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Myth Lectures
The Sixth Lecture Is Up… It’s the first one in the Roadblocks bundle. The other four later this week in that bundle. So here, once again, is all the information about the myth lectures… Fiction Writing Myths Lecture Series… The first six lectures on the myths of fiction writing are now available on Teachable.com. There will be twenty lectures total, twenty different myths in four different lecture bundles. This first bundle of five lectures we are calling Creation. There will be three other bundles of five lectures each, totally twenty different lectures of nine or so videos each lecture. (They will appear as I get them recorded.) In other words,…
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The Myths of Fiction Writing Lectures
Fiction Writing Myths Lecture Series… The first five lectures on the myths of fiction writing are now available on Teachable.com. There will be twenty lectures total, twenty different myths in four different lecture bundles. This first bundle of five lectures we are calling Creation. There will be three other bundles of five lectures each, totally twenty different lectures of nine or so videos each lecture. (They will appear as I get them recorded.) In other words, each bundle of five lectures has around 45 videos. Each lecture will have nine questions we ask about each myth. The nine questions for each myth are: — What is the origin of the…
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More Learning Than My Poor Brain Can Handle
Day Two of the Licensing Expo… I managed tonight four more videos, long ones, up on the Learn Along Licensing on Teachable. Plus a couple of other things. This Expo, as Kris and I had thought it might be, is a major business changer for us. Kris had warned me since she went there for a few hours last year that this would be major, and she was right. One thing is clear. Publishing is a tiny and really sad little part of licensing at the moment. And really screwed up. Especially traditional publishers. As Kris said at one point, agents are agents. But at least in this world they…
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Stay Away From Traditional Book Publishing
Yes, I Know That is a Dream for Many… But it is a horrid (and I mean horrid beyond words) path for writers now in 2018. But Dean, how can you say that? You first published with traditional publishing, right? Yes, I sold my first novel in 1987 and did my last work for them in 2008. I did 106 books (that I can remember) through traditional big-five book publishing. I am pretty convinced that even by my math, most of that was last century. Let me repeat that. Last century. You know, dial phones hooked to a wall with cords, no internet, no email. That century. Yet traditional book…
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Because of Last Night’s Comments
I Did a Tip of the Week… On how and why bestselling authors give bad advice to young writers. So in a very quick post here, I thought I would list a few reasons that come to me off the top of my head. 1… It was how the bestseller learned in the last century, so beginning writers should learn the same way, even though that is not how the bestselling writer actually works now. 2… It seems like a good way to train beginning writers (like the no adverb silliness). 3… The author is not talking to other authors, but to readers. (Writing as work and rewrite myth comes…
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Stunned By The Voice
A Detail About The Voice That Flat Amazed Me… One young woman was back after failing last season to get a chair to turn. (She got two this time.) And in the conversation about her courage to come back, and how she had gone away and worked really hard, it was revealed that any time a judge told someone who failed to get a chair to turn to come back, that person had an automatic invite back. That’s right, all a judge had to do was say “come back” to a singer who failed and the invite was automatically there. And then the detail was mentioned that almost knocked me…
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The Rewriting Myth
Got a Letter Today… A very real private letter from a very, very frustrated person who had just seen the Sacred Cow posts I did all those years ago. (Some are dated but they are all still here.) The writer was thanking me for talking sanity. The letter was heartbreaking, described how it had taken a year-and-a-half to write the novel and two-and-a-half more years rewriting and the writer still wasn’t happy with it, but wanted to move on. The writer was clearly having a long-held dream crushed by the myths that range from writing slow and sloppy to rewriting and needing editors and agents and so on. Once again,…
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Controlled By Fear
Needing an Agent is an Irrational Fear… I said that in a webinar today and got a couple comments later from writers who had heard it. And it dawned on me that even though needing an agent is based completely in irrational fears, most writers don’t understand that. Even though it is obvious to me. So here I am again, trying to talk logic at a myth once again. Almost always a failure, but I keep trying. And Kris and I talking about agents sure stirs up the trolls out there. Wow, you would think it was us that just recently stole the 3.4 million from writers instead of agents.…
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Forgotten Writers
Amazing How Many There Are… Today Kris and I spent almost the entire day putting books on shelves in our offices and in other areas of our new condo. And we both kept noticing how many writer’s books we had from writers no longer working in fiction. Now, there are a ton of reasons for a writer to vanish. Death, of course, sickness, family, and so on. Most of those you hear about in one form or another at one point or another. Especially if you are a fan of the writer. But so many of the writers had just vanished. This business does that to writers. Talked last week…
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Just A Few Thoughts…
The Agent Theft News Has Me Thinking… I am sitting here in a beautiful condo high over the city of Las Vegas, staring at this screen on my little iPad and wondering where I would be if I hadn’t fired my agents and then found this new world of Indie Publishing. I might be here in Vegas somewhere, but I would not be writing. Of that I have no doubt. I was fed up with all the crap with agents and baby editors and lack of respect. I was done with writing and always hurrying up to hit some deadline or another then only to wait until someone got around…