-
Getting Ready To Start The Challenge
Doing All Sorts of Odds and Ends… Mostly I worked to clean up things I was behind on, such as email. And I did some resting as well. So the day was about the focus to get started writing short stories tomorrow. How do I get ready when I have no idea at all what story or stories I will be writing? I won’t even give any idea a thought until I sit down at my writing computer tomorrow. (Even if I did, my memory is so bad I would forget it by then anyway.) Well, I cleaned up my writing desk. That is sort of a signal to me…
-
Rolled In After Midnight
So I Am Back On the Coast Until the End of April… Doing workshops, Pulphouse Magazine layout, writing short stories, and packing. A ton of packing. Tomorrow night I’ll talk about my preparation for the short story challenge. Mostly mind-set preparations, since I never plan what I am writing out ahead. So that ends tonight the great cat trip. 26 hour drive, two days of rest and helping them get settled, then a flight back tonight and a drive back to the coast. The cats are safely in the condo in Vegas with Kris and doing as well as could be expected. Now back to writing tomorrow after I get…
-
Headed Back To The Coast
Flying This Time… Leaving Kris the van and two cats. Both cats seem to be getting used to the place. I’m going to be getting ready to fire up on the short-story-a-day challenge starting on Sunday. That’s just part one of this coming challenge. Plus I have an entire house to pack and get cleared. So starting Sunday these blogs will get longer as I talk about how to focus on a challenge and writing and production in the middle of a pretty intense life roll. Moving, they say, is one of the most stressful events in a person’s life. So figure this short story per day for April will…
-
Me and The Cats Made It
26 Hours… I stopped and rested for a few hours in a hotel room around 5 in the morning, took a shower, then stopped every 45 minutes after that for the next six hours to rest and drink water and some caffeine. Left at 12:30 p.m. from Lincoln City and got in here to our condo in Las Vegas at 2:30. Had dinner in Boise with a friend along the way as well. Cats never said a word. I had them in a massive dog carrier that took help from Josh at WMG to get into the van. They had pillows and a blanket and they didn’t make a sound…
-
A Filler Because I Am In A Car With Cats
That’s right, two cats… I am writing this ahead and will post it from my iPad as I grab something to eat in the middle of the night somewhere along the way. I am taking two cats in a large dog carrier from the Oregon Coast to Las Vegas. So wish me luck… And this is yet again an example of the power of a streak with this blog. If I can post a blog while driving two cats non-stop for over twenty hours, anything is possible. (grin)
-
Planning the Impossible
When It Comes to Production… …there are two sides in this modern world. Yesterday I was talking about what might be possible with writing production. But I sure don’t plan on ramping up to a major writing production cycle to have the books and stories sitting in a drawer. Nope, they have to be in Smith’s Monthly and published stand-alone and both those and that magazine takes some real production time and energy at WMG Publishing Inc. (Remember, I am still working at hitting 67 major titles published this year before the middle of November, and that does not count short stories stand alone.) So today I sat down with…
-
What Is Possible?
When It Comes to Production… I did a post on streaks, and have shown here that novels in all sorts of locations and challenges are possible. But in a conversation earlier today, I realized that all the challenges I have done with writing lately are time-limited. — Write 30 short stories in thirty days. Check, done twice. — Write a novel in five days while traveling. Check, wrote the book about doing it. — Write four novels in July. Check. All four novels now published. And here I am with over 1700 regular blog posts, a challenge, a streak that is not limited. I have studied a lot of the…
-
Some Odds, Some Ends, Some Cool Stuff
Spent the Day Up at WMG Offices Mostly I was doing some recording of coming workshops and such. And I got to play in collectables as well. Including looking for Chevy ads from 1961 newspapers. And going through a bunch of jewelry. And I bought a 1/4 scale Batman Dark Knight Mint in Package. So fun stuff. While I was doing all that on a rainy, cold day on the Oregon Coast, Kris was doing something far, far more important. She was marching in the March for our Lives in Vegas. Here is a picture of her getting ready to go out that she sent me. ———— Femme…
-
Long Drive
Back in My Office At My Big Computer… But wow, was that one of those drives. Not a golf drive. I’ve been known over the years to hit a few of those fairly long, but this drive was by car. Actually van. Started off great with a wonderful breakfast and meeting with my closest friend who I have known and been best friends with since 1964. Then I drove through first sunshine, then rain, then snow over a nasty hill. Then more sunshine for an hour or so, then it started to rain and I drove for three hours in downpours until it turned to snow over the coast range,…
-
An Experiment
Doing this from my new iPad …with attached keyboard. Yeah, I know a lot of you are just going “So…” But after over 1,700 of these nightly blogs in a row, this is the first one I have done on anything but my huge iMac. (Now that all by itself is a record.) Since I am going to be in Las Vegas and in Lincoln City, both, I figured I better learn how to have a little flexibility if I want to really keep going on these nightly blogs. You know, come into 2018 like the rest of the tech-based country. (Grin) I teach a great deal about breaking old…