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Day Three: Writing a Novel in Half a Month
Chapter Three: Day Three Again another regular day so far. Last night, after I signed off here, I worked on reading a little and ended up going to bed at 4 am. Day Three, Entry One. 11:30 am. Rolled out of bed and got to this computer around 12:30 pm. Worked on emails and workshop stuff for an hour. April workshops all posted now. New workshop sale will start tomorrow. 1:30 pm. I headed down to our office and loaded 16 very heavy boxes of books into our SUV to take to the storage unit. Amazingly windy day, gusting up close to 40 mph, but sunny and clear. So with…
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Day Two: Writing a Novel in a Half Month
Chapter Two: Day Two … Standard day so far. I will keep doing the hourly breakdowns of the day as I go forward. I’m keeping little notes on a scratch pad so I remember exactly. Last night, after I signed up, I worked on reading Cave Creek stories for about an hour before at 3 am going to watch some television. Ended up getting to bed around 3:30 am. Day Two, Entry One. 11:30 am. Rolled out of bed and got to this computer around 12:30 pm with my breakfast protein bar. That is pretty standard for me these days unless something strange is going on. I spent one hour…
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Writing In Public…
Prologue Decided to do it. Write a novel in public again, detailing it out in blog posts every night. Totally insane, but great fun, which is why I am doing this. The last few days were interesting. The more I looked at the next ten to twelve days, and looked at deadlines, and publishing and other writing projects I will be doing, the more I realized how much I had to do. So the sane thing would be to just push off trying to do a novel quickly and in public. I’ve failed a number of times trying this because of scheduling issues the first year I was here in…
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Smith’s Monthly #46 Out Tomorrow
In Theory… That means that I will have gotten two months out in a row, and already working on Smith’s Monthly #47 layout (March issue) and putting #48 together (April issue). As I do covers for short stories, I’ll post them here. But I have a desire to do a novel quickly, so I may do one of those books that I talk about the writing moment-by-moment each day for 10 days. The reason I got onto this idea was way back (years and years ago) I did that here, put all the blogs together into a book called Writing a Novel in Ten Days. Well, that book is in…
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Downside of Being Disorganized…
Just Because I Like to Write… Yup, me and Heinlein’s 4th Rule have a sort of love/hate relationship. As I have said often, I have no idea how many short stories I have written. Number ranges from 400 and up. Maybe way up. Over 200 have been published in Smith’s Monthly alone. So while putting the next issue of Smith’s Monthly together, I had a story manuscript in paper, but could not find the file anywhere. So a few days later I had my writing computer basically give up the ghost (lost nothing but the mouse said “Nope” and I tried three different alternatives and all of them said, “Nope.”),…
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Holy Smokes!!! Was That Fun!!!
And a Lot of Work… Tonight, for the last three hours straight, without a break, I have been doing a master class in putting collections together. That’s right, tonight I finished up putting sixty of my science fiction stories into six volumes. Kris had already done hers and she had already divided her stories up into the six volumes and sort of labeled then with a rough idea header that she used. But as those of you who watched the video on the Kickstarter can tell, Kris’s idea of a rough header and mine do not often match in thinking. But I did the best I could since she got…
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Herding Cats (Writers)
Totally Insane… I have learned this lesson now over 15 years of trying to help writers with workshops and other projects. And I learned the lesson way before that, back in the late 1980s as an editor. The lesson? Writers as a class are pathologically incapable of following even the simplest instruction. When it comes to writers, I do try to be clear as much as I can. The other day I talked here about manuscript format and just a surface reason for it in fiction. I even went so far as to give a link. Made little to no difference even on manuscripts I am getting for classes since…
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Formatting Meets Craft
Something So Basic… A little bit back I mentioned a bunch of workshops Kris and I were thinking of offering, and almost everyone said they would like to try “Advanced Pacing.” Now, that would be really fun for me to try to explain. I knew that, but then I got a bunch of stories in that I needed to read for a workshop. And half of them didn’t know basic fiction manuscript format, even though the rules said the stories had to be sent to me in that form. All of the problem ones had put extra lines between paragraphs, making it just damn near impossible for someone like me…
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Only Hours Left in Colliding Worlds Kickstarter!
Ends Today (Thursday) at 5 pm West Coast Time! This Colliding Worlds Kickstarter campaign hit all five stretch goals, so wow are all backers going to get a lot of cool stuff. Including a sixth volume of Colliding Worlds. The extras above the reward you pick includes six books of science fiction, two Classic Workshops and two Pop-Up classes. Also this is the last few hours to get the two special science fiction writing workshops. They are only offered through this campaign. How to Write Science Fiction Short Stories. How to Write About the Vastness of Space. Both workshops are three weeks long, each cost $150, and you can write…
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Colliding Worlds Kickstarter… Only About 60 Hours Left…
Don’t Miss This One… A great deal of science fiction reading from me and Kris, special workshops (two of them you can only get through this campaign,) and a bunch of other nifty things. And if we hit the next stretch reward, the five volume set becomes six volumes of our science fiction short stories. Check it out at Colliding Worlds Kickstarter Campaign. And only a few hours left to watch the video with me and Kris talking about collaborating. We had fun. About 60 Hours Left… The old fiction technique of a ticking clock is real with this campaign. Measured now in hours left.