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End of the Month Catching Up
Time for some writing numbers and regular stuff… Going to catch up all the numbers here, since the last time I did this was almost three weeks weeks ago. January turned out to be a pretty good month for writing. And as things get slowly back to normal again, I will start back up the “thing I learned today” feature. That was fun. I still did it every day over the last three weeks, but not going to spend time here going over them. I wrote about 125,000 total words during January, with everything except post comments counted. Decent amount of fiction. Working to ramp that up. Totals are below.…
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Official Approval Fear
Did I Get it Right?… What a stupid, silly, useless question when it comes to writing stories. And yet… That one question covers some of the largest fears that fiction writers have. I got some of these expressed in the questions from last week. Thanks everyone. So let me see if I can make some sense out of all this… —Wondering if they got it right (fearing that they didn’t) makes beginning writers often spend thousands on book doctors or some other editor term, almost always from a person who has never published a word. —Wondering if they got it right (fearing that they didn’t) makes beginning writers rewrite the…
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The Fear of a Real Paycheck
Economic Basis for Fear… Last week I asked some basic questions, the premise being that I am questioning why I made simply writing for five days on that last novel something special. And on Thursday I asked a number of questions that got some fantastic responses. It is pretty clear that it is fear in one form or another stopping or slowing down or influencing most fiction writers these days. In all sorts of areas. Lots to talk about this week. And I believe some of the fears are just bogus and some have some pretty solid basis in reality. So I want to address a fear I have fought…
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Some Fun Stuff
A Partial List of My Books… If you want a sort of graphic list of some of the books I have done over the years, a nice person sent me a link to my page on some web site that attempts to follow my work. It doesn’t begin to have all the books (not even close) that I have written under the Dean Wesley Smith name there, let alone all the short stories and such (Missing a few hundred is all). And forget about pen names there. But it is still pretty nifty how they do it, so at a glance you can scroll down and see a bunch of…
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More Questions
A Bunch More Discussion Questions For Writers I have been mostly talking to myself over the last four days, trying to make sense of some questions I have that don’t flat seem to have answers. Or at least not easy answers. So on the idea I might keep this up, I thought for a short post tonight I would just toss out a few more questions that would be fun to talk about in coming posts. Again, just sort of talking with myself, but feel free to chime in with other ideas. —Why is every writer I know in a hurry? —Why are most writers totally incapable of planning longer…
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What Is Special?
With Writing, What Exactly Is Special? A nasty question I got a hunch I shouldn’t ask. Making a project, a chapter, a story special is a quick way to problems and critical voice issues. Making the speed of writing a project special is also a problem I just fell into. And have fallen into a number of times over the last few years. I did a book of blog posts called Writing a Novel in Ten Days where I did my last ghost-written project. Then I did another series of blogs into a book called Writing a Novel in Seven Days. And then to make writing speed even more special,…
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Become a Better Storyteller… Write Faster
The Problem of Writing Faster… You Get Better… I mentioned this in yesterday’s post and it went right past most everyone. So I figured I would tap dance on this concept a little to see if it would help a few people. What is Writing Fast? As I said yesterday, writing fast doesn’t mean you write sloppy or type faster. Or take shortcuts with plotting or story. Writing faster is simply spending more time in the chair telling stories. That’s it. Every moment you are in the chair writing you are doing the best you can. You just spend more moments in a day and a week is all. An…
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Excuses and the Fine Art of Self Sabotage
Excuses… Last week I came to the sudden realization that most of us modern writers are lazy. While at the same time convincing ourselves we are not. We convince ourselves that the time and energy we spend writing is exactly what we are supposed to be doing. And we seldom question those rules or guidelines or beliefs that lead to the “supposed-to-be-doing” issue. I’ve been questioning those rules and guidelines for a decade now, writing articles about Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing and Killing the Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing. And yet it was when I finished writing a novel in five days while traveling that I realized I had…
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A Question…
Why?… Such a dangerous question when asked in relationship to so many different things. Yesterday, in the last chapter of the book I did about writing a novel in five days while traveling, I made a comment near the end that I found the exercise fun to be able to (just for a few days) feel like I belonged in the world of the pulp writers. And I made a comment that I was born too late. A reader wrote me privately with a good comment. Basically the reader reminded me that I should feel lucky to have the modern things we writers use such as computers, control of our…
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Epilogue: Writing a Novel in Five Days While Traveling
WRITING A NOVEL IN FIVE DAYS WHILE TRAVELING… Epilogue… I am writing this from the comfort of my office at home, the day after I got back, which was late last night. I ended having to fight a pretty nasty storm coming in, but made it fine. The drive from Las Vegas to the Oregon Coast took two days, with a stop in Redding. As I said, the novel came in at 37,100 words. But I know for a fact that I will need to flush out the ending slightly because I figured out the end, was tired and did a lot of “and then this happened…” So more than likely the final…