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Going to Try For Sleep
Got a 5K Run Early… So got my story done early, going to rest for a bit and go to bed a couple hours early. Still won’t get a full night’s sleep, but will help. The course tomorrow has a pretty good hill on it, but I am still going to try to break 40 minutes. Now my fastest is 31:19, but won’t get close to that since that was two years ago and I was five pounds lighter and it was a flat course. So 40 minutes is my goal. I know, for you runners, that’s slow, but I’m old, and if I do that I should win my…
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Story Tonight Was Novella
Seven Stories plus Transitions and Fillers… I spent all evening doing this, making sure information was not repeated too badly from story to story, lining it all up as 19 chapters, adding transition to keep the main story line moving through it all. Seven stories are the core. I wrote almost 3,000 new words tonight, more than equal to a short story. So counting this novella called BIG EYES as my story for the night. It will be the lead story in Smith’s Monthly #58 which will be on Patreon and out to subscribers in a week or so. Plus next week it will be part of a cat bundle.…
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Tried Something New For Me…
Flipped Viewpoints in a Story… Now, this would have been so much easier to just write a new story completely, but since I am doing this challenge, and I was in a spot that it made sense to do this stunt, I thought I would try it. My suggestion… Don’t. I had a Poker Boy story called “Mystery Cat” that also had in it Pakhet Jones. But it was a Poker Boy story, and Poker Boy is first person. I wrote it about two years ago or so and published it in Smith’s Monthly back about a year ago. Pakhat Jones stories are also first person. But in the Poker…
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Finished a Short Novel
Might Only Be a Novella Tonight I finished another Pakhet Jones story. Now basically I have written an entire larger story in six or seven short stories over the last month and a half. The one last night that I didn’t think stood up that well as a short story, only Kris said it did. Go figure, I’m only the author. I don’t know anything. And I mean that honestly when it comes to my own work. So tomorrow I am going to take all those stories and do the connecting tissue and a bunch more depth and see if it climbs solidly into novella length and maybe short novel…
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Quick Update Tonight…
Got a Lot Done Today… Worked all day on workshops, and doing a lot of recording. Also worked on covers and downloaded 14 pieces of art for short story covers. I can tell you that took some time. Another 15 or so to go and I will be almost caught up. The art is the hardest part, so figured I would just do all the ones I was behind on all at once. Then the covers will take me ten minutes each to finish and I can get more raw stories to Patreon. www.patreon.com/DeanWesleySmith I hit my challenge tonight even with a very late 12:30 am start. A really twisted…
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Two More Stories on Patreon
And February Workshops are all started… Still lots of time to jump into them. And I will have the March ones posted in a few days as well. Story tonight was a group of characters from other series. It was a Sky Tate story, but had Poker Boy and Marble Grant in it. Great fun and came in just over 3,200 words. I started it this afternoon for a change and it took just about 2.5 hours. I also did covers for the 6th and 7th stories from January and got those two stories on Patreon for those following the raw stories. https://www.patreon.com/deanwesleysmith Covers for those are below. One is…
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January Challenge Stories
List of All 31 Stories for January… Well, after an amazingly difficult month in the real world, and basically just starting cold after a tough fall and December, I wrote 31 short stories, one per day, in January. Many, many nights I thought about just skipping the story and catching it up later, but I didn’t. All the stories were short stories except one I didn’t wrap up very well and it is a clear novel start. About eight of the stories are novel starts that I wrapped into short stories until somewhere in the middle of the month I managed to actually just write short stories. They ranged from…
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Patreon Updates
Smith’s Monthly #57 and 3 Raw Stories… Got those on Patreon. If you want to really see what Smith’s Monthly looks like, read the pdf version. You get to see it completely. And the last five pages with all the covers of all 57 issues is pretty stunning. But for those of you at the $5 level on Patreon and above, I put up both the Bookfunnel link and the pdf of Smith’s #57, the January issue. Also put up three more raw short stories from the challenge. What is slowing me down is the covers, of course. I did those three in an hour, but I got to find…
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Challenge Still Going Strong
27 Short Stories in 27 Days… I will start tomorrow doing covers for them and getting the raw manuscripts up on Patreon. And finally get all that done there, including issues of Smith’s Monthly. But going to take through the weekend because I still have other stuff to catch up. A number of times my critical voice (which only exists in the form of “Why am I wasting my time.” I have all other critical voice wiped out.”) came roaring up. A few days I was just too tired, but wrote a story anyway. So just getting each story done each day and having fun writing. I talked about all…
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Six Weeks of Motivational Mondays…
I’m Having Fun With Them… And the “Pithy Comment” each week as well. Six weeks so far since I started back in December. 3 videos plus the comment each week. So each quarter there should be 39 videos and 13 Pithy Comments. (More this first quarter since I started early.) You can jump into them at any point. I hope those of you in there are enjoying them. So tonight, for the 23rd story this month, I did another Bryant Street story and for the first time in the hundred or so Bryant Street stories I have written, this is the first one that could easily be a novel and…