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SUPER Great Challenges
Blog Early Tonight Because of Licensing Expo… Starts tomorrow morning, so I might be late a touch on a few things, but will try not to. And will give a report here and on a couple of the classes later in the week. But quickly, I want to announce what is not up yet, but will be shortly on Teachable (shortly meaning a day or so.) THE SUPER GREAT CHALLENGES… Right now we have the following challenges you can sign up for at any time… Any genre… — The Great Challenge (write a story per week and send it to me for 52 weeks.) — The Great Novella Challenge (write…
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ADVANCED MAGIC BAKERY… Chapter Two
Chapter Two… Market or No Market… You write this short story. All done. In your magic bakery you have created a magic pie. That pie has a lot of value that I will talk about in later chapters. But instead of taking the pie out of the kitchen and putting it in your store to sell to customers around the world, you just put it on a shelf in the kitchen, for some reason deciding not to market your story. Pie will not spoil. It can just sit there for years and years. But it is not making you any money, not paying you back for the time and energy…
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ADVANCED MAGIC BAKERY… CHAPTER ONE
ADVANCED MAGIC BAKERY Copyright, Trademark, and Branding in the Modern World Dean Wesley Smith Chapter One: A Magic Pie To start off with, I need to make sure this metaphor is totally clear. When you finish a story (a short story or a novella or a novel), you have created a magic pie. The pies are all the same size. The length of the work does not dictate the size of the pie in any way and I will explain that later. When a real baker makes a pie, there might be 20 different ingredients put into the mix in a certain way and baked in a certain way…
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Advanced Magic Bakery… Introduction
ADVANCED MAGIC BAKERY Copyright, Trademark, and Branding in the Modern World Dean Wesley Smith (Author Note: I am going to write this book here one chapter at a time… At some point it will also be a class on Teachable and the book will be for sale in my store.) INTRODUCTION You are a magician. You are. Trust me. And not just an illusionist. You are a real, honest-to-god magician with real magic. Although often you use the techniques of an illusionist as well. But your magic is very, very real. You create from nothing entire people, entire worlds, entire galaxies. You help people understand the feelings of loss and…
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Lots of Great Things!!!
Thank you, all… Kris and I both really appreciate the well-wishes on our anniversary. It means a lot to us. And, of course, we spent the entire day working. (grin) LAST DAY OF THE EARLY BIRD SALE For the DESIGN FOR INDIE AUTHORS classes on The WMG Writer store. Don’t delay, it drops off Monday evening and unlike how Teachable works, this sale just automatically vanishes on the store. (grin) Here is the information I posted a few days back about it… A brand new series of workshops DESIGN FOR INDIE AUTHORS on the WMG Writer Store. We just announced all three, even though we have been working on them…
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Cool Video By Steph
Explaining the New Design for Indie Authors Classes A brand new series of workshops DESIGN FOR INDIE AUTHORS on the WMG Writer Store. We just announced all three, even though we have been working on them for months and Stephanie Writt, the instructor has been getting everything in place. Check out her videos explaining the classes. Right now until Monday, we have an early bird special on these new classes. They are normally $500 each (what we always charge for nine weeks with webinar.) But until Monday you can get them for $400 each or $1,000 for all three. (The bundle for all three will be $1,200 after Monday.) Also…
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Covers, Interiors, and Kickstarter Design…
DESIGN FOR INDIE AUTHORS… A brand new series of workshops DESIGN FOR INDIE AUTHORS on the WMG Writer Store. We just announced all three, even though we have been working on them for months and Stephanie Writt, the instructor has been getting everything in place. Check out her videos explaining the classes. Book Cover Design is first up. 9 Weeks using mostly Canva to design beautiful book covers. A webinar every week and along the way Steph will be explaining everything detail by detail so even writers starting off with their first cover can follow along. (Again, this is design genius Stephanie Writt teaching all three of these.) Here is…
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Update on Challenge
STILL GOING… I have no intention of tossing in the towel on this one even though March and April were tough and I didn’t get that many stories done. My pattern over the years is that I always have troubles in March and April and then ramp back up solidly in May and while most writers are lost in The Time of Great Forgetting, I am writing at full speed or better. I’m going to need a bunch of two-story days to get back on track, and I can do that over the next five months without too much of a problem. (Got it planned out.) And my most productive…
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Negative Habits
Habits of Not Writing… Or not publishing what you write. Over the years I have talked a lot in classes and here about how it really helps to form positive habits on writing. Start a streak, do a challenge, write at the same time each day, and so on. And with the publishing coming in, I have often suggested a publishing day each week set aside only for publishing. Form a habit. But what I have noticed in myself and others lately is not writing, not publishing, is habit-forming as well. Streaks, challenges, and so on to help form positive habits are powerful, but so are the habits of not…
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Filing System Drawback…
Smith’s Monthly As A Filing System… A number of people have mentioned to me how cool that idea is to keep stories organized. And it really is. When I publish an issue. I have not published an issue since #67, which was November of 2022. Which means I have not filed anything since then. (grin) Granted, for six months of that time I was mostly blind and for another six months of that time I was recovering from surgery and most of this last year I was dealing with business issues. So yes, it has been 2 years and 4 months since I filed anything, but a lot of that…