Your Morning Serial Live!
In Today's Journal
* Your Morning Serial Live!
* Readers Comment
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Your Morning Serial LIVE!
Just in case you've been otherwise occupied the past few days and don't know, you can read the novel I'm currently writing—Blackwell Ops 41: León Garras—beginning today at 5 a.m. (Arizona time). Just click
Your Morning Serial
Today's installment includes Chapters 1–3 in around 4500 words.
Chapters 4–6 will go live on Saturday, April 12, also at 5 a.m.
After that three more chapters will go live every other day until the novel wraps.
I decided to start this experiment with my current novel because it feels a little more like writing in public.
If you enjoy what you see, click the Subscribe button. It's free, at least for now, and you'll get every installment in your email. Or you can download the Substack app.
Just open your app store on your phone, tap the app and then tap "Get" for IOS or "Install" for Android. My understanding is that once you have the app, you can still opt to receive the email version too if you want it.
Readers Comment
In Defense of WITD
Jacob left this comment on the Journal website. It was too good not to share:
If I hadn’t started writing into the dark, I don’t know if I ever would have finished a single novel. I’d spent decades writing off and on, and researching storytelling techniques, trying to get ‘good enough’. I was convinced you had to plot your stories, re-write them over and over again.
When I was first introduced to DWS and his writing techniques, I was very resistant, and frankly, terrified. I mean, the very idea of writing one draft clean went against everything I was taught, and everything I believed.
I basically had to brute-force logic myself into trying it. I made a deal with myself that I would write one novel in one draft, beginning to end. That is to say, I more or less set out to prove to myself that DWS was wrong.
What I discovered, instead, was that I had been a one draft writer all along. Looking back, the best stuff I’d ever put to paper was written ‘into the dark’. I would just start typing, no pressure, no preconceived notions, and then occasionally go back and tweak stuff. Cycling, basically. But then I would feel ‘guilty’ afterwards, because that wasn’t how you were ‘supposed to write’.
So yeah. Are people better off writing ‘traditionally’ at first? I can’t speak for others, but it certainly wasn’t true for me.
[Ed. Note: Many TNDJ readers will remember my own story about trying to prove DWS wrong, that WITD would not work. But it does. You only have to believe in yourself and give it a real try.]
In Defense of Amanda M. Lee
Writer Julie left this comment on yesterday's TNDJ post, and I wanted to be sure everyone sees it:
Amanda M Lee [is] a prolific writer who writes 9,000 words a day five days a week. ... She doesn't dictate ... and does most of her own covers.
She is exclusive to KU, but she had thousands of 4.5 - 5 star reviews from her loyal fans even later in the series when most writers' fans fade away. (I'm one of those fans). Her writing isn't perfect, but she has gotten better with time, which dispels the myth of fast writing.
I'm telling you about her because she doesn't promote her writing very much (just has an email that lets you know when the next book is coming out) The email she sends out has the first chapter of her book, which usually gets the reader (or at least me) hooked.
[Ed. Note: You can also read the first chapters of some of Amanda's book on her blog.]
She rarely does interviews, but here is one from around four years ago: Amanda M Lee Interview
[Ed. Note: I strongly recommend watching the video. She talks about "outlining," but if you listen, she's basically doing a reverse outline of the previous book before she starts the next book.]
Thanks to both Jacob and Julie for their excellent comments.
Of Interest
Should you trust this new author platform? I don't remember whether I passed this along before.
3 Writing Aspects You Should Never Let Anyone Mess With
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 720
Writing of Blackwell Ops 41: León Garras
Day 1…… 1847 words. To date…… 1847
Day 2…… 3410 words. To date…… 5257
Day 3…… 3452 words. To date…… 8709
Day 4…… 2915 words. To date…… 11624
Day 5…… 2311 words. To date…… 13935
Day 6…… 1610 words. To date…… 15545
Day 7…… 4129 words. To date…… 19674
Day 8…… 3889 words. To date…… 23563
Day 9…… 3313 words. To date…… 26876
Day 10…. 3373 words. To date…… 30249
Day 11…. 3424 words. To date…… 33673
Fiction for April……………………….. 31712
Fiction for 2025………………………. 298662
Nonfiction for April………………........ 7530
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 89060
2025 consumable words…………….. 381212
Average Fiction WPD (March)……... 3524
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 7
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 17
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 111
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 287
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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Questions are always welcome at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. But please limit yourself to the topics of writing and publishing.
Call me Mr. Negative if you must, but when I see a wall of text on a "blog", I close it and move on. All the posts appear to be similarly formatted. (I only looked at two.)