The Journal, Monday, 1/2

Hey Folks,

Ugh. Not doing too well on the retraining thing. But I have excuses. (grin)

Excuse 1. Rolled out late at 3:45 because I stayed up and watched the Green Bay/Detroit football game.

I planned on a quick, abbreviated wake-up period of no more than a half-hour, but…

Excuse 2. I allowed an email from a writers’ group to sidetrack me.

The email mentioned that a pulp writer, Van Allen Plexico (http://www.whiterocketbooks.com/plexico/), would be speaking at an upcoming meeting. The title of his talk will be “Pulp Fiction Isn’t Just a Tarantino Movie.” Great title.

So I did a Google search and found the guy. When he says “pulp” apparently he means a genre, not production or way of writing. He’s written 17 novels thus far, and he’s been writing for several years.
(In an interview, he mentioned turning out a new book in one series once a year.) I thought I had stumbled across a gold mine. Turns out (for me), not so much.

BUT I also listened to a YouTube interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpbKRWrjktg) and mined a nugget or two.

I also picked up one of his books from Amazon (free, a short story, I think). If I like it, I plan to buy one of his novels. Maybe.

Okay, so what I’m saying is I totally blew it on the early writing retraining I was supposed to start this morning. Which means I’ll have to piece together writing time through the day today. While other people are awake.

But it’s all right. Missing goals and learning new ways to adjust is all right. Quitting, not striving toward those goals or adjustments, is not an option. Well, it’s an option, but not a good one. (grin)

Also, from Dean, I learned of Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey, a major pulp writer back in the day. By “major” I mean he “wrote 25,000 to 30,000 word books, ONE PER WEEK for two decades.” I want desperately to be able to tell stories like that. Will I find and read (study) some of his books? Yes. Oh yes.

Okay. Today is a complete no-writing day. Just too many other things going on, so no reason to try to force it. Or who knows. Maybe I just need to whine for awhile. Or maybe (shudder) I’ve used up my allotment of fiction words. (grin)

Anyway, instead of writing I did some other things, including updating my website.

Also, from now on when I write a post that contains a topic, I’m going to tag that post with a keyword that points to the topic. That should make it easier to find things.

Now I’m gonna post this, then blow off the rest of the day.

Of Interest

One of Dean’s goals for the year is to learn one new thing about writing/publishing every day. His first installment is at 1/1/17 Daily… Some Learning… (http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/1117-daily-some-learning/). It includes hints about the very prolific pulp writer Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey (Nick Carter).

At Kris Rusch’s site, Free Fiction Monday (http://kriswrites.com/2017/01/02/free-fiction-monday-present/)

Interesting comments on Dean’s “Got Your Goals?” (http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/got-your-goals/#comments).

For anyone interested in more about Pulp Magazines, I recommend http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/eng/Pulp_magazines.

Marking the passing of Richard Adams, author of Watership Down: http://thefederalist.com/2017/01/02/watership-author-richard-adams-knew-rabbits-say-freedom/.

Today, and Writing

Nada. I read the sentence I wrote yesterday to continue the Jonah story and I just didn’t feel it. So that one’s going out the door.

See you tomorrow.

Fiction Words: XXXX
Nonfiction Words: 580 (Journal)
So total words for the day: 580

Writing of

Day 1…… XXXX words. Total words to date…… XXXXX

Total fiction words for the month……… 1628
Total fiction words for the year………… 1628
Total nonfiction words for the month… 1620
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 1620

Total words for the year (fiction and nonfiction)…… 3248