Random Writing Tips – Maybe write bad stories

 

I’ve easily read over a thousand short stories.  I have numerous short story collections, and I used to subscribe to a couple magazines that published 10-12 stories each issue and I read all of them.  Now I am terrible with titles or names of authors, but if you had me describe the plot of a story, I probably remember … fifty or so.  But if you handed me a story I read a decade ago but couldn’t remember, there’s a fifty-fifty chance I’d remember something as I was reading it.

This all came up recently, because there is a short story I really enjoyed and I wanted to find it.  Partly just to reread it, but also to see if it was online anywhere so I could share it, since it has some relevance to everything going on in the world now.  But I can’t remember what it was called, or who wrote it, or what magazine it was in.  And when I searched for it using basic terms that fit the story, it turned out there is a novel with that basic term as a title, which were all the results.  So I’m still searching for that story.  If I ever find it, I’ll come back and leave a note.

Now what does all that have to do with the title of this post?  Well, of the hundreds of stories I read in those magazines, that one story is the only one I remember truly enjoying.  The dozen or so other stories I remember I … disliked to hated.  Which means, most of the stories I read I don’t remember because they were just okay.  Maybe okay good, or okay bad, but ultimately forgettable.  The vast majority of the stories I remember, I remember because I did not like them.  Like, there’s a story about this futuristic sports doping scandal that falls apart because the people that spent time and money on this doping technology forgot to tell the athlete they needed to train differently.  Or the group that built a time machine and are sending someone back to study this lost civilization decide on the loose cannon with no training over anyone better qualified.  Or the President who hints multiple times they have a secret plan for world peace, but when they have to reveal it, it’s just we’re going to bomb people who disagree with us.  And they weren’t a “How the hell did this asshole become President?” type, but someone up until then shown to be diplomatic and understanding of the power of their position. 

I was thinking about all of this, and I realized that maybe writers should write a bad story, just in case it gets published and someone remembers it because they disliked it.  I mean, being remember that way is probably easier than being remembered for writing a good story.  Something to think about.

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Image from Pixabay.

An interesting history YouTube channel

I have an interest in history.  There’s the standard WWII and ancient Rome, but also the history of spaceflight, technology, and anything dealing with the hundred or so other minor interests I have.  As such, I follow I don’t know how many YouTube history channels.  But for this post, I want to talk about one in particular: Cambrian Chronicles, the “number one Welsh history channel on YouTube.”

It was probably about a year ago, I was on some video and I scrolled down to read some comments, when one of the recommended videos on the side caught my eye.  I forget what it was, but it was probably something like “The Lost Welsh Kingdom.” I’ve never taken one of those DNA tests to see where I’m from, but growing up I heard my family was mostly German with some Irish and English.  So there’s probably some Welsh in there as well.  And for some reason, at the time the idea of a lost kingdom or whatever sounded interesting.  So I checked out the video, enjoyed it, and followed a new channel.

I would say that a “typical” Cambrian Chronicles video would be there’s a manuscript from the year 750 that names a dozen Welsh kings.  We have “good” historical records for ten of them.  Here’s the best evidence/theory for the other two.  And we go through five or six other ancient manuscripts to piece together how something was likely mistranslated or the truth is likely right out in the open, but nobody noticed.  A good actual video is The Royal Title that No One Can Remember.  Basically, there’s a list of a dozen or so people with a “title” that can’t be translated.  We don’t know why these people were called it, or why other similar people weren’t. 

All of this is interesting, but why talk about it in a blog about writing?  For one, someone could easily write a story where that Royal Title just meant that they were aliens, and nobody could argue about it because the historical record doesn’t say otherwise.  But more importantly, hearing about kings or kingdoms that – a thousand years later – we only know existed because of some scraps of parchment, is a reminder of how … temporary our existence is.  Hell, given enough time, Shakespeare will be forgotten.  I believe most people know that, on some level, but few have come to grips with that reality.  And right now, too many people are ignoring reality for all our detriment.

Random Writing Tips – Repost your stories

 

Ten or fifteen years ago, I came across a site where you would post a blog/story/whatever, and for every view it got you would get a penny.  So I started posting whatever I could thing of to get some money.  In the following few years, I found a dozen or so such sites.  Some I actually did get money from, but others would have like a $5 payout minimum, and I’d be at $4.50 and they’d go belly-up.  All the sites I knew of eventually died, and I don’t know if such sites still exist.  I imagine they’d be quickly overrun by AI crap. 

