The 2024 TNDJ Archives Are Here!

In Today's Journal

* Quotes of the Day
* The 2024 TNDJ Archives Are Here!
* Yesterday
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quotes of the Day

"Writing is like driving at night. You can see only as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." E.L. Doctorow, in James McInerney, “Author, Author: An Interview with Doctorow,” in Vogue magazine (Nov. 1984)

“You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard.” Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird (1994)

Both quotes courtesy Dr. Mardy Grothe

The 2024 TNDJ Archives Are Here!

These are fully searchable PDF files, and they're free. I've saved them as both one file (covers all of 2024) and in four files, each of which covers one quarter of 2024.

If you want them, email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. Put 2024 Archives in the Subject box and I'll email them to you as fully searchable PDF files. And yes, For Your Personal Use Only, you may copy/paste from them, print them, etc.

For some reason (I'll sort it later) I was unable to upload the 2024 TNDJ Archives to the Journal website.

I even deleted the archives from 2014 through 2019 to make space, but I still got this message: "The New Daily Journal 2024.pdf exceeds the maximum upload size for this site."

Ah. So I thought maybe the file size was too big (although the previous archive files that I deleted were much larger).

So I took the time to break the file into four parts (each part is less than 2MB) and tried again. The site still wouldn't accept it.

So if you want them, email me. You can still download the full archives from 2020 through 2023 at the Journal website.

Yesterday

In addition to the above, yesterday I applied my first reader's fixes (Thanks, Russ. I SO appreciate you!), then constructed a new cover and promo doc and uploaded Blackwell Ops 33: Temple's Way to D2D and Amazon for release on January 18.

But if you're hungry for Temple's Way, you can purchase it early at StoneThread Publishing AND get it for a dollar off!

Another Personal Goal

Through 2025, I'm also going to try to continue releasing a new novel (or novella if the story wraps too soon) every two weeks. That's another streak I've had going since October 19.

But I'm still aiming at writing 22 novels on the year, so I hope I don't have more than a couple of novellas. (Also, I've decided I probably won't finish and publish the two 'blue' novellas I started in 2024. Shrug. I just don't to risk having my publishing accounts frozen, etc.)

For the whole of 2024, I published 24 books. I averaged releasing a book every 2.16 weeks, but that included two nonfiction books and two omnibus compilations.

Before October 19, some releases were only a week apart, but some were three or four weeks apart. So nothing earth-shaking. Just kind of interesting.

Back to Yesterday

Yesterday I also updated all the stuff in the Numbers section, a less-enjoyable task for me. As a writer, January is my least-favorite month. All those zeroes are a little depressing. (grin) The numbers don't begin to pile up for the year until February 1. Sigh. January's like 31 straight days of darkness (into which I will write).

But it's all good. All any of us have to do is write one word at a time, one sentence at a time, and don't worry about it. Just have fun with the process.

Finally, yesterday also I emailed my unintentional mentor, Dean Wesley Smith. The subject line of my email was "May I brag a little?" (grin)

I thanked him for his advice over the years and told him what I'd accomplished last year, thanks in large part to him introducing me to Heinlein's Rules and Writing Into the Dark back in 2014.

He wrote back, in part, with this:

"Over 1.2 million consumable words! I am aiming to get back to that level myself, so thank you for showing me the way on that. [I took this as a massive compliment.]

"Fun, isn’t it? Something that most people just can’t understand, that writing at this level is just a ton of fun."

As he often is, Dean's absolutely right. WITD is great fun, but unfortunately many writers will never experience it.

What's sad is that it's all a matter of choice.

Until you take a deep breath and decide to believe in yourself and place your trust in your characters—not in me or Dean or anyone else—you'll never know. And what a terrible tragedy that would be.

I hope some of you will take the plunge this year (this month, this week, today) and commit yourselves to writing into the dark.

Of course, there's always the alternative (paraphrased from a meme I saw):

Person: How does writing fiction work?

Writer: Well, you type and you delete. You rethink. Then you do 187 minutes of research and correct what you've written. Then you reread and wonder whether you have a grasp of English. Then you rewrite. Then you revise. Then you polish.

Person: And then you're done with the book?

Writer: No, then you move to the next sentence.

Talk with you again later.

Of Interest

5 Secrets to Writing a Great Setting Yup. Use the five senses. But if you need this, here it is.

Lake Superior State University's Banished Words List Some lighthearted fun. Period. (Thanks, Bob. C.)

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 920

Writing of Blackwell Ops 34: Soloman Payne

Day 1…… 2005 words. To date…… 2005

Fiction for January…………………… 2005
Fiction for 2025………………………. 2005
Nonfiction for January……………….. 2170
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 2170
2025 consumable words…………….. 4175

Average Fiction WPD (January)…. 2005

2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 0
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..… 104
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 270
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.