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Topic of the Night: Making a Living Writing Short Fiction
Can You Make a Living Writing Only Short Fiction? Every year or so I look at this topic once again, do the math, see if anything has changed over the last couple of years. And now, here in May 2016, things have changed some, but in my opinion it would still be possible to make a decent living writing only short fiction. Why do I like this topic? Actually, because I love short fiction, meaning any story under around 10,000 words. I love reading it and I love writing it. And doing this exercise is fun for me, even though no one will ever follow this path. Besides, I am…
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Topic of the Night: A New Online Workshop: Teams in Fiction
Kris and I have decided, once again, to tackle a really, really important area of fiction, but one we believe most writers flat don’t understand or even realize exists. Teams in Fiction Basically, when Lester Dent (under a pen name) invented Doc Savage, he broke an old fiction tradition of one character and a sidekick. With Doc Savage, he created five team members that worked around Doc and by doing so set the template for all modern fiction. Think about your favorite shows. NCIS, the number one show on television, has Gibbs in the middle and his team around him. Captain Kirk and his team. Luke and his team in Star…
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Thirty Fantastic Years
THIRTY FANTASTIC YEARS Thirty years ago today I pulled into a driveway at an address in Albuquerque, New Mexico that Algis Budrys had sent me to. As I walked in the door, I met Kristine Kathryn Rusch and we have been together ever since. We had a wonderful day today just having fun and talking about thirty years and about years to come. I can’t even begin to imagine where I would have ended up if not for AJ sending me to that address. Certainly not here doing this. More than likely I would no longer be writing and would have just ended up working a golf course counter and…
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Had Fun Working in Our New Bookstore
Fun Working in Our New Bookstore Yeah, that’s right, WMG Publishing will, in short order, be the owner of a brick and mortar bookstore. It’s a large area inside of the new Pop Culture Collectables store. Actually one third of the entire store is paperbacks, hardbacks, sf and mystery digests, and magazines. Another third of the store is a comic book store. Wait until you see the wall of comics. I’ll do pictures. And in the comic book room will be die cast cars as well. And larger cars. And the main room is toys, non-sports cards, cookie jars, sports collectables, jewelry, and collectable boxes and clocks. We also have in…
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Topic of the Night: Blaming the Reader
Topic of the Night: Blaming the Reader I got a letter from a very angry person about how his books weren’t selling at all and it was all because readers were too stupid and couldn’t find his books in all the crap on Amazon. Now normally, I just laugh and delete letters like that as hopeless. With this person, I should have done that, but instead I wrote him back a letter basically saying that the readers were never at fault, more than likely it was his covers or blurbs or writing. He might not like what I would say, but I offered to look at them if he sent a link.…
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Topic of the Night: Three Types of Thinking
Topic of the Night: Three Types of Thinking More than likely this will be a topic I’ll talk about regularly in numbers of ways. But for tonight, what got my focus on this was a comment made by the Passive Guy on a post he put up from Kris. (Scroll down to Kris’s post, his comment is under hers.) He said, “Under current contract practices, the author is the only person who has to think in the long term while everyone else in the publishing business is focused on the short term.” Wow, is that the truth. In so many ways. And so few writers focus on long term in business. In fact, my…
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Topic of the Night: Help Getting Through the Time of Great Forgetting
Help Getting Through the Time of Great Forgetting Every year now for the last three or four years I have talked about something I notice with beginning and early-career writers. It happens like this: Writers are all excited at the first of the year, make resolutions, plans, challenges. All great with great intentions for their coming year of writing and production. And for months, things are working great. Somewhere around the last of April to the first of June, life from the outside starts to intrude and the writing takes a back seat, slowly, over weeks or a month. And then the writing is forgotten for the most part, or…
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Clean Copy
Clean Copy Tonight I was running through The Idanha Hotel to put in the corrections Kris had found on her read, at least the ones I agreed with. That was the book I wrote in seven days last week, remember? Well, this time through I agreed with all of her corrections, mostly just typos, and what was even more interesting, this was the cleanest manuscript I have had in a very long time. I normally do clean copy in my one draft, but this was noticeably cleaner. Kris only found about one typo every six or seven manuscript pages, and sometimes there would be no typos in numbers of chapters.…
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Topic of the Night: The Blog That Destroyed An Art Form
The Blog That Destroyed an Art Form I got a great comment from a guy this morning. I didn’t put it through because the guy called me some pretty good names. *ss*ole was only one of them. One word I had never been called before. Creative. But he said he had liked my writing. (I think the operative word there is “had.”) So why was he so angry? And why did I damn near fall out of my chair laughing at this angry post with a bunch of swear words aimed at me? (Not the reaction he was hoping for I am sure.) Because he said, basically, that with my…
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Topic of the Night: Writing a Novel in Seven Days: Epilogue
WRITING A NOVEL IN SEVEN DAYS Epilogue The Challenge Was Simple. Day One: 3,000 words. And then each day after that add 1,000 words to the amount needed. Seven days, if my math is right, I will have a 42,000 word novel. 3,000… 4,000… 5,000… 6,000… 7,000… 8,000… 9,000 words. 7 Days. Looking Back The Writing of The Idanha Hotel: A Thunder Mountain Novel Day 1… 3,700 words. Total words so far… 3,700 words. Day 2… 5,100 words. Total words so far… 8,800 words. Day 3… 5,600 words. Total words so far… 14,400 words. Day 4… 6,050 words. Total words so far… 20,450 words. Day 5… 7,500 words. Total words so far……