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Why Do We Do Kickstarters?
I Got That Question Today… The question sort of caught me by surprise, to be honest. First off, surface reasons. 1… It gets new books to readers ahead of the publication date and at a discount. Fans of a series or a writer enjoy that. I know I do, which is one of the reasons why I back so many campaigns. 2… It gets our work out to readers we might never find and they might then buy more of our work. This is called discoverability. 3… It is amazing promotion and advertising and you don’t have to pay for it. In fact, if you do it right, you get…
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Got Closer to Buffet Challenge
Took My New iPad to a Buffet… Sort of a test run. Didn’t plan on doing any writing, just mostly setting up a bunch of programs on my iPad, including Microsoft Word and Outlook. Got interesting, to say the least, but 90% there. Only killed the only email I have left twice, but managed to save it both times. Yikes… Even set up a word doc that I can use sort of for a template. And wrote the start of a story. The first line of the story is… “The 1950s called and they want their food back.” Yup, the buffet I was in was that bad. And I like…
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Thinking About Motivation
And What Motivates Each of Us… As I put the final touches on the BRAND NEW FEY NOVEL Kickstarter campaign that will launch on Tuesday, I got thinking about motivation because in the story in this new campaign, Kris talks about how it was the first Fey Kickstarter and all the backing that got her motivated to tackle the monster project of getting back into the Fey books and cleaning them all up and writing new ones. Link to the Fey Kickstarter Promotion page is: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/403649867/brand-new-fey-novel And I tried to do a short story per day challenge as motivation going into this year and it had all sorts of issues…
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The Buffet Challenge
Going To Be Fun and Take Time A while back I talked about trying to visit every buffet in Las Vegas and start or write a short story in each one. And also talk about the buffet in articles and blogs and put all the stories and articles together in different books. I said books (plural) for a reason. Wow, just wow are there a lot of buffets in Las Vegas. From high-end to just regular ones. I have started the research and just making a list of them seems overwhelming. Numbers of top-ten lists, but that mostly just focuses on the really high-end ones. I got a new iPad…
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Creative Voice Having Fun
Watching Two-Year-Old-Kids Kris and I always talk about the creative voice being a very, very smart two-year-old kid that knows a ton more about writing than your front critical voice will ever learn. Problem is the front voice doesn’t allow the creative voice to play, set it loose. Lots of reasons for that. So tonight, while I was over at Resorts World Casino, walking, I got to witness twice the creative voice at play in real-world dramatic fashion. (And yes, my 5-mile-per-day streak is still going and at 8 days now. Some running. But tonight, because of the heat, I just went to the mega resort of Resorts World and…
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Redoing the Post From Saturday
Figured A Lot of You Don’t Check In Here Over the Weekend… So here is Saturday’s post again about all the new stuff available and the half-price sale going on right now. 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…
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Explaining Depth
And All the Workshops Attached to Depth… Since we are doing a sale with everything half off, and I got the question to explain exactly what Depth is and how all the workshops tie together, I figured this would be a good time to do it. To get any workshop at half price, just hit purchase on anything on Teachable, then use the code: AugustRegularSale And hit apply and you will get it for half price. 1… WRITING WITH DEPTH is the basis of all of the craft workshops we do. We offer it every month and I have not changed it much at all in the five or six…
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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…