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Writers Often See The Dark Side…
At Least Beginning and Early Stage Writers… I have noticed this over the years, but a couple things over the last few months really brought this concept home. This functions in two ways. For example, in the Depth workshop, one of the assignments is to see an ex-spouse at the end of a setting assignment. 99 out of 100 of those assignments are negative, hateful, full of loathing or disgust or fear of the ex-spouse. Fiction folks. You have a choice to move away from the cliche and the negative. Writing topics in other workshops go along with this trend. If there is a choice between positive outlook and a…
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Memory and Perspective
The Beach Boys… Tonight I watched the first half of the Grammy salute to the Beach Boys. Some of the major artists were up to playing Beach Boy songs, some were not, but the history of the music and the writing so far has been fascinating. And seeing all five remaining original Beach Boys sitting in the same box in the theater was so cool. Especially after all they have been through. 60 Years Ago… Yes, I said sixty… I went out on a first date with a woman I now know longer even remember her name, to a Beach Boys concert being held in the Boise High School auditorium.…
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Challenges Are Battles Against Yourself…
Nothing Else Matters… Just You… Challenges have this nasty habit of quickly uncovering issues in your motivation and your consistency in writing and other life issues you are dealing with. This challenge for me uncovered that my vision stamina is not strong yet. If I spend a lot of time during the day, as I did a few days this last week, at my business computer, by the time I get to the writing computer, I am very limited in the amount of time I have. I love writing at night, and my eyes are better at night. I expected to be slow, didn’t expect that sight issue would be…
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Slow Starts Are Perfectly Fine
No Reason At All To Worry… A number of you have decided to take the writing challenge with me for the next nine months, until the end of the year. But I have gotten a number of letters worried about starting slow. And I am starting slow, as I said I would. This worry can really invite in critical voice, repeating over and over that you are failing. Not sure why anyone buys that a few days into a nine month challenge, but if you buy into it, and let critical voice take over, it sort of becomes a self-fulfilling thing. Yikes! The key is to focus on the writing…
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Keep The Fun…
Nothing Is Important In Writing Fiction… The moment you make something “important” you let in critical voice and since it is important, the critical voice will shut you down. That’s why so many of you can’t finish a story or a novel. It becomes important about halfway through, you become afraid to show it when you are done because it might be bad, and you stop. Critical Voice wins. (Critical voice only has one goal and that is to stop you.) But I have gotten a number of questions on how to focus on a challenge and not make what you are writing important? Well simply put, don’t make it…
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Challenge Starts!!
9 Months Left In The Year! If you get focused, you can get a lot done in the next nine months. And learn a lot and have a lot of new books and products out for readers. That’s what these challenges are all about. Even though I am writing this on the 1st, I won’t start officially counting until after I wake up. Here is how the challenges will work, both half and full. Every week on Monday (My week will be from Monday to Sunday night), I will post my consumable words written here that week on this blog to the right. They will be total from April 1st…
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Getting Back In The Chair…
Can’t Count the Words for the Challenges… But figured since my writing has been so off and on for the last five months because of the eye issues, I had better spend time back in my writing chair kicking off the dust. Feels great, let me tell you. Can not believe how much I have missed being in that chair over the last five months. I sat down tonight and said, “I’m home!” Couple things I noticed. I am not typing as clean as I used to because the eye is not totally back, so getting letters mixed up when my fingers get off the keys or in the wrong…
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Got Up Very Early…
Halfway Through My Night, Actually… To go with Kris as she ran, biked, and swam in a Reverse Triathlon. She started off with a 5K run, then did 10K on a bike, and then 300 yards of swimming. I was her support staff, to hold her stuff, get her water and such and help her through the transitions. She completed it and did fantastic! She is flat amazing. Read her post on Facebook about how life conspired against her on the training and she still showed up and finished. I often get questions about what it takes to become a long-term, full-time fiction writer. My answer is never quit, and…
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An Adventure In My Own Fiction…
Being Prolific… This is kind of sad, actually. I have a clear memory of writing a story. Not sure if it became part of a novel or not, not 100 % sure of what series it was in. But I remember writing the story. And I wanted that story for a specific reason tonight. Yes, I have spreadsheets full of stories and all my indie published novels are out in different places. But spread sheets just give me titles and series and such. And just for Smith’s Monthly alone, there are almost 300 stories on that spread sheet. And I have a lot of unpublished short stories that got delayed…
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More On Dean Challenges
Some Great Questions This Weekend… Main question is that if I go past a million words, does that mean anyone in the challenge must as well? Nope. If I write past a million words (love how you guys are worried about that while I am worried with the eyes of just getting close to that number), the challenge is capped at one million. So the full folks need to write that much, the half need to write 500,000 words. If I do 800,000 words, that is the mark for the full and 400,000 is for the half. I will be reporting every week on both challenges with a video. Every…