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Lectures and A Panel Today
AT 20BOOKS CONFERENCE… At 10 am I do a talk about Writing into the Dark. That should be fun and will leave time for questions since the topic sort of begs to allow them. Then after lunch I am doing a talk about how to stay productive over a long period of time. So, so, so many writers burn out in a couple years or five years, or more likely they are gone in ten. How am I still here after selling my first short story in 1974? Yeah, that’s going to fit in 40 minutes. (grin) Sadly, most writers are so short-sighted, I will be stunned that anyone attends…
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COLLECTION CLASSES 2023
INCLUDES 2021, 2022, AND 2023 CLASSES I am in the process of launching two or three of these a night. So they will be appearing on Teachable as this week and into next week. There are 24 choices of Collection Classes including six new in 2023. Each class is 9 weeks long and you write five stories, do titles and blurbs and covers and publish the collection by the end of the nine weeks. If you turn in all nine assignments (5 are stories) you get credit for a Pop-Up of your choice. The title of the class is the theme of the collection, but no genre restrictions at all.…
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Last Day for Holiday Spectacular!!
Ends at 7PM Today… That’s right, ends at 7pm today (Thursday). Kickstarter is counting down the hours. The campaign hit the 5th stretch goal and is on the way to the next one. More stories, more workshops for everyone. And every backer this year gets 39 original holiday stories, one delivered every day from Thanksgiving, November 24th, through January 1st. Over thirty professional writers wrote for it. Hugo Award winning editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch did all the editing. Talk about fun. We call the 39 stories the WMG Holiday Spectacular 2022 Calendar. And they make fantastic gifts. Who wouldn’t love to get a gift that goes and goes and goes…
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Workshops Not Ending… Only the Sales
Thank you for the kind words, everyone… But a lot of you are making it sound as if the workshops are going away. Nope, just the sales, and I do understand that will limit a number of you going forward. Just nothing we can do if we want to get these out to as many writers as possible who might need them. So here is what is happening that we have planned now for the workshops that I can talk about or announce… First, we will keep doing new regular workshops. The six that are there for November are the core. Other new ones will be added in and then…
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November Regular Workshops Now Up!
All Six Are Available on Teachable… And yes, they are available in the half-price sale. Just hit purchase and then use the code: TheLastSale on the next page to get them at half price. Sale goes through Sunday late. I apologize if I have not responded to your email in the last day or so. Just resting my eye as much as possible after a procedure. All is fine, just don’t want to strain it. But I will get through all my email by tomorrow. The brand new six classic workshops will be available tomorrow or Saturday in time to get them in the sale as well. Here are the…
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The Last Sale…
Ever…. And we will not change our minds. This is it. This week. Why the about face on sales??? We said in June we would do a regular sale the last full week of each month up until the end of the year. Well, total failure. What is success to us? Having writers take the workshops or classes to keep learning. What the regular sales did from June until now basically caused the writers who are taking workshops and learning to be cut more than in half. So the sales don’t help more writers take classes, they instead cut the number of people taking classes and learning. And that is…
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5 Does and 5 Don’ts For Fiction Writers…
Some Don’ts… 1… Writers, do not say you are going to go trademark your idea or your most recent book. It does not work that way. 2… Writers, do not say you are going to go copyright your most recent story or novel or idea. It does not work that way. 3… Writers, do not think everyone is going to steal your new idea. It does not work that way. (And chances are your wonderful new idea has been done a million times before anyway. However, it will be original if you write it in your voice and don’t rewrite it into pablum. (Definition of pablum is bland or insipid…
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Branding
Kris and I Talk All the Time About Branding… Most writers only limit that word “branding” to how their covers look similar in series. How their name in a certain font looks from book to book, and so on. That is all important, but honestly just a tiny touch at branding. When you are taking something out for license, like to a gaming company, or toy company, or anything like that, you detail out your branding on your project. Fonts, type of art, colors and a ton of details are all important to how a product overall looks when transferred from text to media of some sort. Clothing and styles…
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Great Ideas For Advanced Classes
Thank you, Everyone!! For the ideas here in the comments and to me directly through email. Fun Stuff. So let me break down some of the suggestions and combine them into advanced classes. Structure for this Advanced Series would be nine weeks long, with assignments along the way. Price would be $500 (same as the 9-week long collection classes). If we decide to do this, we would offer 6 of them in a year. You can buy all six at some point. They are not part of the regular workshops and would not be available for at least a year on any sales, just as the Business Master Class was…
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I Never Look Back…
But At Times I Am Forced To By Circumstances… I write stories, one draft, cycling, and finished. For fiction, I have a person go over it to find typos. Kris reads it to help with the typos. I never look at a story again. Now I have published well over 400 short stories (a number of them from my early years and because they were horror, they no longer fit what I am doing, so I have never republished them.) But most I have put through Smith’s Monthly and then indie published. A bunch have been in anthologies I have never republished in Smith’s Monthly as well. Someday I will.…