My Blog Streak!!
Started a Year After My Friend Died…
In August of 2011, my best friend, Bill Trojan died of a massive heart attack on the last day of the World Science Fiction Convention. I was in charge of his estate and I spent 9 months getting that under control. (A full book of stories in those statements.)
Then I tried to get back to writing. I had been blogging at times on my web site and also before that on the Star Trek writer web site. But I needed a focus and I was also doing a little teaching and was about ready to start up Smith’s Monthly Magazine.
So on August 1st, 2012, I started this blog. The idea was to do one blog per day without missing.
12 years later I still have not missed a day.
Power outages more than I can count, this site down, moving Kris to Vegas, me going blind with an eye infection, me being in the hospital with surgery. Somehow I never missed doing a blog here every day since August 1st 2012.
Sometimes the blogs were nothing more than me saying “I am alive. Goodnight.”
Regularly, the blogs are about workshops because Kris and I are very proud of the workshops we have done and are doing. But over the years I have written ten or twelve writing books here a chapter a night, posting them for all to read.
And sometimes a blog is personal stuff, or my own writing challenges. Or whatever.
On August 1st I will have managed a daily blog without missing for 4,380 straight days.
That’s 12 years. I was 61 when I started, 73 now.
If you don’t think streaks can be motivating, you should try one.
I never intended this, can’t believe it has happened. But the streak lives and on I go until one night I just flat go to bed and forget to do it.
But until that night, stay tuned. Just never know what I am going to do here.
SPEAKING OF FORGETTING…
I got so busy with the great Pulphouse Subscription Drive Kickstarter, (Thank you everyone!!) I forgot to shut off the Great Bundle sale.
I said the day before the Kickstarter that the Great Bundle Sale Extended to Any Class on Teachable…
Not just bundles, but any class. BUT ONLY FOR ONE DAY… Well, seems like that day stretched into ten days. (grin)
And a few writers noticed and took advantage of it still going on. The great forgotten workshop sale… sigh…
So to be fair, we are going to extend the sale for one more week for everyone.
To get any class or bundle at half price, simply go to WMG Teachable, find the class or bundles you want, and hit purchase. Then put in the code…
GREATBUNDLE
And hit apply and you will have it for 50% off. Good for everything on Teachable, including the Lifetime subscriptions, including the Lifetime Everything Subscription.
A forgotten sale… Take advantage of my bad memory while you can because no more sales planned this year.
10 Comments
Bob Mueller
I remember being awed by your streak after the first year or so and wishing I could do something similar. A little over two years ago, I finally realized I could, and started posting weekly. 117 weeks straight. Thanks for the inspiration.
dwsmith
All right, Bob! Keep it going and fun.
Richard Clement
Congratulations on the streak. A lot of hills to climb along the way. You’re moving into Isaac Asimov territory, when the day after bypass surgery he asked for his laptop to be brought to the hospital so he could keep working. It’s been fun to watch, and an inspiration.
Here’s to streaks everywhere,
Richard Clement
Mark Kuhn
For me, the “Time of Great Forgetting” started in April of 2021, right after my brother passed away from Covid, at a time when I had been ramping up my writing production.
I never thought I needed therapy for it. I just thought what I was feeling was grief. But one day a song came on the satellite radio while I was driving. “Another You” by the Seekers. I instantly found myself transported into a memory of my brother I could not get out of. Thankfully during the episode that lasted about thirty seconds, I managed to get my car to the side of the road. Turns out that grief doesn’t do that to people. PTSD does. And every episode can alter the brain’s chemistry, too. So I got myself some well-needed help.
Recently I’ve been able to actually begin writing again. Three random words from a dictionary to your method of mashing titles together. Small steps, but quality steps.
It’s a fight worth fighting.
The opportunity to submit a story to Pulphouse comes at a good time for me.
I’m looking forward to next month.
dwsmith
Wonderful, Mark, on making sane steps to get through it all and back to writing. Fantastic.
Stories will be fun to write and fun for me to read. Keep up the healing.
Kerridwen Mangala McNamara
Wow!!
Vincent Zandri
Congrats Dean, that kind of streak is beyond impressive. You inspired me to do the same thing only with new fiction that I’ve been publishing chapter by chapter on Kindle Vella beginning in earnest close to three years ago. As of 2.5 years ago, I haven’t missed a single day. It’s resulted in 58 stories, novellas, and novels, many of which have been edited and are now a part of my Bear Media Publishing Company and earning nice money, others are still awaiting their turn. Now the sweet thing about this streak is I’m being paid to write first draft material (even though I write pretty much one draft anyway). I’ve made approx. $17,000 just keeping my streak up. This money has nothing to do with my normal royalties. Talk about a win/win….For anyone else who wants to try this, keep in mind in the early days, Vella was paying bonuses of upwards of $1,000+ per month. But that quickly waned and now my monthly bonuses average about $200 per month. But the cash isn’t even the point. The platform gets me focused on writing new fiction everyday.
Thanks for the inspiration Dean. Oh and also my Uncle Harvey (Stanbrough) deserves a lot of credit.
Vinny
dwsmith
Wow, very cool. Thank you for the inspiration as well.
Harvey Stanbrough
Yes, congrats Dean. You got me started on Heinlein’s Rules and WITD ten years ago. In that time I’ve written 92 novels, 9 novellas, and around 240 short stories. I’ve also published my Journal for writers almost every day since then. And Vin, thanks for the nod.
dwsmith
Fantastic!! Really fun how it just adds up. Well done all the way!