FOCUSING FORWARD…

Watching the Old Magnum Television Series…

It was filmed in the eighties. We are watching it not to study anything, but to shut down and enjoy the entertainment, even though sometimes dated. Still fun.

The one we watched tonight was about the internment camps of Japanese Americans on the islands. It happened 40 years before the show was aired and they kept talking about those 40 years. The show aired 40 years ago now. So interesting to think about the 80 years.

40 years ago Kris and I had not met yet (a couple of years from meeting, actually). We were both writing like crazy, but both of us were married to other fine people, and actually had no time or interest to watch television, which is why we had never seen these episodes of Magnum we are now using to relax at night.

Kris and I tend to not spend much time looking backwards. Pretty much a waste of time and energy better used focusing on new stories and learning for the future. You often hear us say, “Forward. Always forward.”

Granted, sometimes events snap you into the past, or hold you at a certain point in time. Happens to all of us for one reason or another. Loss of a friend or family member will do that. A business event did it to me and Kris for a time this spring and summer.

But as best you can when these events happen, as time passes you slowly turn back to the focusing forward.

But what I find interesting after the event has gone by is learning from it. So I do spend some time dwelling on an event that happened before I figure it out, turn around and march toward the next event. Not a lot of time, just enough to gain the knowledge from the event.

This happened to me when my best friend Bill died and I had to deal with his estate. I spent eight months cleaning up the mess and four months studying what had happened and turning around and moving forward again. In fact, it was one year after my friend died that I started this daily blog and have not missed a day in over a decade now.

Forward. Always forward.

THE KRIS AND DEAN SHOW DOES DIE HARD…

It is on for certain. Thank you to those of you who took a chance and signed up. All the videos, the entire three hours or more, will be on Teachable on the 14th. Kris and I will spend some time going over Die Hard again and making notes, then will film it all and get it up on Teachable next Thursday. We will have it broken down into pieces so you can go over it at your own pace. No assignments or anything like that. Just a ton of learning.

Trust me, it will be an eye-opener and jump your writing forward more than you can imagine.

Here is the basic description of the course for those who want to jump in…

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For over three hours, Kris and Dean will go scene-by-scene through Die Hard: The Christmas Movie.

Die Hard is a fantastic way to learn story. Detail by detail on how to build a story, from openings to try/fails to climax and validation.

Also the movie is great for learning pacing. And fantastic for information flow.

And for building great characters, both main characters and secondary characters.

Extreme depth, great foreshadowing, action sequences, cliffhangers, and so much more. Die Hard has it all.

Kris and Dean will go over the movie, stopping and starting it and talking about each area of the movie as they go and how and why you would do that in your writing.

Fantastic Amounts of Learning for Only $50 on WMG Teachable.

Questions, just write me directly or ask here in the comments.

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DECEMBER REGULAR WORKSHOPS STARTING

They are…

• Writing into the Dark
• Teams in Fiction
• Depth in Writing
• Advanced Depth
• Killing the Critical Voice

And for one month only

• Applied Depth

Applied Depth is a classic workshop that for one month you can get direct assignments from me as a regular workshop. They are all starting right now…

on WMG Teachable

I will be doing a blog at one point about how so many people take the Depth in Writing basic workshop and then stop focusing on learning all the varied aspects of depth in stories. Depth in Writing class is just the awareness assignment of what is possible.

I Love This Mug…

The Pulphouse Fiction Magazine mascot and it is a huge mug.

There is something just so satisfying for an older writer like me to have an actual product come from something I am doing. All six of our stores have merch of all kinds. Something that just never existed for us normal writers in the traditional publishing days, that’s for sure. And was never thought of.

By the way, this is branding, a very basic form of it.