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Help With Time of Great Forgetting…
Help Coming if You Take It… This year will be a brutal Time of Great Forgetting for most authors. The cause of these months just vanishing from your writing is distractions. Lots and lots of them. Good weather, family events, graduations, gardening, sports, you name it. Massive distractions away from a great schedule you have been maintaining all winter so far with the writing. And also at the moment we have the head-shaking distraction of the craziness coming out of the US government. You combine that with a desire to cover your head or just run into the garden and it makes this coming few months maybe the worst Time…
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Wow! Have We Done a Lot…
I Swore I Wouldn’t Do Online Classes… Not kidding. I swore I wouldn’t do them. Back before there was anything like Teachable, I was pushed into doing one online class one fall by a group of writers, encouraged by my wife. I swore it would only be one. I honestly did. Kris and I laid out the class and I presented it. Had to create a web site that acted very much like Teachable for the first few years. Then since we had decided for the moment to not do any more in-person classes, I did a few more over that first year. (We brought the in-person classes back at…
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More Challenges for the New Year…
Our Regular Four Challenges Enter the 2025 Holiday Sale… For years now we have had four challenges that writers can jump into at any point during the year and start at any time. — THE GREAT CHALLENGE which is to write and send to me one short story a week. — THE GREAT PUBLISHING CHALLENGE which is to publish one major thing a month. (Collection, novella, or novel.) — THE GREAT NOVELLA CHALLENGE which is to write a new novella every month. — THE GREAT NOVEL CHALLENGE which is to write a new novel every two months. Very few people have tried the novel challenge and only a couple of…
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Thinking of the Start of the New Year…
New Year Is Not Far Off.. Today I got up late (since I stay up until 5 am), watched far too much college football including that crazy ending to the Arizona/BYU game, then headed out to the store(s) to get all the stuff Kris needs to make her fantastic pumpkin pies and a turkey and all the extra stuff as well. Actually fun. And then watched more television and didn’t get into my office until after midnight. And most of the time since getting in here I have been working on and thinking about the start of the new year and what I am going to do to really ramp…
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Something Fun for Me…
Offering This To Just Four Writers… A few days ago I made an offer to a writer who was hoping to attend a craft workshop next year with Kris and wanted to be ready. What I offered was this and am offering to four more writers now. Sign up for one of the 2025 in-person craft workshops taught by Kris, either Gothic or Adventure. See how to sign up on yesterday’s post or write me. (Sorry, no lifetime in-person subscribers unless you want to buy an in-person lifetime subscription now, then I will do it for you. Write me for the cost.) Send me a short story every two weeks.…
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My Blog Streak!!
Started a Year After My Friend Died… In August of 2011, my best friend, Bill Trojan died of a massive heart attack on the last day of the World Science Fiction Convention. I was in charge of his estate and I spent 9 months getting that under control. (A full book of stories in those statements.) Then I tried to get back to writing. I had been blogging at times on my web site and also before that on the Star Trek writer web site. But I needed a focus and I was also doing a little teaching and was about ready to start up Smith’s Monthly Magazine. So on…
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Nifty Mug and T-Shirt
2024 Challenge Challenge yourself to average 2,024 words per day for the entire year of 2024. Here is the mug and t-shirt you get for signing up… Full instructions below the pictures. Nifty, huh? And you get both if you join the challenge. Only open until the 5th… Sign up on Teachable. Here are the basic rules… No genre limitations. Rules of Turn-In 1… Every month (or more often if it helps you) you must send me an email giving me your word count. I do not want to know what you are writing, just how much. End of the year we figure it all out. The cost is $600.…
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Write Only For Yourself…
Something I Teach All The Time… The great artist Bob Eggleton put up a post on Facebook tonight. A quote from Andre Malraux the French novelist (among other things he did.). Malraux said, “An artist discovers his genius the day he dares not to please.” I am constantly talking with young writers who are doing a number of things that I try to convince them are not critical. And often deadly. 1… Writing to market. (What is supposedly hot in sales, what you have already done, what others tell you to write.) 2… Write for beta readers or first readers or workshops. Just pretty silly when you stop and think…
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The Myth That Writing is Hard…
I Wrote This in 2009… I have updated it for 2023… It is long but I thought it needed to be said again. And note, this was written before I was doing a blog per day. ————- This myth comes in many forms and has many faces, but let me put it as plainly as I can to start. Myth: To be Good, Writing Must Be Hard. (And it can’t be fun.) Total hogwash, of course, yet it is stunning how many new writers believe this, and how readers, when they bother to think about it, believe the myth as well. And, of course, almost everyone who teaches creative writing…
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Moral Rights
A Friend Reminded Me… That I had not yet talked about moral rights in the Bite-Sized Copyright class. He did not intend to, just sent me a great moral rights topic letter., So I just finished recording that for Monday morning. Basics, but considering most writers don’t even understand copyright or licensing, I had to keep it basic. And nope, will not explain it here. Google is your friend for the basics. It is also in the Copyright Handbook which you should own. Keeping it short this Friday night because after three full days now of my new exercise routine, I am beat up. Tonight I did 4 miles around…