Anyway, besides all the general posts about movies and society and whatnot, I also posted some of my stories.  For the simple reason that if someone read one and liked it, maybe they’d go and buy some of my books.  I don’t know how successful that was, but it did lead to some issues.  For one, most publishers won’t take previously published works.  Even stories posted on little known sites that died after three months, count as previously published. 

So what to do with a bunch of stories I can’t submit to publishers?  Some I republished myself as part of a collection.  But that still leaves a bunch of stories.  These may not be the very best of my writing – since those stories I put in collections – but they’re not garbage.  Well, most of them aren’t garbage, hopefully.  But instead of letting them gather dust in a forgotten corner of my hard drive, I’ve started reposting them, mostly on my blogs.  Because the main reason I still post stories is to give a free taste of my writing so maybe someone will check out and buy one my books.  And while writing a new story each month for my blog would be fantastic, there is this thing called life that often gets in the way.  So these okay stories that I can’t really do much else with, are prefect to fill in the busy months.  I spent who knows how much time working on them, I might as well get as much use from them as I can.

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Image from Pixabay.

What counts as writing?

Many years ago, I read some famous author saying that to make a living as a writer, you needed to treat writing like a job.  You punch in, do the work, day in and day out.  A few years ago, I was trying to think of some way to boost my writing, so I decided to try making it a job.  The first thing I needed to figure out was how many hours a week I wanted to write.  I quickly decided on 42, because that works out to six hours a day, and it’s also The Answer.  If I had six hours a day to write, that would be great, but I also have a part time job to pay the bills.  So instead of trying for 42 hours of writing each week, I go for 42 minus however many hours I work that week.  (I’ve also started counting my commuting time.)  So this gives me my weekly goal of hours of writing.

But what exactly is an hour of writing?  If I sat down and started typing, “Chapter 1, It was a dark and stormy night,” and continued for an hour, we’d agree that would count as writing.  (I never said it had to be good writing.)  But what if I sat down the next day and spent an hour revising what I had written?  Would that also count as an hour of writing?  I decided that, no an hour of revising would only count as thirty minutes of “writing.” I set this up years ago as a trial and I’ve just continued to do it, so I don’t remember my exact reasonings, but I believe it is because I can get stuck just doing revision after revision after revision.  Part of my goal was to put more words on the page, not just polishing the ones already there.  By only counting revising as half the time, I should be more motivated to write stories.

But what about blogging?  Some of my blogs are just random thoughts I’d like to put out to the world, but I have to admit part of it is the hope that someone goes, “This guy has an interesting take on … exploring Mercury, I wonder what their fiction is like.” It’s a slim hope, but we have to do what we can.  Just to keep things simple, I decided that an hour of blogging would also only count as thirty minutes of writing.  Even blogs about writing, which I don’t care to think too much about otherwise I’ll give myself a headache.

The final writing related thing I decided to count as writing, is social media crap.  Because it doesn’t really matter how many stories or blogs I write if they’re never seen by anyone.  So I spent time each week on Mastodon and Bluesky, just trying to find new people who might take an interest in anything of mine.  But I do see spending time on social media as less important than blogging, and so I don’t waste too much time, an hour on social media I only count as six minutes of “writing.”

I’ve been doing this for years, and I don’t know if I’ve ever actually hit my goal.  I think the only time I came close was when I picked up some extra shifts and worked thirty-some hours, meaning I only needed to write for a couple hours that week.  But even then I don’t know if I made it because I also basically have a third job of taking care of a bunch of stuff around the house, which usually leaves me too tired to do anything but veg in front of a screen binging shows or YouTube videos. 

I still write, just not as much as I want to.  I guess I need to come up with some new motivation to make sure I put in the time.  Any suggestions?

3,000 Days!

If I’ve mathed correctly, then today – after I spent ten minutes polishing up a story just after 1 AM – marks the 3,000th day that I’ve “written” something.  Apparently, the last day I didn’t “write” was January 26, 2017.  Which, you have to admit, is rather impressive.

