Over a Million Consumable Words
November 2, 2024 by Harvey
In Today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* A New Short Story
* Over a Million Consumable Words
* The Darling Members Club
* The Writing
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quotes of the Day
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” George Bernard Shaw
“November, n. The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.” Ambrose Bierce in The Devil’s Dictionary
A New Short Story
“The Breath Formed” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack.
Go check it out. Bring tissues.
A note on the writing—If you want an example of how being too vague can harm a story and/or confuse a reader, this story contains one instance of a too-vague “it.”
You’ll see it. Instead of “Keep moving through it” the sentence should read “Keep moving through the breath.”
As always, if you enjoy the story, please tell Everyone. If you don’t, shhh! (grin)
Bradbury Reminder
It’s Saturday.
Those of you in the Bradbury Challenge, be sure to get your story titles, word counts, and genres in to me before TNDJ goes live on Monday.
(PD, are you jumping in this week? I hope to see something from you. C’mon, man, sit down and hammer something out. We both know you can do it.)
Over a Million Consumable Words
Woohoo! Celebrate with me!
At the close of business yesterday, I went over 1,000,000 consumable words for the first time ever with 1001759.
Of course, “consumable words” includes fiction AND nonfiction this year. The nonfiction is primarily TNDJ. And that number doesn’t include today’s little issue of the Journal, so the total in Numbers below will be a little larger..
The neat thing will be whether I can make 1,000,000 words of published fiction this year. That’s the biggie for me.
No fingers crossed though. It’s a goal, not a dream, so it’s completely within my control.
The Darling Members Club
Maybe the best Stern Talbot PI mystery I’ve ever written is officially “live” today on Amazon and all stores served by D2D. It’s a good story.
Of course, you can also get a copy for a discount at the StoneThread Publishing store.
Or you can make 7000 words in any week of the November challenge and claim it free by emailing me.
The Writing
I had a pretty good day of writing yesterday to start November off with a bang. With any luck I’ll be increasing my daily word count goal this month.
The day was so good I was actually sorry to see it end.
I attribute the good day to remembering to mute the sound of notifications of emails hitting my inbox. (grin) As a result, I only checked email while on a break from the story.
So I’ll be doing that again today and (I hope) into the future. I’ll still respond to your emails as soon as I see them, but that might mean within an hour or so now instead of within minutes.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
How to Get Reviews and Build Credibility All of November, Jake from Writem is offering marketing tips for fiction writers. This and the following link will take you to the first two. I encourage you to sign up.
The Must-Have Pages for an Author Website
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 530
Writing of Blackwell Ops 30: John Quick Returns
Day 1…… 2155 words. To date…… 2155
Day 2…… 3930 words. To date……. 6085
Day 3…… 3042 words. To date……. 9127
Day 4…… 3057 words. To date……. 12184
Day 5…… 5268 words. To date……. 17452
Fiction for November…………………. 5268
Fiction for 2024……………………….. 842400
Nonfiction for November……………… 1430
Nonfiction for 2024……………………. 335850
2024 consumable words……………… 1002289
Average Fiction WPD (November)…… 5268
2024 Novels to Date……………………….. 15
2024 Novellas to Date……………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date………………… 18
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..……. 97
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………. 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………..… 255
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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Bravo on your new short story, Harvey, a poignant reminder of why hunting has long been described as a "blood sport." Regarding your first quote of the day, you and your readers should know that it was almost certainly NOT authored by George Bernard Shaw. Most quotation anthologists cite "Author Unknown."