Bradbury, a Process, and Punctuation Humor
In Today's Journal
* Quote of the Day
* The Bradbury Challenge
* A Note from Dave Taylor
* Yesterday
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
"The faster I write the better my output. If I am going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I am pushing the words instead of being pulled by them." Raymond Chandler (Thanks to Patrick D for the quote.)
The Bradbury Challenge
The whole point of the Challenge is to have fun and grow as a writer. There is no cost. The only requirement is to write at least one short story per week. Feel free to jump in at any time.
During the past week, in addition to whatever other fiction they’re writing, the following writers reported these new stories:
Balázs Jámbor "Those bone fingers" 2100 General fic
Vanessa V. Kilmer "Big Boot" 3096 Fairytale
Christopher Ridge "She Screams so Good" 2347 Horror/crime
Harvey Stanbrough "What Mothers Do" 1699 Action-Adventure
Harvey Stanbrough "No Way Alive" 3138 Pulp Crime Action-Adventure
Dave Taylor "Running Toward Daylight” 2511 Thriller
Dave Taylor "Wheel in the Sky" 2753 Horror/Sci Fi
Dave Taylor “Be Ready When the Bus Comes By” 2758 – paranormal
Woohoo! Look at ol' Dave kickin' it into high gear! Congratulations to all of these writers.
A Note from Dave Taylor
What do a Joe Bonamassa blues song, iMac wallpaper, a picture of a black smoke ring in the clouds, and comments made by Sirus XM Grateful Dead channel host Big Steve and Steve Friend on Kyle Seraphin’s Friday podcast have in common?
On the face of it they have nothing in common, yet each in its own way or in combination with another created the nexus of each of the three short stories I completed this week. This past week has been one of revelations how story prompts seemingly come out of thin air.
For example, I was listening to the Joe Bonamassa song "Driving Toward Daylight" while I was going through my email when I looked up at the wallpaper on one of my monitors. My wallpaper is an old growth forest with heavy overgrowth on the forest floor. The combination of the song title/lyrics and the forest in front of me brought a story into focus. A bit over two hours later the story was done and dusted.
On April first I saw a picture above an article that showed a black smoke ring in the clouds. I didn’t bother reading the article, but the picture prompted the beginning of a story. I spent almost three hours over two days completing "Wheel in the Sky."
On Thursday I saw an email from Sirus XM that the Grateful Dead channel was free for the month. As Erlinda and I were headed home listening to the GD channel, a show came on where the host Big Steve made an odd comment: “You gotta be ready when the bus comes by.” Once again, my subconscious kicked into overdrive.
Friday I was listening to a Kyle Seriphin’s podcast. Steve Friend made a comment I had never heard before: “People look left and right but rarely look up.” When I sat down to write more of the story that odd comment snuck right into a bit of dialogue after a scene unfolded.
To borrow a bit from the Grateful Dead, what a long, strange trip this week has been. I averaged 1,336 words per day between Monday and today. Who knows, maybe another story will come into being today.
Dave also wrote, for those who like to listen to music as they write, "I’ve found incorporating Stephen King’s 'listen to one song on repeat' works well in keeping the world and my conscious mind out of the way as I write."
And just for kicks, here's some short punctuation humor.
Thanks for all of that, Dave.
Yesterday
MAN it's difficult not to post something to TNDJ every day. Old habits, eh? I enjoy posting every day, but I also want to make only substantive posts.
I don't like to post nada por nada por nada de nada, yet here I am, I suppose, doing just that to fill out today's issue of TNDJ.
But yesterday I had nothing of substance other than the Quote of the Day above and, in Of Interest, an essay by Vin Zandri and another by Dr. Mardy Grothe. And you have those today.
But I needed to write SOMEthing yesterday in the early morning to appease my nervous fingers and in place of writing and posting to TNDJ.
So I pulled up the highly opinionated wrong-headed dictionary I've been compiling for around three decades and worked for awhile on that.
Then I came here and wrote this probably unnecessary explanation, then took a break. After that, with my fingers thus warmed up on the keyboard, I turned to the novel again.
Of Interest
Five Ways to Guarantee a Steady Income by Writing Novels
Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week: “Integrity"
On Stephen King Maybe you can see this and maybe you can't. I gave it a shot.
Help With Time of Great Forgetting
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 840
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
Day 6…… 1610 words. To date…… 15545
Day 7…… 4129 words. To date…… 19674
Day 1…… 3889 words. To date…… 23563
Fiction for April……………………….. 21602
Fiction for 2025………………………. 288552
Nonfiction for April………………........ 5070
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 86600
2025 consumable words…………….. 368642
Average Fiction WPD (March)……... 3600
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.
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Questions are always welcome at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. But please limit yourself to the topics of writing and publishing.
Also, is there some place we can read the other Bradbury short stories? Just wondering if they are published where to find them.
Loved Dave's bit about where inspiration comes from. I do the same thing. Lots of great ideas this week for me from reading up on cold cases, funny cat and dog pics and videos, and some great old pics and articles I read about female French resistance fighters and about Russian anti tank dogs. Which reminded me of one I read years ago about the CIA' s spy cat program. Some of this I have already used. The rest will undoubtedly show up in something somewhere. Or as Stephen King put it, "Sooner or later it all goes in (the writing)."
Also enjoyed the link from DWS. I hope to offer being a character to my readers someday. That sounds like fun. I already do that with my friends. I have gotten some great characters from that. One friend wanted to be "a gremlin" and another wanted to be "a grandma" which I thought was going to be difficult to come up with something interesting for but when the idea came it was loads of fun, too.
I like the idea of a themed short story challenge. I think I would enjoy that if I wrote short stories.