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My 2025 Challenge
And Back to the Format of this Blog… This blog on most nights will be in three parts for all of 2025. Part 1… PUBLISHING… First part I will talk about something in publishing or writing. More than likely finish the series on trademarks and so on. That will start tomorrow. Part 2… LEARNING… This will be all sorts of things about books or learning or workshops… For example, the 12 Holiday Days of Workshop Sales is still going. See yesterday’s blog. Great bargains to help you learn and get into the new year. Part 3… MY WRITING… Every night I will write about my writing that day, about the…
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Last Day…
Tomorrow This Blog Goes Back to Normal… And tomorrow I will finally announce my challenge here that I am going to attempt for 2025. I think I have all the parts worked out, so should be interesting. And this blog will go back to having three parts. But for right now one really great last day on the 12 Days of Holiday Workshop Sale. The Everything Subscription at half price. That covers everything that is on WMG Teachable and everything that is coming into the future. Might be the best year-end gift for your writing you can do not only for this year but for years to come. Twelve Days…
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It All Started With Workshops
We Called Everything a Workshop… At least in the beginning. And we tried to fit everything we decided to try to teach into the workshop format for the first number of years of online classes. But that slowly became clear it would not work, so we came up with lectures, and then Pop-Ups, and then general classes of all kinds and shapes. Every month we do regular workshops, the ones we consider to be the core classes every writer needs. Those regular monthly workshops are six weeks long, have five assignments, and about 40 videos total each. When a workshop loses attention, but we still feel it is important knowledge…
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Wow! Have We Done a Lot…
I Swore I Wouldn’t Do Online Classes… Not kidding. I swore I wouldn’t do them. Back before there was anything like Teachable, I was pushed into doing one online class one fall by a group of writers, encouraged by my wife. I swore it would only be one. I honestly did. Kris and I laid out the class and I presented it. Had to create a web site that acted very much like Teachable for the first few years. Then since we had decided for the moment to not do any more in-person classes, I did a few more over that first year. (We brought the in-person classes back at…
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Looking Forward…
Monday Morning Classes… Over the years we have done numbers of Monday morning classes, where every Monday morning four new videos appear on a certain topic. For 2025 we are doing PUBLISHING MONDAY and BITE-SIZED BRANDING AND TRADEMARK. Both should be great fun, 52 weeks of four videos per week per class, and they are available as the 4th item on the 12 Days sale list for 50% off. (No homework or assignments, just learning every week.) In 2023, we did a very future-looking Monday morning class called THE DECADE AHEAD, talking each week on how to focus out ten years with your writing and publishing. And just today I…
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I Am Making Progress On My Challenge Preparation
Actually, A Lot of Progress Today… I even did a couple of Smith Monthly Covers!! Still not sure about some of the tiny detail stuff, but covers look very possible and a lot of fun. Yay! I also did some of that basic stuff like used a few exterior hard drives to make sure everything was backed up. Amazing how many files I have with my fiction since my first computer days. And got two computers down on my office desk in WMG and ready to get set up. Those coming to the January Space Opera here in Vegas in mid-January will get to see all that sort of thing…
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More Challenges for the New Year…
Our Regular Four Challenges Enter the 2025 Holiday Sale… For years now we have had four challenges that writers can jump into at any point during the year and start at any time. — THE GREAT CHALLENGE which is to write and send to me one short story a week. — THE GREAT PUBLISHING CHALLENGE which is to publish one major thing a month. (Collection, novella, or novel.) — THE GREAT NOVELLA CHALLENGE which is to write a new novella every month. — THE GREAT NOVEL CHALLENGE which is to write a new novel every two months. Very few people have tried the novel challenge and only a couple of…
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Talking About Advanced Craft….
So Much To Learn and It Never Ends with Craft.. I am always calling very advanced and successful writers “Stage Four” writers because they do things in craft and storytelling to hold readers. And readers never see what the writer is doing and most middle stage writers can’t see it either. Sort of like watching a chess master when you “play” chess. You know the pieces and how they are supposed to move, but you can’t see what the chess master is doing. So a few years back Kris and I put together 18 Advanced Craft Workshops. They are nine weeks long each. We did six in 2023, six more…
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Discussion About Publishing…
So Much To Learn and Do… Indie publishing just eems overwhelming, I know that for a fact. I am going to be doing a lot of my own layouts and publishing on my challenge in this coming year (I will announce what I am doing with the challenge after Christmas as I ramp up.) And I am trying not to panic. Failing at times. So I have really been giving a hard look at all the details now involved with publishing and sales. And slowly realizing I need to figure out a way to organize all that I am learning and have learned to keep the panic down to a…
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Interesting Copyright and Workshop Fun!
Copyright Notice… Kris and I went to see Wicked (part one) tonight. Great movie and I am a fan of L. Frank Baum’s work in all manner. I have read all 14 of the original OZ books, some numbers of time, and most of his short stories. At one point before my house fire, I even had 12 of the original hardback with dust editions with the fantastic (Denslow and Neill) art. So I am sitting watching the credits tonight and made note of the credit given to the author of the derivative novel, Gregory Maguire. But unless I missed it, not one credit to the original Baum source material…