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More Challenges for the New Year…
Our Regular Four Challenges Enter the 2025 Holiday Sale… For years now we have had four challenges that writers can jump into at any point during the year and start at any time. — THE GREAT CHALLENGE which is to write and send to me one short story a week. — THE GREAT PUBLISHING CHALLENGE which is to publish one major thing a month. (Collection, novella, or novel.) — THE GREAT NOVELLA CHALLENGE which is to write a new novella every month. — THE GREAT NOVEL CHALLENGE which is to write a new novel every two months. Very few people have tried the novel challenge and only a couple of…
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Talking About Advanced Craft….
So Much To Learn and It Never Ends with Craft.. I am always calling very advanced and successful writers “Stage Four” writers because they do things in craft and storytelling to hold readers. And readers never see what the writer is doing and most middle stage writers can’t see it either. Sort of like watching a chess master when you “play” chess. You know the pieces and how they are supposed to move, but you can’t see what the chess master is doing. So a few years back Kris and I put together 18 Advanced Craft Workshops. They are nine weeks long each. We did six in 2023, six more…
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Fail to Success…
Got A Number of Questions About That Statement… Fail to Success… Most writers, when they set a goal like a page count daily goal, or a number of products finished, get stuck on the number and if they do not hit their goal number start repeating to themselves that they have failed. Horrid thing to do to yourself. Just horrid and very negative and leads to all kinds of other problems. I do exactly the opposite. I tend to set goals that are product-finished driven. Number of stories, number of novels, books published and so on. I do not get into what will be in the stories or content or…
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Deciding on a Challenge
Setting Writing Goals for the New Year… I have noticed this year that I seem to be very shell-shocked, for lack of a better way of putting it, when it comes to setting a goal for 2025. Never remember having this issue before. I am not afraid of failing with a challenge. I always fail to success with every challenge, and failing is a part of publishing. Just nature of the beast. So no worry there when setting a goal. But these last two years have been brutal in life events for me. First I lost vision and only regained a part of it, then I smashed up my shoulder…
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The Power of a Streak…
I Get Reminded of Streak Power At Times… Especially on a Friday night, after a stupidly difficult week. Why? Because I have a streak of blogging every night. And wow does this streak have power. No chance on the planet would I be at this computer tonight without this streak. But tonight is day 3,920 WITHOUT MISSING A DAY… That is flat nuts, But here I am. And sometime in March if my math is correct, if the streak does not get broken, I will pass 4,000 days without missing. Internet outage before hot spots, dozens and dozens of power outages, crashed computers, me in the hospital twice. Never missed.…
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A BUNCH OF STUFF…
Trying Something Old/New Tomorrow, if the schedule allows, I am headed with a friend to hit a few golf balls. Now understand, way back in time I used to be a PGA professional and I could play pretty well for the time. But for the last number of years, I have not hit a golf ball and am not sure if I can. Why? Lost a lot of my vision two years back. Last year I smashed up my shoulder and it is now titanium. Plus with the injury I gained about twenty pounds around my middle that I have not been able to shed yet. Plus I am 74.…
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FOCUSING FORWARD…
Watching the Old Magnum Television Series… It was filmed in the eighties. We are watching it not to study anything, but to shut down and enjoy the entertainment, even though sometimes dated. Still fun. The one we watched tonight was about the internment camps of Japanese Americans on the islands. It happened 40 years before the show was aired and they kept talking about those 40 years. The show aired 40 years ago now. So interesting to think about the 80 years. 40 years ago Kris and I had not met yet (a couple of years from meeting, actually). We were both writing like crazy, but both of us were…
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HISTORY BROUGHT FORWARD…
Back in the Day… And I do mean “back in the day” when Kris and I were going to a lot of science fiction conventions (1990-1998 or so), we got asked to do a live talk on publishing. Sounded fine, even though were were two new writers, we decided to talk about what we knew about the publishing business (which was a ton because I was the publisher of Pulphouse Publishing and she was not only the senior editor, but also the editor of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.) We were also selling novels like crazy and were in and out of of New York publishing offices all…
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A Few Great Questions Today…
First A Question on Priorities… The question boiled down to this… “What is more important? Writing, Learning, Reading, Publishing?” Great question, and I honestly had to stop and stare at it for a moment because in the publishing world of 2024, all of those are important. There needs to be a balance of feeding them all regularly. But writers tend to get into trouble over time when they drop one or two. “I don’t have time to study another author’s book or to take a class or worse yet, I don’t need it right now.” So learning gets left out and the writer goes stale and dull in time. “I…
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I Have Been Lucky…
Yes, Even With Everything Going On… I consider myself amazingly lucky that somehow I have been able to continue in this profession of fiction writing now for fifty years. I mark that fifty from selling my first short story. For going on thirty-nine of those years, I have been super lucky to have Kristine Kathryn Rusch as my partner. We met when we had both sold a few short stories and just kept on going through all the ups and downs. There have been some amazing ups I can tell you, but also some stunning downs. We just keep on going, enjoying the storytelling and the publishing and our friends…