbook on composition will tell you the same thing.
If the extraneous information is important, set it off with em dashes—like this—and if it isn’t important, set it off in parentheses (like this). See (or feel) the difference?
More importantly still, if your subscription fee is an altruistic gift and you are receiving nothing of value in TNDJ in exchange, I recommend you unsubscribe—seriously—and kick the paid version of TNDJ to the curb. Life is too short to read stuff that doesn’t instruct or entertain you. Use that money for more important things.
The bottom line for me is that Writing Is Fun. TNDJ is the restult of me writing about writing, and for me that’s fun too. That means occasionally I might grin as I’m writing it.
If I do, chances are good I’ll go all Vesuvius and get chummy and convey to you the effect that writing a particular sentence or paragraph had on me with a “grin” enclosed in parentheses. (grin)
If you don’t care for that sort of silliness, I suppose I could work-in a smiley face icon now and then, or a “chuckle” or (God forbid) an “LOL” instead of a “grin.” But I know me, so I seriously doubt I will.
Being unnecessarily stodgy and formal just ain’t my cuppa.
Okay, that’s enough of this nonsense. I expect I’ll be back tomorrow with something that has a little more to do with fiction writing.
Talk with you again then.
Of Interest
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: Attitude
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 1250
Writing of Blackwell Ops 25: Rafe Andersen
Day 1…… 3243 words. To date…… 3243
Day 2…… 1354 words. To date…… 4597
Day 3…… 2899 words. To date…… 7496
Day 4…… 1545 words. To date…… 9041
Day 5…… 2085 words. To date…… 11126
Day 6…… 1302 words. To date…… 12428
Day 7…… 4069 words. To date…… 16497
Day 8…… 1539 words. To date…… 18036
Day 9…… 5366 words. To date…… 23402
Day 10…. 1270 words. To date…… 24672
Fiction for June…………………….….… 37836
Fiction for 2024…………………………. 378433
Fiction since October 1………………… 681490
Nonfiction for June……………………… 19810
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 203440
2024 consumable words……………… 581873
2024 Novels to Date……………………… 9
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 1
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………… 91
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 239
Short story collections…………………… 29
Disclaimer: Harvey Stanbrough is a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog he teaches Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies, and they will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. Harvey will never teach the myths on this blog.
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Well, I didn't even recognize there were more (grin) than necessary. Or whatever. It's your Journal, who else have the right to tell you how to write it? It's crazy, I think.
Bradbury challenge is a great thing. However nowadays I write longer works. Maybe a few weeks later I will give it a try, again. Thanks
What? Writing is fun? How dare you! I hasten to add that I am often laughing, smiling, and even-heaven forbid-(grin)ing at the words as they somehow appear like magic on my screen. I also shed a tear when I had to write a scene about burying an old dog that was family and friend to adults and children alike.
All right, so basically, I don't get the grin aversion (grin) but I'll grin and bear it.