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Challenges Both Started
And Both Still Have Some Room… You can start any time with either the novel challenge or the short story challenge. On the novel challenge, you have to tell me when to start the clock ticking for the two months. (No writing ahead, finish your current project and when you are ready to start the next book, let me know if you are in the novel challenge.) For the short story challenge, the streak starts when you turn in the first story. There are prompts on the short story challenge each week and some stuff about novel writing on the novel challenge each week. And yes, you can move from…
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Early Night
A Good Reason… Tomorrow morning, or actually in just over 7 hours, I will be crossing the starting line of a half marathon. Kris is teaching the mystery workshop, so I am going it alone. (She wouldn’t go that far anyway, even though she easily could if she wanted.) I will be run/walking. Last half marathon I did was in November the day after a nasty fall. I hope to improve my time on this one by at least thirty minutes from that one, even though I am still too heavy for real running. But got to start somewhere. Might as well start with 13 miles. (grin) See why Kris…
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Challenge Questions
As I Normally Do… I am getting questions on these new challenges. So here are some answers. — When can I start? With the short story challenge, you start when you turn in a story to me. That starts the clock ticking and each week you need to turn in a story following the instructions. Any time in the next month or so. With the novel challenge, you write me and tell me you are starting. Two months later from that date is the deadline, so you can make sure you are ready to start before you tell me, just don’t have any words written. This can be any time…
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The Great Novel Challenge
Because I Got So Many Questions… The Great Novel Challenge Starting Up For the last few years I have done quarterly challenges that many people have enjoyed. And a lot of novels or short stories have come out of those challenges that I enjoyed reading. So when we started The Great Challenge for short stories, I got a ton of questions about why not do a novel challenge as well for the novel writers. Kris and I have been talking about this one for a while. So we decided to just move it up and start it at the same point. — And yes, if you are signed up and paid…
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Costs of Creation
Crystal Ball Gazing… In one of the Futures workshops, part of an assignment was to look into their crystal balls and tell me which publishing trends they might be watching for the future. And what might develop in the future. Fun exercise and I have done it here a few times over the years. — A large number of the writers doing the assignment said they were watching AI audio. I agreed with that. Why? Because right now the costs of audio are too high. The cost of creation, in other words. And often that cost is in time rather than money. But to me time is by far my…
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A University Masters Degree in Publishing
Taught By Kevin J. Anderson… This is the first of its kind at any university and I wanted to bring this to everyone’s attention because it is so cool!! And it would be so much fun to do. And the learning would be amazing. And even better, it is something most of us could manage. Two weeks in colorado, then the rest of the year online, then two more weeks back in colorado to finish up. And the cost for a master degree is just about as cheap as it comes. A MA grad program in publishing. How flipping amazing. ——– Kevin said this about the program he created and…
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Never Give Up
Much Harder to Say Than Do… But this week at the Writers of the Future I heard a lot of fantastic stories about success because the writer just kept pounding the markets. I remember that when I started out. From 1974 until 1982, stories out, no sales. And then I started following Heinlein’s Rules and sales started. First year I sold six short stories. (One to Writers of the Future.) But I wrote 44 and had them all in the mail. All the time. If a manuscript was rejected, I sent it back out often within hours. So rejection was a way of life. I put all the rejections in…
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Challenge Still Open
I’m Home and Back At Everything in the Morning… But wanted to answer one question about The Great Challenge. You can start any time you want and you don’t have to tell me. The first prompt goes up on the 14th. But you can start when you want. How will I know you are starting? I will get a story from you. That starts the streak. I will have a list of those in the challenge and will note when you hit a week and then read your story in the middle of the week. If you miss a week after you have started, I will send you a note…
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Big Award Ceremony
That Was Tonight… Writers of the Future Awards Event… Great fun, best banquet food I have ever seen, and I signed about a billion books and had wonderful conversations. I am a judge on Writers of the Future, but this year I was asked to write a story for the fantastic cover painting Bob Eggleton did. It as a honor. And a lot of fun to talk with the winners this year. An amazing group of writers. And even more fun to talk with a lot of old friends. So it is now late, I will be back in Vegas tomorrow afternoon, so going to get some sleep so I…
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Another Fun Day
At Writers of the Future… Writers here are great, people are nice, fun discussions. A number of us closed the bar tonight. Martin Shoemaker and a few others. And I got to meet one of my favorite artists, Larry Elmore. He and I ended up hanging around together and talking about the 1960s and art and other things for a couple hours. A wonderful man and great artist. So a really fun day. Tomorrow is the ceremony and dinner and then I will be headed home. A fun few days in the craziness of Hollywood. And if you emailed me anything today, I will get to it in the morning.…