Bradbury, and a Top Ten List

In Today's Journal

* The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
* Top Ten Things Every Writer Should Know
* The Numbers

The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting

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.

During the past week, in addition to whatever other fiction they’re writing, the following writers reported these new stories:

• Vanessa V. Kilmer "A Stranger Storybook Ending" 3513 Fairytale

• Adam Kozak "North Side Racket" 3890 Noir

• Harvey Stanbrough "A New Threshold" 2390 Romance

• Dave Taylor "The New Year’s Revelation” 2,668 paranormal

Bradbury on Steroids

This one requires you to write at least two short stories per week.

• Christopher Ridge "Fat" 3289 Horror

• Christopher Ridge "Doggy slippers" 1735 Horror

Congratulations to all of these writers!

Top Ten Things Every Writer Should Know

These "top ten" things assume at least a nodding acquaintance with the nuances of the language. That acquaintance should at least include grammar, syntax and the appropriate use of punctuation to direct the reading of the work.

1. Follow Heinlein's Rules.

A PDF document will download when you click the link. It is imperative that writers follow these very simple rules, Heinlein's "Business Habits for Writers."

No matter your skill level or genre or field of endeavor in fiction writing, you will not be successful as a professional writer if you don't follow these rules.

2. Trust Your Creative Subconscious.

This is writing into the dark.

The creative subconscious of even writers who later knuckled under and learned they "have" to outline, etc. has been telling stories since before they even knew the alphabet existed.

Your subconscious holds all the pertinent knowledge you need to write at your current level of development. (So no conscious thought is necessary.)

That is not to say learning (conscious, critical mind) isn't essential.

But what is pertinent (what works for you) of what you pick up with your conscious mind in classes and lectures and seminars and workshops filters into the subconscious. From there, it flows onto the page as necessary while you're writing, all without further conscious thought.

After all, do you have to "think" to cross a T or dot an I while you're writing? Do you have to "think" to put a period at the end of a sentence or a question mark at the end of a question? Do you have to remember to include both a subject and a verb every time you want to write a complete sentence? Of course not.

And after you learn structure and pacing and various genre attributes (in class with your conscious mind), you won't have to think consciously about those either. They will lodge in your creative subconscious and come out as necessary while you write.

3. Cycling

This is basically the ability to be unstuck in time in your story.

If you're writing into the dark, your characters will surprise you. Often.

As just one example, if a character suddenly pulls a gun from his coat pocket, you have a problem. You have to cycle back, right then, and allow the character to put the gun into his coat pocket at some point.

That's Part 1 of cycling. In Part 2, you read over—as a Reader, not a Writer—what you wrote earlier and allow the characters to touch it as you read, filling in details or description as you read.

4. Keep Coming Back.

Yeah, this is just tenacity and remembering that you're in the middle of writing a story, regardless of the eventual length of that story.

The more times you "come back" to the story after breaks, the farther in the story you'll get on a given day.

You can also use "keep coming back" to write in shorter increments through the day as necessary.

I've spent as few as 10 minutes writing (while cooking supper). No matter what else is going on, you can keep coming back through the day in little bits and pieces. If you want to.

5. Writing Fiction Is Not an Elevated Calling.

Beginning writers want to believe writing fiction is an elevated profession, something to which they must aspire and forever be found wanting. That assumption is ridiculous.

For a serious writer of fiction, writing is just what we do. It's a job, though it's also great fun and a job we enjoy a great deal.

My recommendations?

• If you don't have a "day job," give your writing the same energy and priority you would give a day job.

• If your time is limited by a day job, give your writing the same energy and priority you give your day job even if you have to give it fewer hours.

6. Keep Learning.

Especially read voraciously the works of authors you like. Much that they do will begin to inform your own writing.

You can even type-in another writer's words to get a feel for the rhythm and flow (not for publication, of course). This is not plagiarism. This is growth. This is how you develop a style.

Also, attend seminars and classes and writers' conferences and conventions where you are able to learn from those farther along the road than you are. If they are steeped in the myths, be on guard for that and filter them out. Read their blogs. Take courses from them.

7. You Must Practice.

This isn't at all the same thing as Heinlein's Rule number 1 (You must write). I'm talking about a different kind of practice here.

Here I mean each time you sit down to begin a new story, decide that you're going to practice a particular technique (in addition to doing all the stuff you're already good at).

• You already know setting? Practice dialogue.

• You're pretty good at dialogue? Practice making sure it isn't taking place in a white room. In other words, practice weaving setting description and/or character description into the dialogue. And so on.

8. Avoid "Peer" Critique Groups.

Because as Mark Twain once wrote, "No urge is greater than the urge for a writer to change another writer's work." Not to mention the old truism: Nothing good was ever built by a committee.

Or as Sir Barnett Cocks once said, as quoted in New Scientist magazine on November 8, 1973, "Committee: A cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured, and then quietly strangled."

9. But Do Consider Carefully Vetted Advice.

If you are fortunate to receive a criticism of your work from someone much farther along the road than you are, heed the advice and consider it. Then either use it or discard it.

But don't seek out or listen to advice from non-writers or from writers who are not much farther along the writing road than you are.

10. Take What Professional Fiction Writers Say With a Grain of Salt.

If you read that Hemingway said he wrote better when he was drunk or that he always wrote standing up, he probably did say it, but he didn't do it.

Professional writers often tell people—especially aspiring writers, whom they often believe are not serious or they'd be busy actually writing—what they want to hear.

Either that or they simply smile and nod in agreement with whatever the aspiring writer says he believes is the "best" way to write. Or, like Hemingway sometimes did, they make things up to tell aspiring hopefuls.

They are fiction writers, folks. They lie for a living. Don't be shocked to learn they lied to you. That said, I will never lie to you in this Journal. I assume, since you're here and reading this, you're serious about the craft of writing fiction.

For some good advice re writing fiction from Hemingway, download and read "Hemingway Monologue to the Maestro." (A PDF document will download when you click the link.)

If you disagree with any of the points above, email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. I will be more than happy to elaborate.

Talk with you again soon.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 1290

Writing of Blackwell Ops 34: Solomon Payne

Day 1…… 2005 words. To date…… 2005
Day 2…… 2992 words. To date…… 4997
Day 3…… 3998 words. To date…… 8995
Day 4…… 4591 words. To date…… 13586
Day 5…… 4503 words. To date…… 18089

Fiction for January…………………… 18089
Fiction for 2025………………………. 18089
Nonfiction for January……………….. 6290
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 6290
2025 consumable words…………….. 24379

Average Fiction WPD (January)……. 3618

2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 0
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)………….... 104
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 270
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.