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Quick Blog
Web Site Acting Whacky… So going to post this quick to keep my streak alive in case something goes wrong. Plus I am late tonight. I got late because I finished a short story after all the assignments from the workshops. Then I spent a couple hours on the Cave Creek novel. So good progress on writing today, and I spent a bunch of hours down in our office working on getting stuff in order down there while we had cleaners up here. And a couple hours out looking for supplies to use for my marble collection display and sorting. Found some. Busy day. Productive. And Kris and I watched…
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Some Updates
On Different Streaks, Challenges, and Exercise… — Today is 3,084 straight days I have done a blog a day here without missing. Yup, that’s nuts. — I am slowly ramping back up my exercise, gaining a little bit more a week on a walking streak. I let myself relax and not push after the marathon because I wanted to just not think about it over the holidays. So going to take me another month or so to get the steps back up to pre-marathon levels. And maybe two months to drop the weight down to marathon level and then keep it going down. So all fine there. — I’m a…
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Stay Organized…
In Other Words, Do As I Say, Not As I Have Done… Spent more hours tonight than I care to think about getting organized from at least three or more years of not being organized, just writing. Yes, I am reverting to a spread sheet for some stuff, and file folders to gather up story files. But trust me, when you get upward of a hundred short stories that are not tracked or in any kind of order, and you are writing as much as I am, it is time to organize. Don’t wait until then. Too stupid for words. And even more annoying, I found at least five, maybe…
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My Novel…
Never Sure What That Means… I do know that if a writer is constantly referring to their novel in those terms, the chances are they have made that book so important, it will take a very, very long time to finish, if ever. You never hear a professional writer talking like that, in those terms. They might say my current project, or my current book, or something along that way. But “my novel,” never hear it. And when I do hear some beginning writer say that, my first response is to ask, “Which one?” But alas, that would be rude because EVERYONE around them should know about THEIR NOVEL, don’t…
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The Problem of a Writing Rut…
Especially with Short Stories… I am not talking about writing short stories themselves. I am talking about a topic rut. Honestly, never noticed this before now. I can get writing on novels and stay in the same topic for one or two novels before needing to break free and write something else. No issue. With novels could always tell when I was burning out on a topic or series. I come back to topics and subjects all the time over years of time. No issue there either. But had an interesting, if not short-term thing happen tonight. I didn’t want to write another cat story. I was burnt out on…
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Four Days Left On Workshop Sale
Ends on Thursday at 5pm West Coast Time… Everything on WMG Publishing Teachable site is half price. Just put in the code Resolution. In case you missed it, here is the full first post about the sale and why we are doing this… Covid in Getting Worse… I honestly never would have predicted this last spring. Not in a million years. But at least now we have some hope on the horizon with the vaccines going out. But they won’t do much good especially over the coming months. Back when WMG Publishing did what we all thought here would be the last workshop sale in May, we had an expectation…
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Story #1 of Challenge
I Promise I Won’t Do This Every Day… But for the first story, I figured it was worth mentioning. And more than likely I’ll talk about the challenge once a week or so as it is going on. And post small thumbnails of covers. So for story #1 I wrote a story I needed to write for the Year of the Cat #11. It is called “Cat Running Wild” and it is a Pahket Jones story, who is a spin-off of my Poker Boy and Ghost of a Chance series. I have done 7 Pahket Jones stories so far. She is a superhero in the world of cats. Story was…
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Math is the Friend of Prolific…
And the Enemy of Excuses… Writers who want to hold dearly to the myths of writing must stay away from math. Math can be super deadly to writer’s fears and myths and beliefs. Math, after all, is just numbers. So let me point out where this is glaringly clear in a simple example. You write 250 words of fiction a day, shorter than many of your emails. Most writers can do that in 15 minutes or less. So you do that every day, you manage to make your writing important enough in your life that you carve out 15 minutes a day to do it. 250 words x 365 days…
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New Year Starting…
Writing This Safely From Home…. …On New Year’s Eve, after midnight. 2020 has left the building. 2021 shows ugliness to start and promise over time. So thought I would talk about the writing challenge I am going to set for myself and some thoughts on how you could ramp up a writing challenge in the New Year. Here is how I would suggest you come at doing a writing challenge in 2021. Decide where you want to be at the end of 2021 with your writing. Some people use word count, I use project or story counts, but I do track words just for fun as well. On good years…
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Workshop Order and Breakdown…
Workshop Curriculum 1/1/2021 I went through these back about four months ago, so with the sale going on now, I thought I would do it again so everything is clear. Today’s post is just the workshops and I’m going to divide all of them down into areas of study. And the numbers are my suggestions on the order to take these workshops because many of them build on others. (Two types of workshops are included. Regular and Classic.) All workshops and courses can be found on Teachable. Just hit “see all courses.” To get them at half price, just use the code Resolution Pop-Ups and others will be listed later.…