1,000,000 Words of Fiction

Restart, Reset, and Regroup

Photo by Mike Tinnion on Unsplash

I’ve been away for a while, though I doubt that fact has raised concern from anyone. Life continues to roll on whether we are fully present, taking in every moment we soak up, or trapped in a monotonous cycle like the movie Groundhog Day. The Summer has been the latter.

August was, for lack of a better word, shit.

While I’ve been focusing my efforts on building and editing a magazine, I noticed my own fiction writing was neglected. I wasn’t practicing the Pulp Work Ethic that I came to understand, and failed to make time for writing new stories. Then I was getting sick: Headaches, brain fog, fatigue, insomnia.

Something was wrong. After two months of brooding and dark days, I realized after consulting with some dear friends and my wife, that I needed to get back to writing fiction. They were right! It turns out that when I’m not creating for myself, I become irritable, restless, and fall into a depressive state of mind. I decided I was done feeling like garbage all the time and letting the days slip away.

To get back into the swing of things, I listened to Ray Bradbury’s UCLA Lecture:

I revisited the teachings of my former writing mentor,

Harvey Stanbrough

, took a breath, sat at my laptop, and wrote a story called FEAST that was published in the Soaring Twenties Substack.

FEAST

Once I told myself I was going to sit and write, the words came pouring as if they were simply waiting for my permission to come out and play. Though It felt good to hammer out a story, I wanted to make sure I didn’t lose the fire again. Inspired by a few professional writers I follow, I decided to start a challenge in order to reset my writing and reestablish old lost habits.

1,000,000 Word Challenge

I don’t remember who first said it, but there is an idea that it takes 1,000,000 words of writing fiction to get to a competent level of craft. I don’t know if that’s the magic number but it’s a big enough goal for me to hit in this new challenge. The more important thing here is to keep writing and practicing every day.

Currently, I’ve written around 34,000 words but I estimate that with these new habits and goals, I should be able to hit that big number by mid-2024. So that’s what I’m doing. Writing short stories is a skill I’ve worked at for a couple of years now but I’m starting to warm up to the idea of penning a few novels. We’ll see where I end up!

I’ll report my efforts on a weekly basis; the wins, struggles, and lessons I’ve picked up will be shared too. Just as I used to do when I first started this newsletter, I hope that my actions will help and encourage those who have aspirations to write fiction.

Fun Stuff

Outside of editing Pulp, Pipe, & Poetry Magazine, I’ve been spending time putting together a few of my Corpo Dread short stories into a collection that will be published in late September 2023. More details to come.

To all those loyal readers who believed in The Pulp Fictioneer from the beginning: Thank You!

I’ve had my fair share of setbacks and roadblocks with this publication, but it brings me immense joy knowing many of you are still here.

‘Till next time.