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August Regular Workshop Sale Starting!
Everything on WMG Teachable 50% Off! That’s right, everything. And a bunch of new stuff since the last sale. I’ll go over some of it. Go to WMG Teachable. To get the 50% off price, just hit purchase on what you would like to take, then on the next page put in the code: AugustRegularSale And hit apply and it will be 50% off. This sale lasts exactly one week. It does not include the in-person workshops, only everything on Teachable. New Stuff Included in the Sale! 9 Different Study-Along classes. (Also the Lifetime Subscription to Study Along Classes which is a fantastic deal even at full price. It includes…
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Pulp Speed in Indie Publishing
Indie vs Traditional Publishing and Speed… There are still writers working today who hit Pulp Speed, or very close to it in traditional publishing. You have to be a master of the business, have an ability to write anything, and the skills to work for many publishing houses to publish that much in traditional publishing. Just do the math. Pulp Speed is about a million consumable words per year. Say you do 300,000 words in blogs, short stories, and other misc stuff, that would leave 700,000 words for traditionally published novels. That’s ten 70,000 word novels per year. I did that for about a decade during the 1990s and there…
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The Annoyance of Streaks
No One Talks About The Negative of Streaks… All we talk about is how they help us get stuff done, and how powerful they are to get us moving. And so much more. And all of it true. But sometimes, streaks are just annoying. For example, my very short streak of five miles of exercise every day is all the way up to three days now. And I can feel it gaining power with each day. But tonight, to get the last of those miles, I was walking alone in a hallway on the 7th floor of this building because one lap around that hallway is exactly 1/5th of a…
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Past Crimes Bundle Last Day!!
If You Want Great Mystery Reading, Don’t Miss This One!!! I’m going to reprint here my introduction to the Past Crime’s Bundle on this last day. I was amazingly honored to be able to put this together and work with these other fantastic mystery writers. But all good things come to an end, and this bundle and the deal to get the ten books will end on Thursday evening. So don’t miss it. Just one day left!! Go to www.Storybundle.com/crime So below is my blog/introduction to the StoryBundle that I think describes it pretty well. It Came Together This Way The past often brings out the best in crime. In…
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September Workshops Now Available
Including new Applied Depth Workshop Yes, Applied Depth as been added to the Lifetime Workshop Subscription. And yes, just sign up for any of them on Teachable. Depth in Writing workshop is required to take the Applied Depth, plus it is suggested to take the Advanced Depth workshop before as well. Applied Depth Workshop takes the concepts of Basic Depth and then applies those concepts to all the major genres. Openings of stories and novels are different from genre to genre. And yes, basic depth tends to work, but there are techniques for each genre, reader expectations of opening for each genre, that will help you get readers of a…
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Study Along Classes Added to Teachable
All Six In-Person Workshops Now Have a Study Along Part… And all are available now. And I have added all six to the Lifetime Study Along as well. SCHEDULE FOR 2023 In Person and Study Along Classes… Here are the lists and dates for 2023 and January 2024. Everyone wanted these announced early, so planning trips for next year was possible. Some of these will fill now that we are getting away from the pandemic issues because we are only taking 15 writers per class. So don’t hesitate too long. Plus, remember, the price right now is $750 for the in-person classes. That price goes up to $1,000 on September…
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More On In-Person Workshops…
All Set Up… And Getting Sign-Ups… So I figured I would mention a few things. First off, here in Vegas the Covid statistics are very low, in the moderate range and are dropping steadily. No masks required anywhere. In the entire state there are just over a hundred people in the hospital, all of them not vaccinated and most of them older and up north where the non-vax folks live. All of them have other conditions as well. But even so, we are still going to require for all of 2023 workshops that everyone attending an in-person workshop must have proof of vaccination and boosters. No exceptions. Do not make…
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Announcing New Advanced In-Person Craft Workshops
Workshops Are Here In Las Vegas… All these workshops are advanced craft focused. You will be doing a lot of writing while here. And each workshop, similar to this year, will be two-genre focused. And each will have a Study-Along class going on at the same time online on Teachable. And each will be followed by a novella challenge class to do a novella in two weeks on the workshop topic. (You must have taken either the in-person or the study-along to take the novella.) DETAILS… Workshops always start Monday morning and end Thursday by noon. So you fly in on Sunday and out on Thursday or Friday. Workshops are…
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Heinlein’s Rules
Just Finished Recording the Last Week… Heinlein’s Rules workshop was an eye-opener again for me. By teaching the rules this way, talking about aspects of each rule for six weeks, I could start to see the beauty in the simplicity of the rules and why they boil this incredibly complex business down to such a simple foundation. And why Heinlein called them “Business Rules.” They really are business rules. And motivational rules. And thinning-the-herd rules. I was so lucky to stumble on them in the fall of 1981 and decide to just do them without missing starting January 1st 1982. Over 40 years ago… (yikes) I would have been thinned…
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A Streak Without Desire
How to Get Through a Streak Lull. As I said back a week ago, I have been doing this blog for ten straight years, without missing a night. But truth of the matter, I sometimes had no desire to write anything and nothing I felt was worth writing about. And if you are doing a writing streak, that will happen as well. Just the brain says, “Nope.” Not a block or anything silly like that, just a lack of motivation at that moment in time. So how do you get through that? Write a line, then another line, then another until you hit your streak goal. They do not have…