Challenge,  On Writing

A Challenge Out of Nothing

June 9, 2021 /

I Can Make A Challenge For Myself Out of the Stupidest Things…

A month or so ago I moved my office from our condo upstairs in this building to a bedroom in the condo on the ground floor. We will be using this condo for workshops in 2022, we hope, if a few more pieces fall into place. But for this last pandemic year, Kris and I used this condo for various things and for good reasons too many to mention, I decided to move my office down here.

And it has been fantastic. With the move and such, I worked on a bunch of projects, but not a novel.

In a week or two I will be moving my office back upstairs to maybe the best office in my 40 year history of writing offices. I am not kidding.

I have had some fantastic offices over the decades. In Lincoln City over the 23 years there I had three different offices that all had ocean views. This new one will be better. Not kidding.

But in every office I have had through my entire writing life, I have written a novel or two or dozens. Except this one I am sitting in now.

So the challenge is I am going to write a novel here before I move upstairs.

That way I can hold the streak that every one of my offices originated a novel or two.

As I said, I can make a challenge for myself out of anything.

And because the sale is going on, I thought I would mention you can grab any of the three challenges we offer for half price right now and for the next week. Novel every two months for a year, a short story a week for a year, or publish a book every month for a year. Great challenges. Details on Teachable.

Just hit purchase and then on the next page use the code:

THELASTSALE

 

7 Comments

  • Mihnea+Manduteanu

    June 9, 2021 at 3:48 am

    Fantastic idea! Will you be keeping us up to date with the writing of this novel? Words each day, how it’s going and such? Since it’s a challenge?
    And yes, my finger is on the purchase button for the short story every week. The collection classes showed me that I am comfortable with writing a short story per week, with you as deadline, so I am going to purchase that one officially and keep the novel challenge, one every two months, all by myself in parralel.

  • Ed Teja

    June 9, 2021 at 10:19 am

    Any thoughts about using vella for an outlet for short stories the way you use Smith’s? It seems hard to get tractions for shorts even collections, but in Vella perhaps that is exactly the right thing for readers. Of course, it’s all guesswork until we know who the readers are, but any first reactions?

    • dwsmith

      June 9, 2021 at 1:38 pm

      Horrid idea because they will be exclusive. And very restrictive. It makes Kindle Select look good, and that’s the worst thing a writer can do to their career. Avoid at all costs. Just put your stories out and be patient and keep writing. There are no secrets.

  • Philip

    June 9, 2021 at 11:17 am

    You introduced me to the world of challenges. I never did it in writing before which is odd because, as a salesman by day, I always set personal challenges at the beginning of each month and they help me hit bigger commissions.

    I’ve been so lazy the last few months, that my challenge this month is to write at Pulp Speed 1. Just trying to ramp up. P.S. This reminds me, love when you discuss Pulp Speed here because it helps many different types of challenges.