Priorities, and When You Buy Used
October 29, 2024 by Harvey
In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Free Nonfiction Books: A Reminder
* Priorities
* When You Buy a Used Laptop
* The Writing
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“[As I was jogging in place while watching a video,] I heard a voice say, ‘You didn’t say anything about why I set up the display in the first place. Are you interested?’ Of course I was interested, and now I’ve added another 156 words to a story I thought was finished. So the lesson—listen to that quiet voice that has such impact. It can show up at any time.” Dave T. in an email
Free Nonfiction Books: A Reminder
A comment from a writer friend reminded me I haven’t mentioned this in awhile.
There are several free nonfiction books, including The Essentials of Digital Publishing (I’ll be updating this one soon, and it will cost $9.99) and Self-Editing for Writers at StoneThread Publishing.
You only have to click the link above, then scroll down to “The books listed below this line are FREE.”
Then click on any cover and a searchable PDF file will download automatically in a new window. Just sayin’.
Priorities
I’ve talked about priorities often in the Journal, but what gets through to one person might not get through to another. I updated this from a post back in early 2018.
If you’re going to be a professional anything, you have to make that anything a priority.
If you’re still in the workforce, that priority is set for you if you want to continue to draw a paycheck.
If you’re a cop, you have to put on the uniform once a day and deal with stupid human tricks. If you’re a mechanic or a construction guy, you have to show up at a particular time and fix things or build things.
Same with the arts. You can call yourself anything you want, but you can’t actually “be” a fine artist if you don’t draw or paint pictures. You can’t “be” a musician if you don’t actively play an instrument. Duh, right?
It’s also the same with writing. Words don’t just appear on the page. If you want to be a writer, you have to put them there.
The best way I’ve seen to do that is to set a goal, then work toward it. And by “work toward it,” I mean bring your fanny and the seat of your chair (recliner, couch, booth at Starbucks, whatever) into close contact on a routine basis.
As most of you know, I have a dedicated writing space (the Hovel) and a dedicated writing laptop (my ‘puter, Hal2). I show up every morning about twenty minutes after I wake up to do all this business stuff. Then I reward myself by putting new fiction words on the page.
In my life, other things sometimes take priority (visits from family or friends on the good side, chores or emergencies or other “bad” things on the bad side). But really, writing is my number one priority.
How do I know? Because even when I’m doing those other things (good or bad) writing is in the back of my mind. Not WHAT I’m writing—not the WIP or any particular story—but the act of writing fiction itself. When I’m not writing, I miss it.
Of course, you don’t have to give the act of writing the same priority I do.
For me, writing is all-consuming. It’s what keeps me coming here every morning to chat with you, and it’s what causes me to return to my WIP even when I feel as if the words have left me and I might never write another word of fiction.
But if you have other interests—other people or situations that make you completely forget your writing for awhile—that’s fine. If I could bring myself to that mental place, I’d go fishing or practice my photography a lot more often.
The point is, if you want to be a writer, no matter where Write Fiction sits on your list of priorities, it has to be included somewhere. And if you want to be a professional fiction writer, the closer to the top of the list, the better.
And if writing is on your list of priorities at all, it has to be on your list regularly.
It has to be on your list at a certain time and place over and over again. Even the frequency with which it appears on your list isn’t as important as the fact that it appears regularly.
If you can make time to write only on Sunday from 1-2 p.m., so be it. But make sure your butt is in the chair during that time, your fingers on the keyboard.
If you can write only five days per week from 5-6 a.m. (or 5-6 p.m.) because you reserve your weekends for family time, that’s fine too. Just make sure you’re there during that hour, and that you’re putting new words on the page.
If you’re a “weekend novelist” (there are books on the topic), that works too. Whatever you want to do, however you want to do it, is fine.
But nothing will work without the regular bonding of the seat of your body with the seat of your chair.
Without that priority, and without that routine bonding, instead of watching your word count or title count or book sales (or however you mark success as a writer) grow, you’ll look back and mark the passing of time with a wistful “What if…?”
I suspect that is a particular kind of hell we’ve all witnessed, and it’s one that nobody wants to visit again.
Writing ‘Puter
As I often say, I also advocate having a dedicated writing ‘puter because doing so will key your subconscious mind.
Having a dedicated writing computer will tell your creative subconscious that when you sit down at that ‘puter and put your fingers on the keys, it’s time to leave the world behind. It’s time to play with your characters, and have fun. It’s time to find out what they’ll get into next and how they handle it.
To me, there’s nothing better in the world than that. Nothing.
Obtaining a dedicated writing ‘puter isn’t that difficult. You can pick one up at a second-hand store for 20 or 30 bucks. I recently bought an excellent second writing ‘puter with a solid state hard drive (SSD) for just over a hundred bucks on eBay. However….
When You Buy a Used Laptop
Especially from eBay, but probably from anywhere, suffice it to say remember ‘Buyer Beware’. Keep the seller’s name, email address, phone number, mailing address, and whatever else you can find.
I bought a “spare” 11.6″ HP x360 a year ago, in October 2023. Eleven months later, it opened on a blue screen that said the tablet/laptop was stolen. I contacted both the owner (a Unified School District) and the seller on the same day a month ago. I finally heard back from the owner only yesterday.
Long story short, the owner didn’t tell me where I could send the computer, so I took it apart, physically destroyed the SDD, and chucked the whole laptop into the trash, piece by tiny piece.
So there went about two hours of writing I’ll never get back. That’s about 2500 words.
The Writing
Yesterday was a really good writing day despite the computer fiasco. First, to get it out of the way and put it behind me, I wrote my short story for this week for the Bradbury Challenge: “Incident on a Georgia Bridge.”
Then I took a short break, intending to come back and start writing openings for novels. Instead I dealt with the computer garbage, then was able to knock out a little over 2000 cycled words in the last two hours of the writing day.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Troy Lambert’s Website I was a little surprised to learn Troy has written only 30 novels. But given the faith Vin Zandri puts in this guy, I thought I’d pass along this site. Especially if you’re a plotter, you might find it useful. Troy offers other tools for authors as well.The Numbers
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 1380
Writing of “Incident on a Georgia Bridge”
Day 1……1745 words. To date…… 1745 (done)
Writing of Blackwell Ops 30: John Quick Returns
Day 1…… 2155 words. To date…… 2155
Fiction for October……………………. 85595
Fiction for 2024……………………….. 827103
Nonfiction for October……………….. 30030
Nonfiction for 2024……………………. 333620
2024 consumable words……………… 984762
Average Fiction WPD (October)……… 3057
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.
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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Sorry about the computer...some people are scum.