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Four Challenges Now
They Are Designed to Help and Be Fun… On WMG Teachable, you can find four challenges now. The Great Challenge… Write one short story a week for one year. The Novel Challenge… Write one new novel over 30,000 words every two months for one year. The Novella Challenge… Write one novella (15,000 to 30,000) words per month for one year. The Publishing Challenge… Publish one new major project per month for one year. (Novel, novella, collection, or omnibus all count.) The cost is $600 to buy in ($300 during the sale this next week). You start at any time, but once you start, the clock is ticking. If you miss,…
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Writing and Workshops and Smith’s Monthly
Scary Busy Day… I finished getting an issue of Smith’s Monthly to WMG publishing for copyediting. Then in a few days I will need to lay it out. I wrote a good 2,000 words in introductions and stuff for the issue. Also had an hour-plus meeting with WMG on different stuff. I also did a ton of workshop stuff today. And a lot of assignments. (I don’t count all those words and letters in my total.) And tonight I wrote a 3,000 word Thunder Mountain short story called “Yesterday’s Cold Grave.” So wow are my eyes tired and I need to keep this blog short. So just going to tell…
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MidWinter Workshop Sale Starts Now!!!
Blogging Early Tonight… Wanted to let everyone know about the sale starting now. Go to https://wmg-publishing-workshops-and-lectures.teachable.com/ Then hit “See All Courses” and find the course you want. It will be half price by hitting Purchase and then on the top of the next page put in the coupon code: MidWinter That will get you the class, the workshops, the lecture, or Pop-Up at half price. And you can buy as many as you want, but you have to do it one at a time since Teachable does not have a shopping cart. The MidWinter sale will last until Thursday, February 24th at 7 pm. In essence ten days. And yes,…
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Didn’t Run… Slept!
Kris and I Both Slept In… We figured we needed the sleep more than we needed the three miles. And boy were we right. And I took another hour plus nap later before finally feeling rested. Don’t buy any workshops tonight or in the morning until I give the go-ahead. We have decided to do a Mid-Winter sale. (Actually the code will be MidWinter to get half price.) That said, when the sale starts, I do have all the March workshops up, including the new one SECRETS IN CRAFT. It is a craft workshop talking about the secrets of writing better fiction. Might be one of the best craft workshops…
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Patreon Updates
Smith’s Monthly #57 and 3 Raw Stories… Got those on Patreon. If you want to really see what Smith’s Monthly looks like, read the pdf version. You get to see it completely. And the last five pages with all the covers of all 57 issues is pretty stunning. But for those of you at the $5 level on Patreon and above, I put up both the Bookfunnel link and the pdf of Smith’s #57, the January issue. Also put up three more raw short stories from the challenge. What is slowing me down is the covers, of course. I did those three in an hour, but I got to find…
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Deductions
Paying Attention to Your Taxes? If, in the best world (which I must admit almost no writers live in), you would have already figured your income for 2021 from your writing and the expenses you can take that income down to make sure you don’t pay taxes. Yeah, and cows can fly. But that is the right way to do it, and honestly, except for 2020, I come close each year to knowing exactly what WMG Publishing made and our tax situation by the last week of the month. I don’t have it to the penny, but I know. (Let’s just say that 2020 surprised me on the income to…
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I Think I Am Ready…
…To Start My Challenge… For those of you new here or not following my trying to make a decision on a new challenge for 2022 all those weeks ago, here is what I decided to do in shorthand. — I will write a new short story per day every day of the year in 2022. — I will blog at least once a week, maybe twice a week about the stories being written and the days of writing. — I will do a cover for every short story as I go along and show it to you. — Each month the stories and the blogs and the covers will be…
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January and February Workshops
Includes New Pulp Speed Workshop… And yes, the Pulp Speed Workshop has been included in the Lifetime Workshop Subscription and no, if you have a lifetime subscription, you do not have to tell me you are going to take it. I’ll know when you turn in the first assignment. The Pulp Speed workshop starts February 2nd. The idea is to help you increase your productivity with your fiction so that you work towards Pulp Speed One (a million words a year). Even if you don’t want to get that far, this class will help in increasing productivity. And yes, Allyson and Kris convinced me. We will have a year-end sale starting…
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Getting Set Up for 2022
Cleaning Up a Desk Cluttered with Yellow Notes and Legal Pads… Amazing how many notes I have on this desk around my internet computer. And I am working to clear those off. For example, I found a note about Motivational Monday idea and then a legal pad where Kris and I worked out the details and the first few videos. Tossed away the note, took the details and transferred them to a notebook where I will actually be keeping track of what videos I have done every Monday and when. I will do it that way for a time, then will transfer that to a spreadsheet at some point. Remember,…
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MOTIVATIONAL MONDAY
We Finally Pulled the Trigger… Motivational Mondays have been launched on Teachable and our now live. Kris and I have been talking and planning this for some time and we think it’s going to be great fun and very valuable for those getting it. Here is how it works: Every Monday on Teachable (actually Sunday night late so you can view them on Monday morning), Kris and I will put up at least three videos on some motivational topic or another concerning writing, publishing, and all the stuff around writing and publishing. See the partial list below of topics. The idea is to help writers stay on track, get unstuck,…