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Too Much Time Researching/Playing
Doing Research Is Play… At least it is for me and most other writers who get sucked down into researching fun stuff. Fun for us that is. (grin) The key is you can’t do it and not write. For me, tonight I was searching for information about the Hotel Nevada on Main Street in Las Vegas. It has been shuttered for a lot of years now and is owned by the Golden Nugget. (Tough search because of the name.) It sits right beside the Nugget parking garage for those who have been here. You never notice it because it has been painted to look like the Nugget. So I wasted…
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Challenge Is On (Again)
Here Are The Rules of My Challenge… Some of you might remember I wanted to do 10 books in 100 days. And I set that challenge in September in an effort to ramp back up my writing after finally getting moved to Las Vegas. Total failure to even start. Reset again in late October, failure again. Lots of talk with Kris. Lots of puzzlement as to why I couldn’t make the time to write. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. I did. Just turned out each day I didn’t for a host of reasons. About that point in late November I realized the problem and how deep it was.…
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Depth As Hearing
Kris and I Had a Great Discussion About Depth Today… All because I was getting fitted with nifty, programmed hearing aides. Why that discussion? Because for the first time in a long time, maybe decades, I could hear certain things. Things I didn’t even know I wasn’t hearing. And that lead to the discussion about depth in writing in all its forms. Some writers had trouble with it in this last workshop and that was because they didn’t even know they were missing it. I didn’t know I was missing sounds. I just knew I had trouble hearing at times, not that a massive range of sounds were not available…
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I’m Back But Behind
Well, Brain Isn’t Totally Back… I will be caught up over the next day or so on all email and stuff. Then on Friday and Saturday the workshop stuff will go out to the Kickstarter folks. I had hoped to have it out before the Anthology Workshop, but that didn’t happen with all the reading. And tomorrow I actually get to start hearing again. Picking up and getting trained on nifty, modern hearing aides. (Never had them before.) Loud sounds (mostly music in bars) killed a lot of my hearing (yes, I have gone through lots of tests) when I was younger. Luckily it was just that and age and…
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Last Day of the Anthology Workshop
I Have Had a Blast… And for those who have been wondering, my novel-writing challenge will start for me on Thursday to write five novels in 100 days. That is the first leg of the challenge. Second leg is to write seven novels in 100 days. Third leg is the last 100 days of the year I will attempt to write 10 novels in 100 days. So the challenge ramp-up starts on Thursday. I am so looking forward to it and so ready. Not a clue what I will be writing, but got a hunch it will be a Cold Poker Gang since I have a title eating at me…
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March Is Here! What Happened?
Where Did January and February Go? Wow, the anthology workshop is almost over and the March Regular Online workshops are starting up Tuesday and Wednesday. And the Future: Structure starts on Wednesday, the 6th. You can take the other two Futures Workshops at any point since they are both still there and available. Sign up for any of them including the regular March workshops listed below on Teachable here. Or if you have a workshop credit you would like to use, write me and tell me which one you want to be in. March Six-Week Regular Workshops… Class #21… Mar 5th … Depth #3: Research Class #22… Mar 5th … Author Voice…
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Kris’s Blog On Writing With Chronic Sickness
Actually, It Will Be An Entire Book… But on her blog right now you can read one chapter of the book that will be out in April. I have read the entire book, all the different parts, and I think it will do more than help writers, but help anyone who is struggling with trying to find a way through life with chronic illness, as Kris has done. And she gives you a little bit of a hint of what it was like for her and how frightening it was last year at this point. A lot of us were not sure she would make it through last winter. Yet…
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Future’s Series of Workshops
Recording the Start of the Third One… That’s right, done one futures workshop on keeping your inventory selling, another on opportunities, and this third one is on having a structure that will maintain into the future. There will be one more futures workshop coming. Kris and I think these might be the most important workshops we have done, trying to fill them with all the stuff we wished someone would have told us thirty years ago. Future: Structure starts on Wednesday, the 6th. You can take the other two at any point since they are both still there and available. Sign up for any of them including the regular March…
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The Voice Started
A Great Writer Show… I have said this for years, and I will say it again. You want to learn about what it takes to be a fiction writer, a long-term professional fiction writer, watch The Voice. It will not only have some great artist advice, but you will understand the amount of drive and sacrifice you have to give to make it in an international art. Listen to the stories, listen as the season goes on what it is taking for the artists to be there. Ask yourself if you could give up that much, push that hard, take the risks. There is also great music and fun humor.…
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Exercise and Writing
Exercise and Health… One thing I have noticed with some pleasure is that many of you have told me you are not only writing, but focusing on getting some exercise each day. That is critical in my opinion to long-term writing. So a few things about movement to think about. Get up every hour from your computer, stare off into the distance, stretch. Even before that, make sure your computer set-up is good, meaning feet flat on the floor, arms supported, eyes looking directly at the screen. Yeah, I know, laptops on couches are your thing. And spending time in doctor’s offices will be as well if you keep that…