Bradbury, and An Idea Whose Time Has Come

October 14, 2024 by Harvey

In today’s Journal

* The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
* An Idea Whose Time Has Come
* The Numbers

The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting

I really wish more of you guys would jump into this. C’mon, show us what you’ve got. The whole point is to have fun and grow as a writer.

I’m gonna list my stories here too (again). The Challenge helps remind me I need a story every week.

There is no cost. The only requirement is to write at least one short story per week. (I’m no longer keeping track of your longer fiction. Too erratic.)

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

• Vanessa V. Kilmer “Lotion Potion No. 8” 3972 Romantic Horror

• Adam Kozak “Hugo Davenport Gets It Done” 4200 Humor

• Harvey Stanbrough “Ten Aftah Fo'” 1264 Murder

• Dave Taylor “Happy New Years Carl!” 2,437 Sci-Fi/Time Travel

• Alexander Teut “Sad marquis attacks from the rear” 5345 Historical

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

While emailing back and forth with a couple of my favorite people—both of them are also writers and TNDJ subscribers—they inadvertently handed me a really cool idea.

Both of them write a lot of short stories. One of them has also written a few novels and the other has written a few novellas.

But both of them have trouble trying to abide by Heinlein’s Rule 4: Put your work on the market (meaning, these days, submit the work to a publisher or indie-publish it).

So I chatted with the two of them and in the end, I hooked them up.

The idea is, the two of them will email back and forth and they’ll challenge each other to publish something at least once a week.

This is a really great idea. Each of them will give the other a place to report, and each of them will encourage the other and help hold the other’s feet to the fire.

Of course, they’ll work out the details of the challenge themselves. But I suspect they’ll also challenge each other to write and maybe share marketing ideas etc. As I said, this is a really great idea.

This post is also an open call for participants.

As some of you know, and as Dean Wesley Smith has often mentioned, when he and Nina Kiriki Hoffman were just starting out as writers, they challenged each other to write and submit at least one short story a week. (There was no indie publishing back then.)

Dean still credits his success to that mutual challenge.

So if you’d like to be paired up with another writer for a writing or publishing (or both) challenge, email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. I’ll put your name on a list and start putting folks together.

In the email, let me know at least whether you write short fiction, longer fiction, or both and whether you’re looking for someone to challenge you with writing or publishing or both. If you want, you may share your preferred genre(s) for fiction writing, etc.

I’ll pair you up. Or maybe I’ll just publish the list of would-be participants now and then. After that you can introduce yourselves via email and run with it. Frankly, I hope I’m deluged with email requests for a few days.

You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I’d love to see every one of you jump into this.

You never know what you might learn from another writer, and you never know the great effect you can have on another writer’s career. So let’s challenge each other and share the wealth.

I’m happy to facilitate this, but once you’re paired up I’ll be out of it. Of course, I’ll be thrilled to learn of your successes if you want to tell me, but the rest is all up to you.

A Few Notes

1. I recommend you never discuss the specifics of any stories that are in progress.

I can tell you from personal experience that talking about a work in progress (WIP) to anyone but your characters is always a horrible idea even outside a critique group.

As an example, back in the day, I was chatting with a good friend, also a writer, and I told him a little about a novel that I was writing at the time.

At one point, before he could catch himself, he said, “Ooh, you know what would make a great ending for that?” And then he told me.

I couldn’t dislodge the thought, and finally I had to set that novel aside for almost a year. I couldn’t add anything to it without hearing my friend’s proposed ending.

I wrote a lot of other stuff in the interim, and eventually I returned to that novel and wrote the ending that actually happened in the story.

2. In addition to encouraging each other to write and/or publish, I also recommend you exchange information on writing and publishing factors. For example,

• your personal writing and/or publishing goals

• how you make time to write

• your writing priorities and how and why you set them

• what you’ve learned about cover design,

• tips on writing sales copy (cover blurbs or descriptions)

• what works for you in marketing

• what otherwise works for you (or doesn’t) in writing and publishing,

• where you live (city or state or region or country)

• whatever else….

Just as I discuss with all of you in TNDJ.

3. Keep your challenge personal and realistic.

Your personal challenges don’t have to be identical. Different writers have different lives and different time constraints.

Your task is to challenge the other person to attain what s/he can attain per his or her goals.

Maybe you can write and/or publish a new work every week or every day. Maybe your “partner” can write and/or publish only every two weeks or once a month.

Support and encourage the other writer in his or her goals, not your own. S/he will do the same for you.

4. Remember that your main role is to support and encourage the other person in writing and publishing. Writing is a solitary endeavor, but you can easily, even inadvertently, help each other to new heights.

5. Of course there’s no fee and this is open to everybody. You can email me to jump in at any time.

Someday, TNDJ won’t be here anymore. But if you get in on this, you can be a great help to each other. I hope you’ll jump at this chance.

Nothing for Of Interest today. Talk with you again soon.

The Numbers

The Journal……………………………… 1080

Writing of “Ten Aftah Fo'”

Day 1…… 1264 words. To date…… 1264 (done)

Writing of Blackwell Ops 29: John Quick

Day 1…… 1781 words. To date…… 1781
Day 2…… 3792 words. To date……. 5573
Day 3…… 3087 words. To date……. 8660
Day 4…… 3545 words. To date……. 12205
Day 5…… 2667 words. To date……. 14872

Fiction for October……………………. 43536
Fiction for 2024……………………….. 785044
Nonfiction for October……………….. 15110
Nonfiction for 2024……………………. 318700
2024 consumable words……………… 927783

Average Fiction WPD (October)……… 3349

2024 Novels to Date……………………….. 14
2024 Novellas to Date……………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date………………… 18
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..……. 96
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………. 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………..… 255
Short story collections…………………….….. 29

I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules.

Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

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