• Challenge,  On Writing

    Dedicated Fiction-Writing Computer…

    A Critical Part of Any Fiction-Writer’s Life… Many of you have heard me at one time or one place or another talk about the critical nature of having a dedicated fiction-writing computer. There are a ton of varied reasons for this. But I have been sort of shocked this week at learning how few writers have them and then wonder why their production is not what they want it to be. It is 2024 as I write this. Our computers are full of about a zillion distractions, from emails to YouTube to Facebook and on and on and on. A dedicated fiction writing computer has one thing on it… A…

  • Challenge,  workshops

    WMG Moving Sale

    Every Workshop, Every Class, Every Subscription 50% Off!!! This is in honor of the WMG Publishing Offices moving to Las Vegas. That’s riight, it is happening later this week and next week. Our new office is so cool. We will do pictures when it is all set up! Been amazing fun to start putting it together. But in honor of that, we are putting everything on Teachable on sale at half off. Just hit purchase what you want, and then put in the code on the next page and hit apply and you will have it for half price. Code is… OfficeMove This includes all lifetime subscriptions as well, and…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    Drop the Trop

    Got Behind Because They Imploded the Tropicana Tonight… To make way for the new A’s baseball stadium.  They called the event “Drop the Trop.” And I have to say it was way cool to watch on television. They had a drone show and a ton of fireworks and then the drones formed a giant plunger with a countdown clock and when it hit zero white light went from the drones to the two remaining Tropicana towers and they came down. We could not hear it downtown (I listened), but got a hunch that dust cloud is going to make things pretty rough for the south end of the Strip for…

  • Challenge,  workshops

    Teachable Full Sale!!!

    Every Workshop, Every Class, Every Subscription 50% Off!!! This is in honor of the WMG Publishing Offices moving to Las Vegas. That’s riight, it is happening later this week and next week. Our new office is so cool. We will do pictures when it is all set up! But in honor of that, we are putting everything on Teachable on sale at half off. Just hit purchase what you want, and then put in the code on the next page and hit apply and you will have it for half price. Code is… OfficeMove This includes all lifetime subscriptions as well, and the Everything Lifetime Subscription. (If you have a…

  • Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign

    Holiday Spectacular Kickstarter…

    Launches on October 22nd… For those who don’t know, the WMG Holiday Spectacular is a calendar of original holiday stories edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. An original story is sent to you every day from American Thanksgiving through January 1st. The stories are basically in three anthologies that are sent out in October the following year. So an Advent Calendar of original holiday stories without any of the religious stuff. One original story per day. And every year we do a Kickstarter to fund it with cool holiday merch and also three special workshops where you can write stories for Kris for the three anthologies in the 2025 calendar. So…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    What Is Prolific?

    Got That Question a Number of Times… Mostly because of my Pulp Speed post and then the post about systems slowing a writer down. My answer the question “What is prolific?” is always “It depends.” Pulp Speed of any level if you are turning the words into books and stories and getting them out on the market would be prolific. Especially if done every year. If your goal is to just write a few books before you move on, 50,000 words a year would be fast enough for you, but no one would ever call you prolific. Writers who tend to be called prolific after a few years are writers…

  • Challenge

    Ideas Come and Go…

    Found An Old Idea Tonight While Cleaning… It was on a yellow sticky note. I loved this idea way back. I called it “The Final Buffet.” I even blogged about it at one point. I was going to go sit in a buffet, have lunch, and write a story there that had something to do with that buffet. Do some introductions with each story about the buffet as well. What a fun idea. Over a period of six months I planned to write 15 original short stories and get them all in a book. Then the pandemic hit and buffets became a thing of the past here in Vegas. After…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Writing Process…

    Heinlein’s Rules and Pulp Speed… Had a great (but sad) back-and-forth discussion today with a writer who read my blog last night and said Pulp Speed would never be for him. I had no problem with that. Every writer is different and that’s great. Then this writer reminded me that he wrote rough (and sloppy) first drafts and rewrote three and four times and is lucky to get 100,000 words of fiction a year out, even though he spends three to five hours a day at it. I mentioned Heinlein’s Rules and how his writing method had trapped me for six years before I found Heinlein’s Rules and Bradbury and…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Pulp Speed Post Once Again…

    Just For Fun… I wanted to bring this Pulp Speed post back again just for fun for me to read again as I work to ramp back up. I figured I could use it again as well. (grin) (I wrote this post around 2014, then brought it forward to 2016, then 2017, and just about every year or so since, skipping 2022. Last time here was April. And we do have a classic workshop on how to do it.) Not at all sure why this idea of writing at Pulp Speed sort of hits me right. I think because it flies in the face of all the myths. A writer has…

  • Challenge

    Being a Mentor…

    Sometimes I Make Writers Angry at Me… In the last three days I have had two writers I am working with as a mentor get angry at me because I was blunt. (Right now my friends who have known we for decades are saying, “No, not Dean…” and then laughing their asses off.) I have promised the writers I work with that I will always be honest with them as best I can. I try not to toss out advice they have not asked for, but if a question is asked, I am blunt and honest. Both writers and I have worked it out. Got a hunch the advice got…