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Story #2 February…
Yes, Restarting Numbering Each Month… I know I got 31 stories done in January. Restarting keeps the number lower so I don’t think of eating the elephant too much. And gives me a monthly target for stories completed. Tonight’s story was a late starting story because I had a ton of other stuff to do, so I went for a character with a lot of voice that I am having fun with and that is my new character, Private Detective “No-Neck” Crunch. All the story titles start “A Woman Who…” And the last part of the title is a hint to where he will find the body of the woman…
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Ate the Elephant For a Time…
Had To Sit Down and Take Deep Breaths… You see, I have four big whiteboards on one wall of my office. They have the titles of the short stories that are in the first 50 issues of Smith’s Monthly. I stopped at Issue 50 because I ran out of room on the boards. There are 220 titles of stories written up there. 220 stories, covers an entire wall. I hope to do 365 stories this year. I happened to glance up at the wall of story titles and my mind went, “That is just 2/3rds of the number of stories you hope to write this year.” Wham!!! I went from…
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January Challenge Stories
Managed A Story Per Day For 31 Days… I have some adjustments to make, such as starting earlier in the day. But very happy with going from zero to full speed on fiction. 101,280 consumable words. That’s on pace for about 1.2 million words this year. Not up to my average yet, but close and a lot of things in January cut into that word count, so we shall see how it works in February and March. Working to get back above 1.3 million words. Here are the story titles for January… List of JANUARY Challenge Stories The Notes She Left Behind… Thunder Mountain A Lost Darkness… Marble Grant Death…
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Golf, Kickstarter, and Story #30
Fun Day! It was a stunningly beautiful day and professional fiction writer Ron Collins and I walked down to the Strat to hit golf balls. Ron is a good player and I used to be. But now I am 20 pounds overweight and have a new Titanium shoulder, getting any kind of control of the ball is a challenge. And a lot of fun. A lot of laughs, actually. But toward the end of the hour I had worked out a few things and was managing to hit shots against the back fence. Without hitting either side fence. Then this afternoon I started writing before taking a nap and cooking…
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Story #29…
Two More Stories to Complete January… Considering I jumped from zero to full speed overnight, I will take it. I will do an inventory of the stories and word counts from January in a few days. On the publishing side, Kris has read 12 of them and I will be putting the first collection of ten together as soon as I work out an issue with doing the covers. The idea is for me to do a collection every two weeks once I start them. I will also be putting some of the stories in issues of Smith’s Monthly. Thinking the restart of that now March. I will also be…
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Story #28… Poker Boy
I Will Do a Full List After the 1st… But still going… Story #28… Two title halves were “Who You Calling…” and “Sweet Cheeks…” No idea what “Who You Calling Sweet Cheeks?” was going to be about until I started typing and up popped Poker Boy. Started it in the afternoon this time, got about 700 words done and the rest about 1 this morning, finishing fast and easy. Love stories that do that. I just kept typing until I found the end. I will do a word count as well, and I got to do an introduction and covers to the first collection. Kris has now read eleven of…
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Story #27…
Just Kind of Stumbling Along… Got some adjustments to make, but about to drop this challenge into the publishing part. That’s going to make it even more interesting. Story tonight was a Bryant Street story and I started it with a play off of Serling’s old Twilight Zone episode starts. Kind of fun. Also I think I got it finally why writers have trouble with valuation of their own property. Here is the analogy. If you built say a theater complex with all kinds of extras involved. And you opened it for business and the first night it made $500, if you were a writer you would think that theater…
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Valuation and Story #26
Been Working On Copyright Valuation… Trying to figure out a way to explain it. But so many elements to it, it makes it tough. But writers believe, especially indie writers, that their work has no value. Yet every time you license a book or story to say, Amazon, and they license it to a customer, you are making money from the value of your work. You license a copy from your own store to a reader, you are making money from the value of your work. Same with doing a Kickstarter campaign. And on and on and on… Copyright is property. So is trademark. So every time you create a…
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Story #25…
Having Fun With a New Character… A detective character in my Poker Boy world who helps ghosts who are trapped move on. This is the 4th or 5th story from this character’s POV so far. I do that in these challenges, get stuck on a new character and write a bunch of stories, like every third story, for a few weeks before moving on. The titles all start with the phrase “The Woman Who…” Tonight it was “The Woman Who Hates Heights.” Also did some story reading. Going to be really picking up speed on that over the next month, finishing up the stories for the Space Opera Study Along…
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Creative Process
I Was Paying Attention Today… For a moment, at the beginning of the new story, because I was tired. Only lasted a paragraph or two before I went down into the story, but figured this might be interesting to a few of you. I started off with my half-title sheets like normal. Saw the phrase “The Last” and then a couple of pages later, keeping the phrase “The Last” in my mind, my creative voice spotted “Summer Girl.” “The Last Summer Girl” Depending on how the story went, I could hyphenate Last-Summer to change the meaning. Fun title. No idea of a series jumped to mind, so I just started…