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A Week of Different Posts: Day Four
Post Four of Seven Days Seems I needed rest more than writing short stories at the moment. I’m not going to do the daily details. I will return to that in a week. Hope everyone had a nice Friday night. I sure did. ———- February Online Workshops All of the February Online Workshops marked below have openings. Click the workshop tab above for description and sign-up or go to www.wmgpublishingworkshops.com. Each regular workshop is six weeks long and takes about 3-4 hours per week to do at your own pace and your own time. All workshops have openings. Class #11 Feb 1st Advanced Depth Class #12 Feb 1st Character Voice/Setting Class #13 Feb 1st…
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A Week of Different Posts: Day Three
Post Three of Seven Days The week of hanging around with friends from a previous life and focusing only on short fiction is going on and I’m enjoying the time in a different routine. Always a good idea to break out at times. So for one week I’m not going to do the daily details. I will return to that in a week. Story and Words Done This Week I managed, after two naps (resting is hard work) to actually get 1,100 words done on the story I started yesterday. I think I am getting rested so might finish the story tomorrow. No idea where it’s going but I…
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A Week of Different Posts: Day Two
Post Two of Seven Days I’m going to be spending a week hanging around with friends from a previous life and focusing only on short fiction. So for one week I’m not going to do the daily details. I will return to that in a week. Came up with a cool title for a story that I worked on for a time today between conversations with friends and far too much great food. “No One is From Here” Should be able to finish it tomorrow. Story and Words Done This Week Story #1… (not done yet) About 1,200 words so far. ———- February Online Workshops All of the February Online Workshops…
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A Week of Different Posts: Post One
Post One of Seven Days I’m going to be spending a week hanging around with friends from a previous life and focusing only on short fiction. So for one week I’m not going to do the daily details. I will return to that in a week. I might or might do some topic of the night posts. I’ll see how that goes as well. I just wanted to break up things and take a break after this last few weeks of craziness. But my focus will be old friends and when they are not around, working on short stories and recharging from all the publishing craziness and year-end stuff…
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Topic of the Night: Lawrence Block’s New Writing Book
Last night I went on about how writers need to focus on writing, but not forget about learning. One great way to learn is read how-to-write books and books about the industry. When learning, always go to learn from those a long ways ahead of you on the road you want to walk. Simple rule. And with publishing and writing books, you read it and take what makes sense to you and ignore the rest. Every writing book should be treated that way, including the ones I have written. Take what makes sense and leave the rest, but don’t give the book away. Put it on your shelf and in a year or…
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Topic of the Night: Learning in the New Year
At the professional writer lunch today, a lot of the conversation on writing turned to how the industry is changing, bookstores, and so much more about the future. Great conversation. And tonight on a nifty program on the Travel Channel, I learned a little about how books were sold door-to-door after the Civil War and up into the last century. It was a major way books were distributed, and publishing company sales forces were basically door-to-door salesmen. When I came into the business in the early 1970s, the major publishing sales force had morphed into selling to bookstores, and only encyclopedias were sold door-to-door. Wow, has publishing changed. (grin) Now…
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New Year: First Day
New Year After much dithering and pestering people around me and working out details, I have finally decided to just go for this new challenge. All outlined in the Topic of the Night that is above this. ——- THE DAY Pretty standard up to a point. Headed up to WMG Publishing around 3 p.m. and talked with a couple of other professional writers there for a time before getting to work. I did a bunch of workshop stuff and getting the office ready for Monday. Then headed to the grocery store to get dinner and went home, took a short nap and cooked dinner. Then I got in here…
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Heinlein’s Rules: Chapter Eight and Epilogue
HEINLEIN’S RULES Five Simple Business Rules for Writing CHAPTER EIGHT On to the fifth rule. Rule #5: You Must Keep It On the Market Until Sold. “It” in the rule refers to your story or novel. In 1947, when Heinlein wrote this rule, for the most part the only markets were pulp magazines. Paperbacks were just gaining strength and hardback publishers were very, very selective. So all short stories and most novels were sold to pulp magazines, and the few digest magazines that were starting up, and maybe to the slick magazines such as Saturday Evening Post, if you were good and well-known as a writer. But as with…
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Finishing Off The Year
FINISHING OFF THE YEAR Hope everyone made it through the night and are starting this new year with some writing and fun. ——- THE DAY Standard running around to banks and such. Lots of fun. (Nope…just kidding on that.) Then walked with two other professional writers and talked about this past year and the coming year. I’m pretty happy with the 1.2 million plus words I wrote last year. As Kris said in her blog about how writers are focusing back on writing this year, my focus is to increase my writing in 2016 as well. So are the other two writers I was walking with. It really is going…
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Heinlein’s Rules: Chapter Seven
HEINLEINS RULES Five Simple Business Rules for Writing CHAPTER SEVEN On to the fourth rule. Rule #4: You Must Put It On the Market. It in the rule refers to your finished and not rewritten story or novel. On the surface, this rule is very, very basic. And yet it was this rule that I had the most problem with over the years. This and Rule #5. Old Traditional Publishing World What Heinlein meant when he wrote this business rule in 1947 was that you had to send your story to some market that would buy it, publish it, and pay you money. When I started with these rules…