What's Keeping You...? Part 2

In Today's Journal

* Quote of the Day
* Writers Write
* What's Keeping You...? Part 2
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quote of the Day

"What’s keeping you from finishing—or starting—your story?" Opening sentence of a Writer's Digest newsletter article titled "Five Steps to an Airtight Plot" (Tiffany Yates Martin, Feb 13, 2024)

Writers Write

From Bob B.

Woodward's site has some links to good Jim Butcher posts related to a craft book by Dwight V. Swain. Karen Woodward: Jim Butcher On Writing.

What's Keeping You...? Part 2

You can read Part 1 of this series

• on Substack or

• on the Journal website.

Note: In light of a new comment I received yesterday—to which I responded and then added more to today's post—today's issue of TNDJ was overly long. So there will be a Part 3 to this series. Read on....

One writer yesterday took partial exception to "What's Keeping You...? Part1." She wrote in part, "There are a whole group of people that those courses are perfect for." No, she didn't mean it like it sounds. You can read her entire comment here.

At first, I believed Tiff thought I was being pessimistic and maybe too harsh. But she made a valid point with her opening sentence. As I wrote in response (considerably reworded from the original),

"I was actually one of those guys for 61+ years. I learned what I was fed. As a result, I was disillusioned and disheartened, and for many years I didn't write at all. Then in early 2014, I found a whole world of a better way to write, a fun way to write. I was finally able to shove the silly myths aside, and Just Write. So naturally (or maybe unnaturally?) I want to share that way.... Being frozen by unreasoning fear that has no-consequences is not a natural state."

That said, if you who are reading this are perfectly happy outlining, revising, rewriting, etc.—if that process is legitimately more fun for you than actually writing stories (or if you don't like having fun)—more power to you.

Please ignore what I wrote in yesterday's post and don't worry about reading the rest of today's post. You will either never need what I'm pushing or you aren't beat-up enough yet.

On the other hand,

if you keep following the gurus' regurgitated rules and you still aren't published, maybe there's a reason for that. Just sayin'.

The gurus, of course, have a ready answer: They will say you aren't published yet because you haven't learned enough about the craft yet. That you need to study more about outlining, revising, and rewriting. And of course they will recommend their books on those topics.

What they WON'T tell you is that you'll learn a great deal more about the craft by putting new words on the page than you ever will by following their rules.

They also will never tell you to Publish Anyway and let the readers decide what they like or don't like.

Many of the gurus even smugly brag that they have unpublished novels sitting in desk drawers, just as if that's a good thing.

The truth is, those novels are unpublished and will remain unpublished only because the gurus didn't believe in themselves. So my question is Why should You believe in them?

I've often wondered how much time they wasted revising, rewriting, and "polishing" those novels before they gave up and put them in desk drawers.

On top of that, just think how much farther along they'd be as writers if they'd finished each novel, published it, and moved on to the next novel.

But they either didn't find me or Dean Wesley Smith or they didn't buy what we're pitching... free. If you want to get a boatload of valid, true fiction writing gems, visit Dean's website and go back to his 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 posts.

Or just keep reading TNDJ.

Here's something else for you to consider:

In the early days, 'the' Stephen King actually threw Carrie into the trash because he thought it was no good. If his wife, Tabitha, hadn't pulled it from the trash and insist he submit it, we might not even know who Stephen King is.

Of course, I have only 105 published novels, 10 novellas, and 270+ short stories. And when I say "only" I'm not being facetious.

Think of what I would have produced by now if I'd found WITD, Heinlein's Rules, and the Bradbury Challenge when I was your age. Seriously.

Even if I'd found those wonder drugs at age 52, today I would have added at least 8 novels per year (my lowest production, so 80 more novels) and at least 26 short stories per year (so 260 more short stories) without breaking a sweat.

And so can you. Take a chance and believe in yourself and your characters.

Even the much-vaunted Dean Wesley Smith, who easily has between two and three times as many published fiction pieces as I do, has said repeatedly that his stories didn't start selling to major publications until he stopped depending on the safety nets (outlining, etc.), trusted himself and his characters, and Just Wrote.

So if you are a fiction writer

and if you aren't writing regularly—by which I mean putting new words on the page regularly—you should probably ponder the question that started this series of posts: What's keeping you?

I will never stop tilting at windmills, so if you're still interested in some unabated but thorougly deserved and necessary guru-bashing, join me again tomorrow for Part 3 of this series.

Talk with you again then.

Of Interest

Thoughts on Fantasy We seem to have a lot of fantasy writers, so I thought you might find this site of interest. (Thanks, KC.)

Marketing quotes and why you need them Includes a couple of places where you can construct marketing quotes

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 960

Writing of Blackwell Ops 35: Seldem Dunn

Day 1…… 3796 words. To date…… 3796

Fiction for January…………………… 52689
Fiction for 2025………………………. 52689
Nonfiction for January……………….. 14320
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 14320
2025 consumable words…………….. 67009

Average Fiction WPD (January)……. 4053

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.