-
Early Night
A Good Reason… Tomorrow morning, or actually in just over 7 hours, I will be crossing the starting line of a half marathon. Kris is teaching the mystery workshop, so I am going it alone. (She wouldn’t go that far anyway, even though she easily could if she wanted.) I will be run/walking. Last half marathon I did was in November the day after a nasty fall. I hope to improve my time on this one by at least thirty minutes from that one, even though I am still too heavy for real running. But got to start somewhere. Might as well start with 13 miles. (grin) See why Kris…
-
Challenge Questions
As I Normally Do… I am getting questions on these new challenges. So here are some answers. — When can I start? With the short story challenge, you start when you turn in a story to me. That starts the clock ticking and each week you need to turn in a story following the instructions. Any time in the next month or so. With the novel challenge, you write me and tell me you are starting. Two months later from that date is the deadline, so you can make sure you are ready to start before you tell me, just don’t have any words written. This can be any time…
-
The Great Novel Challenge
Because I Got So Many Questions… The Great Novel Challenge Starting Up For the last few years I have done quarterly challenges that many people have enjoyed. And a lot of novels or short stories have come out of those challenges that I enjoyed reading. So when we started The Great Challenge for short stories, I got a ton of questions about why not do a novel challenge as well for the novel writers. Kris and I have been talking about this one for a while. So we decided to just move it up and start it at the same point. — And yes, if you are signed up and paid…
-
Old Dog New Tricks
That Is What I Called This… I’m the “old dog.” I am moving from writing late at night for the first 40 years of my fiction writing career to now writing in the morning (with some sessions later in the day or evening) for the next forty years. My goal now is to walk out of the condo every morning, go to a buffet about a mile away (to get steps), and write at least a thousand words before leaving. I started a Cold Poker Gang novel with new characters and I have been managing (except for one morning) to get out and set the routine. Yesterday I got out,…
-
Challenge Is On (Again)
Here Are The Rules of My Challenge… Some of you might remember I wanted to do 10 books in 100 days. And I set that challenge in September in an effort to ramp back up my writing after finally getting moved to Las Vegas. Total failure to even start. Reset again in late October, failure again. Lots of talk with Kris. Lots of puzzlement as to why I couldn’t make the time to write. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. I did. Just turned out each day I didn’t for a host of reasons. About that point in late November I realized the problem and how deep it was.…
-
Last Day of the Anthology Workshop
I Have Had a Blast… And for those who have been wondering, my novel-writing challenge will start for me on Thursday to write five novels in 100 days. That is the first leg of the challenge. Second leg is to write seven novels in 100 days. Third leg is the last 100 days of the year I will attempt to write 10 novels in 100 days. So the challenge ramp-up starts on Thursday. I am so looking forward to it and so ready. Not a clue what I will be writing, but got a hunch it will be a Cold Poker Gang since I have a title eating at me…
-
My Challenge
Off To a Decent Start… I am working to write ten novels in one-hundred days. That is my challenge to start this year. Same challenge I tried to start twice this fall and didn’t even get off the ground. But this time I am gaining speed just fine. My goal is to get up to a minimum of 3,000 words a day. Some days will be more because that is the way it works for me, but I have to have that lower limit every day. And to get to that lower limit, I needed to ramp up. So on January 1st I wrote 1,000 words on a project that…
-
Fun New Year’s Eve
Hope Everyone Kicked 2018 To The Curb With Fun… Kris and I sure did. We started off the day working, then a quick lunch, then more work. Then by 3 p.m. we were standing in a very windy, very cold park getting ready to run a “fun” 5k run to end the year. Wind died as we got started, so it turned out to be fun after all. Then home for a nice dinner, then a little more work before heading out to Fremont Street at 8:30 to join the crowds there in downtown Las Vegas. We saw the ball drop in New York there, then went into one of…
-
Looking at Gaining Energy
I Actually Have Two Challenges That Will Help… As I have detailed out before here, my two challenges are to lose about 25 more pounds and write ten novels. All in 100 days. I was talking with Kris about the two elephants, working on how to carve three hours for writing and three hours for exercise out of every day for 100 days. I have done as we teach, looked and written down my schedule, and if I remain focused, the six hours are there, no issue. But just thinking about it made me tired. (You know, elephants.) Then I found myself saying that once I got the writing going…
-
Fun Day Started Early
Another Run… This 5k fun run was along a paved trail along a canyon in Henderson, NV (a part of larger Las Vegas valley.) Started at 9 am and I actually managed to run fairly comfortably over half it. I decided to not push yet, since I am still recovering from the fall in some ways, but it was a comfortable run walk. And fun. (A couple pictures below and Kris put a bunch more on Facebook.) A really fun breakfast at a nifty restaurant out in Henderson after the run, then home to just spend a nice day working here with pizza for dinner. (Yes, Las Vegas has fantastic…