You’ll note that I did say “written” something, because to be perfectly honest there were probably hundreds of those days where I wasn’t feeling well, or had 8,000 other things going on, so I just opened up whatever story I was working on, typed “And they lived happily ever after,” and called it a day knowing full well that would be deleted the next time I got around to actually working on the story.  Not to mention the days when I realized I hadn’t written something about 11:55 PM, and just went and changed a word just to say I did something.

A few months ago I wrote a post on You’re allowed “sick” days, where I talked about writing every day and I didn’t know if I’d continue after hitting 3,000 days.  Now that I’m here … I mean, it’s not that far off to ten years. 

Random Writing Tips – Some quick tips

 

The way I usually come up with these tips is I’ll think of something – usually while at work or while driving to work – make a note of it, and then forget about it for a few weeks or months until I need to write a post.  Then I’ll go through the notes to see what I can do.  But sometimes what I figure is a good idea, can’t really be stretched to more than a paragraph or two.  So here are some of these quick tips.

Be careful with slang

This started when I got a notice that someone had replied to a YouTube comment.  I read the reply and didn’t know what they were talking about.  Turns out, it was a reply to a comment I made a year or so earlier.  I went back to that video, read my comment and I think a couple earlier replies, then the new reply, but still didn’t know what they were talking about.  Part of it was they used a term I had heard the kids use but only had a vague idea of the meaning.  I looked it up, got the official definition, but still didn’t know what they were talking about.  Either there is some other meaning to this word, or they didn’t make their case that clearly.  So if you use the hip new slang all the kids are using, just know there’s a chance some of us old fogies won’t know what you’re saying.  But old fogies aren’t the target audience, so what does it matter?  On one hand, you can’t write something that will be of interest to everyone, but on the other hand, the more people that can understand your writing means the more people likely to read it.  There is a balance one needs to find.

A Something File can be useful

This began with a microfiction story I wrote.  At some point I had started a “To Do” file, where if I had an idea – for a story or general thing to do – I could just open it and type out my idea.  And then every few months I’d clean it out and find better places for the story ideas.  Sometimes, when I wasn’t feeling well, I’d open this file to just write “something” so that I could say that I had written something that day.  I was thinking about it one day and decided that I’d keep the “To Do” file for non-writing ideas but I should start a new “Something File” just for my writing ideas.

Sexbots

Years ago, there was this site – which is still up but the pages are corrupted – where you could post stories of a few hundred words.  One day, I wrote a story with “Sexbot” in the title, and in about a day it had more views than some of my stories got in a week.  Sometimes, it can be useful to jazz a title up a bit, to get more notice.

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Image from Pixabay.

Writing Newsletter First Quarter 2025

 

This quarter I continued writing a story each month on my website, publishing, “Legacy,” “Stamp of Approval,” and “I Wish.” I also decided to post/repost at least one story a quarter on my Ko-fi account.  This quarter I reposted “Check Brain.” On my blogs I posted the stories “Plans,” “A Line in the Sand,” and “Not Worth It,” and reposted the stories “The Unerring Word” and “Ticket to the Future.”

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If I counted correctly, I posted twelve new microfiction stories and eleven new haikus.  Last quarter I said that I would need to do a better job keeping track, which I sort of did.  I think the biggest issue was I changed how and what I counted after a month or so, so the numbers are a bit iffy.  But going forward, I now have a better way to keep track of them.  Regardless, all of microfiction stories can be found on my Untitled Works Page, and all my haikus on my Haiku Page.

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Something I’ve thought about over the years is moving away from only having my ebooks on Kindle.  But I never really looked into other sites.  There’s a chance in the next quarter I’ll publish a story on Draft2Digital.  I have a story, it just needs some polishing.  There’s just so much other stuff going on that I haven’t felt motivated enough to do the polishing.  But hopefully in the next three months I’ll get around to it.

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One … positive of all the crap going on is that I seem to have more ideas for blogs.  There are things I feel I need to say.  Before I tried to fit all my blogs into a schedule, but from now on I think I’ll keep to the schedule as well as do some bonus blogs.  So while it isn’t the writing I wanted to do, I do seem to be writing more.  We’ll just have to see how this goes.

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Image from Pixabay.