First Day of the Challenge…
Publishing Opinions from Yesterday…
Interesting that no one agreed or disagreed or said anything about the opinions yesterday of where I think indie in 2025 will go.
But I did get a letter from a new writer asking me if my book Killing the Top 10 Sacred Cows of Publishing was still accurate.
I told him it was dated and things are much worse now for traditional publishing for fiction writers than they were when I wrote the book ten or so years ago. Much worse. Traditional publishing is a graveyard for young fiction writers and their dreams. No other way to look at it, sadly.
But this guy also told me he had tried one book with indie and it failed. No clue what that even means. No clue.
What is failing with one and only one book indie?
Well anyhow…
Learning and Such…
The codes for the 12 Day Holiday Sale are still active and will be for a few more days. See my post from Sunday for the full 12 things being offered. And getting the Lifetime Everything Subscription at half price is an amazing deal to get you learning for years and years to come.
Day One… Short Story Challenge…
As I said, I would detail out my day with each story and the writing involved.
Day One…. I did not make it easy on myself today. College football playoffs and I was cheering for three teams. Boise State last night, Arizona this morning, and Oregon this afternoon. Well, that was a waste of time.
So I got to email and stuff and Kris and I headed out to walk to lunch around 2:30. I got back to my office around 4pm or so and decided I needed to start a story.
I pulled up my template on my writing computer and a title I had put up there as a filler caught my attention, so going slowly, I wrote about six hundred words of a story called “The Files She Left Behind” which turned out to be a Thunder Mountain story which turned out to be a time travel, romance, historical, crime fiction story. That 600 word opening took me well over an hour. As I said, I was going slowly and I had to move my new shoulder into a better position and let me tell you, that can really mess up the typing.
Yup, why go easy on my first story back on the challenge? Four genres in one short story. Why not? Sigh…
I took a break to do some laundry, then wrote another 1,000 words in about an hour before going down to cook dinner around 6:30.
Back up here in my office by 8:30 pm and did another 1,00o words before taking a nap and then watching some television with Kris.
12:30 am back in the office and with one break finished and printed off the story by 3 am.
Ended up at 4,300 words. So under five hours for the first story back. I’ll take that.
Story will be up free on the 15th on my new Shopify store (not launched yet) and when I get to the 10th story I will do that collection and get it on Patreon. That is still being cleaned up, so hold on there as well.
But got the challenge off the ground! First day is always the hardest and the slowest.
Here we go. Great fun!!
(By the way, my word count today is 4,300 plus 570 for this blog plus two hundred for a book introduction, so the total of consumable words is a little over 5,000 words today. That is a 1.8 million word pace. First day. Good!)
16 Comments
Mark Kuhn
With traditional being so bad, why then don’t Patterson, Baldacci and others walk away and do indie? Or are those big names just traditional’s way of falsely showing they’re still relevant?
dwsmith
They are treated like gold and if they were not, they would walk away. Patterson has his own basically indie press inside his publisher where he has his own people doing what he wants. Trust me, the old-timers are treated like gold and no reason for them to walk, even though Brandon proved there were many millions to be made in indie.
S. H. Miah
Yep, I read an article a couple years back about Koontz’s deal with Amazon for his novels. Basically can write whatever the hell he wants, and apparently Amazon sent him a 20 page detailed document on how they’d market his work when pitching the deal.
Can’t find the article anymore, though :/
Harvey Stanbrough
Dean, I suspect most of us took your opinions re indie publishing in 2025 as the straight scoop. I did.
Congrats on that first day. I was the same way with my speed. Only 2005 words on the first day of a new novel, but I’ll take it. I almost always start a new novel slow on the first day. Should have a lot bigger day today. And only 4175 consumable words so far (the 2005 plus the first two days of my blog) but it’ll pick up. My fiction wpd goal is 3250.
Kate Pavelle
Great going Dean!
I found that I will have to pace myself carefully to make my wrists last. I commiserate with your shoulder position issue, looks like we both have some figuring out to do about what works best. In my case, my wrists are tired from using either crutches or a walker. I’ve been trying to use those more to spare my knee, which takes a beating from my knee scooter. I am dictating this post to save my wrists for fiction. We adapt, we overcome. Onward!
Kerridwen Mangala McNamara
Kate,
I don’t know if what worked for my wrists will work for yours, but worth sharing just in case!
1) 2- part keyboard(separated in the middle by a cord) so I can position each piece exactly where it’s most comfortable… and adjust a needed)
2) arnica gel as needed (homeopathic, there is massage pill and pulls a other options. But the gel is available at Walgreens and Walmart). Long history with this one – we just found it referenced in an original Dr Doolittle book!
3) finger and wrist stretches (i can send you pics of mine).
4) typing while wearing rollerblading widths (old style)
Or, you know, rest… but then the stories don’t get written!
Best wishes for less pain in the new year!
Jim Turnbo III
Great to watch you in action Dean!
Question: Any suggestions (online/offline) for finding half title ideas? I burnt through what I had on my legal pad in 2023 when I did your short story challenge. (Can’t explain how powerful of a habit this is. The stories wrote themselves from a simple title.)
Eagerly waiting and watching for the day when you get to kick day 140 in the proverbial fruits and hit 141… and beyond.
dwsmith
Jim,
I go through my old digest collection, looking at the table of contents and taking half titles. I put half on one side of the page and another half on another side of the page. I get the half titles from mystery, sf, fantasy, and horror mags. You can do that with any form of magazines, actually, even new ones coming out now. They don’t have to be old. Some issues I find none, other issues I find three or four half titles or phrases.
Lots of table of contents are online and on Amazon you can find table of contents for anthologies, things like that. I never use a whole title, just half or a phrase. Then jam two of them together.
Jim Turnbo III
That splains it Lucy!
Thanks Dean. Shall get on that straight away.
DS Butler
Good start to the new challenge! Looking forward to following along.
Have you ever considered dictation instead of typing – to help your shoulder a little? Even my Mac’s inbuilt dictation is pretty accurate these days. I used to roll my eyes at the idea but couldn’t live with out it now.
dwsmith
Tried it a number of times, bought the t-shirt, hated it beyond words. If both arms get cut off and I am completely blind, maybe. (grin)
Kris Rusch
Congrats, Smitty! And you managed to live your life at the same time. Well done.
Heather
Only excuse: if I Had been awake yesterday to reply (that it was truth to me),
I’d a missed out on more good of the good stuff that comes out in your comment section, everytime you shake us awake.
Heather
And- That is an Awesome pace. Thank you.
Do marathons have a out front pacesetter? Something must, to give us the term.
Me, learning still to keep walking whole way w/o tossing the towel.
dwsmith
I m now a walker as well on fun runs, half marathons, and heaven help me if I try another marathon.
Kris Rusch
Yes, marathons have pace setters. I think Dean is a great writing pace setter…or maybe rabbit for us all to chase. 😇