Okay, I Gotta Share This

September 7, 2024 by Harvey

In today’s Journal

* A New Short Story
* Reminder
* Yesterday I Closed the Door
* Okay, I Gotta Share This
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

A New Short Story

“The Baby” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out.

If you enjoy it, tell Everyone. If you don’t, shhh! (grin)

Reminder

Today is Saturday. Just a reminder to get your story info in to me before the Journal goes live on Monday.

Remember, if you finish a story earlier in the week, you can send it to me early too. It never hurts to avoid pushing the deadline.

Yesterday I Closed the Door

on the old Harvey’s (Almost) Daily Journal. There are two thousand, one hundred, and thirty-two posts there. Wow.

I was going to delete the publication outright, but instead I marked the whole publication “Private.” If you subscribed over there originally, you still have access to those posts. But no new subscribers can come to that old publication.

I decided not to delete the publication outright because, over time, I can revisit those posts. I’ll delete the posts that have no or little intrinsic value, and I’ll repost those that do in the future here in TNDJ.

Okay, I Gotta Share This Little Epiphany

It wasn’t really an epiphany for me. Just a very rare occurrence. But it might be an epiphany for you.

A few days ago (Sep 2) the story in my current novel just wasn’t working. No matter how much I goaded it, the story wouldn’t take off and run despite the fact that it had flowed easily and well earlier.

This doesn’t happen often, thank goodness. And don’t misunderstand. The novel wasn’t stalled. The story wasn’t fizzling out.

The writing itself ran like crazy, but nothing I put on the page felt right. I wrote a few hundred words, then deleted them. Wrote a few hundred more, then deleted them. I did that probably six or seven times.

And it was REALLY odd at that point in the novel because the operative was just about to start a new hunt. She’d received a new assignment, done all the basic prep, flown to the location, and met with her contact.

All of that went fine.

But as she began her final prep, deciding when to make the hit (daylight or darkness, and if in darkness, evening or early morning), the story dried up. That’s when I did all the writing and deleting I mentioned above.

Usually in Blackwell Ops novels those tense “almost-there” or “final-prep” scenes fly past, and then the actual hunt is even more tension filled and goes even faster.

So for about 5 hours I just sat in my chair, writing and deleting, or else reading over and over again (my fingers on the keyboard, cycling) what I wrote earlier.

Sometimes I cycled over part of a chapter, sometimes a chapter. At one point during those cycling sessions, I read over the whole novel up to the white space.

I was remaining involved with the story, determined to stay in touch with the character and wait her out. You can’t usually stay in touch with anyone if you don’t make the effort.

And during one of the shorter repeated cycling sessions, finally the operative started telling me her story again.

Turns out she was having serious doubts about whether to do This or That, to hunt the target during This time frame or That one (daylight or dark).

I’ve encountered that only rarely before. Men in general (and I in specific) don’t spend much time doing all that back and forth stuff.

We’re (I’m) more prone to giving a problem some thought and then making a decision, right or wrong, and living with it.

But this operative is a female.

I hasten to add, I’m not insinuating that all females do this. I’ve written a lot of female operatives before and never encountered this situation with any of them.

So I reminded myself to slow down, take my time, and write everything she was doing, thinking, and saying, and—

The story broke loose and started running again.

After about another 2500 words, she was on-site, about to go into the woods and start hunting.

Here’s the point:

The only difference between me and most writers—especially those younger in the craft—is that I’ve been through similar episodes before.

So I know the story will break loose if I just trust it and stick with it. And it always does.

Tomorrow I’ll be back with a brief but excellent example: a before-cycling and after-cycling excerpt from the current novel.

The excerpt will illustrate exactly what I mean when I advise you to slow down and take your time. It will also illustrate what I mean when I recommend you focus-down to pull the reader more deeply into the story.

The excerpt (a subscene of a chapter) is the first part of what happened that caused the story to finally break loose.

I think you’ll find it interesting.

Good day yesterday, but only a little writing on the novel. Hadda get my short story done. (grin) Total fiction for the day was 4322.

Talk with you again then.

Of Interest

Vincent Zandri Shares His Evil Plan…

Mental Floss I suppose I should mention this site too. I do not personally find it as useful as 1440 Daily Digest or History Facts, but your results might vary.

The Numbers

The Journal……………………………… 890

Writing of “Mac and the Mentioners”

Day 1…… 3709 words. To date…… 3709 (done)

Writing of Blackwell Ops 28: Ariana Ramos

Day 1…… 2583 words. To date…… 2583
Day 2…… 1339 words. To date…… 3922
Day 3…… 1526 words. To date…… 5448
Day 4…… 3941 words. To date…… 9389 (Sep1)
Day 5…… 2734 words. To date…… 12123
Day 6…… 2584 words. To date…… 14707
Day 7…… 3711 words. To date…… 18418
Day 8…… 3668 words. To date…… 22086
Day 9…… 0613 words. To date…… 22699

Fiction for September……………………. 20960
Fiction for 2024………………………….… 613796
Fiction since October 1…………………… 804748
Nonfiction for September………………… 7760
Nonfiction for 2024……………………….. 282600
2024 consumable words………………….. 784291

Average Fiction WPD (September)……… 3493

2024 Novels to Date……………………… 12
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 5
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………… 94
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 242
Short story collections…………………… 29

Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer, but please try this at home. You can do it.

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 slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

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