Day Three of the Challenge

Stunningly Simple and Yet Difficult to Understand…

You become a trademark owner as soon as you start using your trademark with your goods or services. You establish rights in your trademark by using it.

Here is what I think is the problem with fiction writers with both copyright and trademark. Fiction writers have no issue making stuff up. Yet when it comes to putting a value on what they made up, even if readers or editors buy it, that product has no value to them.

And writers purposely stick their fingers in their ears and hum the Star Spangled Banner when you try to talk with them about the value of a copyright. Or the value of a brand. God forbid you mention trademark.

Yet those three things are how fiction writers, especially in 2025 make money. We license copyright, brands, and trademark. We never sell anything.

As Kris and I talk about the Publishing Monday and the Bite-Sized Branding and Trademark classes, this topic is front and center. How to make this understandable to writers with fingers in their ears? Well, with luck, the writers taking those two classes will remove their fingers long enough for Kris and I to get some concepts across.

We are certainly going to try.

Learning and Such…

The codes for the 12 Day Holiday Sale are still active and will be until Monday, so just a few more days. See my post from last Sunday for the full 12 things being offered. And speaking of branding, two classes for 2025, both giving out videos every Monday morning for the entire year. One is called PUBLISHING MONDAY and the other is called BITE-SIZED BRANDING AND TRADEMARK. Both are still half price in the 12 Day Holiday sale.

Just mentioned those above…

Day Three… Short Story Challenge…

Day three was different yet again. Today I didn’t get started on a story until 12:30 am. I knew this would happen at times, did not expect it this early in the challenge.

Got a full night’s sleep, crawled out of bed in time to go to walk to the writer lunch. Back at 3:30 and did the Writer Direct webinar on the WMG Writer Store until 5. That is totally fun and open to anyone for a small subscription per month. Every Friday from 4 to 5.

Then Kris and I took down our Christmas trees and decorations and got them all packed up and in the car to take to storage. Then a short nap and I cooked dinner.

Made it back up here and did a bunch of email until 9 pm. Took a walk to get doughnuts, then took another short nap, watched some television with Kris and got back up here by 12:30 am. A lot of steps, very busy day and two naps.

So I sat down at my writing computer, put in the title “Death Finds the Perfect House” (from two half-titles) and started typing.

For about three hundred words of a dead body in a laundry room of a suburban house, I thought I was writing a Bryant Street story, but then the woman looking at the body went to the kitchen and made herself a vodka and orange juice and I damn near shouted. “Mary Jo!”

Seems I was writing a Mary Jo Assassin story.

I cycled back over the 300 words to put in the right details. Got about six hundred words in and damn near fell asleep at my computer.

So downstairs I went to the kitchen for a couple of hard-boiled eggs, some Gatorade, and a five minute nap on the couch with a big orange cat. Third nap of the day.

Then back up here and by 3:30 am with one more short break, I had finished the story at a few words under 3,000 words.

Now I need to finish up a few more hundred words on an editing project, so by the time the day is done I will be around 4,000 words consumable. A ton of email but that does not count.

So word count for the first three days of the challenge of consumable words is about 12,500. If maintained this pace will be about 1.5 million words this year. Let’s see what happens. Onward.