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It Was A Monday
So To Hit My Streak… I am only putting up the listings of the January regular workshops that are starting tomorrow and Wednesday. And those signed up for the How to Write a Holiday Story in January from the Holiday Spectacular Kickstarter, it is also starting tomorrow, so don’t forget that. Here is a list of the workshops: The regular workshops last six weeks and are $300. Some good workshops this month. And Writing Romance is brand new. Class #1… Jan 7th … WRITING ROMANCEClass #4… Jan 7th … Writing into the DarkClass #5… Jan 7th … Writing Sales CopyClass #6… Jan 8th … Depth in WritingClass #7… Jan 8th…
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Lost Five Challenge Writers
Five Short-Story-Per-Week Writers… They didn’t make it through the holiday season. And actually, that is fewer than I would have expected to lose. Middle of the winter, flu and cold season, holiday, travel, and who knows what else. A ton of reasons to not complete a story in a week, or even think about writing for a few weeks. And this year, with the holidays smack in the middle of the week so none of us had a clue if it was Monday, Tuesday, Friday, or what? Sunday deadline just seemed alien to many, me included. And what was amazing is that all five writers that dropped out over the…
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January Workshops Starting
Romance Workshop and Others… On January 7th and 8th, the regular workshops for January are starting. And that includes the brand new How to Write Romance workshop. Besides the Lifetime Workshop Subscribers who can take a workshop when they like, only one person has signed up for the Romance workshop. But I am still going to record it and have fun doing so. I want to work through it myself, to be honest, to nail down some points for my own writing. Plus a number of the Lifetime Workshop Subscribers have said they are interested, so will do it for them as well. The regular workshops last six weeks and…
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Six Decades
Now I Officially Feel Old… Thanks to the great writer Mel Odom, who pointed out on a post that he will have published in five decades when his new book comes out later this month, I was forced to do the same calculation. Sigh… When my next book (a large collection of 33 stories) is published on January 15th, I will have been published in six decades. I think I have that count right. 1 — Published my first short stories in 1974, and forty or fifty poems to literary magazines, so that counts the 1970s. 2 — Published a ton of stories and my first novel in 1988. 3…
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Book Birth Day
Kris Did An Awesome Post… And an important one. In fact, she and I have been thinking this way for a long time, just having a name for it now is really, really helpful in the attitude change that is required for this new world of writing. And as Kris does so well, she explained this attitude shift perfectly. So go read her post. You can find it at Book Birth Day. Might be a piece of advice that will save your career if you have been locked into the launch mentality of old publishing. Time to crawl out of the last century if you are and join 2020. Books…
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First Day New Year
A Good One Here… Actually, we started the day off watching the fantastic fireworks over the Strip here in Vegas. Nice night, not too cold, great fun. This this morning we were out toward Summerlin in a park, running a 5K charity run. We ran in the same park on New Year’s Eve in the early evening. So two runs in about 18 hours. I did fine on the first one, but I have a hip injury that slowed me down on the second one this morning. But I made it just fine. Slow, but fine. Now to give the injury a few days to heal before running again. However,…
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A Tough Week…
For Writing Streaks and Challenges. Amazing how such a good time of the year can be so tough on writing. After all, it is the holiday season full of fun and family and travel. And that’s the problem… it’s the holiday season full of fun and family and travel. More streaks and challenges break in this last week before Christmas than any other time of the year. But thankfully, next week is the start of a new year and challenges and streaks can be fired back up then for the long winter. After forty years in this business, I have observed general times of the year where writing comes easy…
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Great Challenges
Lost Three This Week… Two writers from the Short Story Great Challenge and one from the Novel Great Challenge. And that is no surprise, considering the holiday stuff. In fact, to me, honestly, it is more of a surprise that more didn’t drop this week. And this next week will be brutal for many as well. However, the two in the short story workshop both had done over 26 stories in a row, so both of them got $900 in workshop credit. And over 26 new stories to market, use for promotion, get up indie. Total win! 26 short stories is more stories than most writers write in years. So…
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All Focus On The New Year
Everything Kris and I Are Doing is Focused on 2020 and Beyond… That focus on the new year seems to be taking up a ton of our time and effort over the last week. Tonight, on occasion, I heard swearing coming from Kris’s office because she was focusing on putting her calendar system for 2020 together. It is extensive. And complex. And she has been doing it for all of the thirty-plus years I have known her. And I really appreciate that she does the organization because, to be honest, I depend on her a lot to tell me when we are scheduled to do something here in Vegas. That…
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Friday Night… No Questions
The Decade Ahead Class for 2020… Got no questions today. Guess I got it moderately clear. I think it might be the best class we have ever tried to teach. Going to be fun, that’s for sure, with lots of videos every month, some assignments, and a special Pop-Up included as extra every quarter. So with new videos in the Shared Worlds class (more coming late next week) and assignments there all answered, and since I will be reading but not responding to Challenge stories until after Christmas, I will now go to bed early. Why? Because I have to be up in about six hours to go on a…