Bradbury, and Two Kings

In Today's Journal

* Quote of the Day
* The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
* A Little More Inspiration
* The Writing
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quote of the Day

"I write every day. The work could be terrible; it could be nothing. I could be fooling myself. The extraordinary thing is that I look forward to doing the work. I can’t wait to get down to it." Writer and painter Frederic Tuten (see Of Interest)

Note: Short post today

Tomorrow I plan to talk about the upcoming copyediting course. I'll show you what's included in the $799 Writer's Digest course (directly from their website, but maybe annotated).

Then I'll show you what I'll talk about in my $200 course. You can do your own comparison, but it might take two posts.

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:

• Balázs Jámbor "Hungarian Criminals 1. The first case" 4200 Crime

• Vanessa V. Kilmer "Rescuing Rampion" 2679 Fairytale

• Harvey Stanbrough "Down to the Wire" 1570 Fantasy

• Dave Taylor "The Birthday Surprise” 4,398 paranormal

Bradbury on Steroids

This one requires you to write at least two short stories per week. Only one taker on that one so far, but the man is KICKIN' it!

• Christopher Ridge "A Day at the Office" horror 2343

• Christopher Ridge "Datenite" horror 2123

Congratulations to all of these writers!

A Little More Inspiration

Yesterday in Of Interest I posted Dr. Mardy Grothe's weekly quotations about "Inspiring Words." Here's an inspiring photo for you.

Before you read the text, realize—at the time, Stephen King believed so little in his own abilities that he had tossed the manuscript for Carrie into the trash can. His wife Tabitha pulled it out and urged him to submit it:

Thanks to my son Roy for sending that.

The Writing

Rolled out early on Sunday morning (a little after 1 a.m.), maybe because I hadn't written the story for this week's Bradbury Challenge. Yeah, not writing even bugs me when I'm asleep.

In a little over an hour I dropped 1500 words into "Down to the Wire" and added it to my production spreadsheet, then checked email again, then went back to the novel.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

The Secret of Life Is Not to Be Frightened

America’s Gandhi: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (Time magazine, 1964)

60 Powerful Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes...

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 430

Writing of "Down to the Wire"

Day 1…… 1570 words. To date…… 1570 done

Writing of Blackwell Ops 35: Seldem Dunn

Day 1…… 3796 words. To date…… 3796
Day 2…… 3389 words. To date…… 7185
Day 3…… 4085 words. To date…… 11270
Day 4…… 4234 words. To date…… 15504
Day 5…… 4543 words. To date…… 20047
Day 6…… 5362 words. To date…… 25410
Day 7…… 2494 words. To date…… 27904

Fiction for January…………………… 78367
Fiction for 2025………………………. 78367
Nonfiction for January……………….. 19550
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 19550
2025 consumable words…………….. 97917

Average Fiction WPD (January)……. 4125

2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 1
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 105
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 274
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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