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Catching Up… To Do or Not To Do?
A Great Question… I got that question from a writer just today and I had a pretty simple answer for him. But there is more to my answer than what I was able to give him at the spur of the moment. I said this: Try to catch up if doing so is possible and will be challenging. If impossible to catch up, then simply reset the challenge and start fresh. Sounds simple until you start figuring out if something is impossible or not. Sometimes you just know you have screwed the pooch. No catching up is possible. Reset and restart!!! But other times the added challenge makes it even…
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Four Challenges Now
They Are Designed to Help and Be Fun… On WMG Teachable, you can find four challenges now. The Great Challenge… Write one short story a week for one year. The Novel Challenge… Write one new novel over 30,000 words every two months for one year. The Novella Challenge… Write one novella (15,000 to 30,000) words per month for one year. The Publishing Challenge… Publish one new major project per month for one year. (Novel, novella, collection, or omnibus all count.) The cost is $600 to buy in ($300 during the sale this next week). You start at any time, but once you start, the clock is ticking. If you miss,…
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I’m Up Late
So Not Much of Anything Tonight… I got a late start at the entire evening, so didn’t even get back to writing until 12:30 am. So finished the story about a new superhero character by the name of Skip Keepers. Basically a treasure hunt story for a marble. Yeah, we shall see. 2,400 words in two hours plus a break. About normal for me. So February is up and running. Onward I go. With luck I will have time tomorrow to do more stuff. Just got buried today, but still got the story done, something that would not have happened without the challenge. Here is an image of the treasure…
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Challenge Still Going Strong
27 Short Stories in 27 Days… I will start tomorrow doing covers for them and getting the raw manuscripts up on Patreon. And finally get all that done there, including issues of Smith’s Monthly. But going to take through the weekend because I still have other stuff to catch up. A number of times my critical voice (which only exists in the form of “Why am I wasting my time.” I have all other critical voice wiped out.”) came roaring up. A few days I was just too tired, but wrote a story anyway. So just getting each story done each day and having fun writing. I talked about all…
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Six Weeks of Motivational Mondays…
I’m Having Fun With Them… And the “Pithy Comment” each week as well. Six weeks so far since I started back in December. 3 videos plus the comment each week. So each quarter there should be 39 videos and 13 Pithy Comments. (More this first quarter since I started early.) You can jump into them at any point. I hope those of you in there are enjoying them. So tonight, for the 23rd story this month, I did another Bryant Street story and for the first time in the hundred or so Bryant Street stories I have written, this is the first one that could easily be a novel and…
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Patreon, Master Class, and More
A Bunch of Stuff… First off, for those of you who are supporting my Patreon page https://www.patreon.com/deanwesleysmith, I have attempted to put up in raw form the first two stories from the challenge with covers. No clue if it worked and if only the correct tiers can see the posts. I will be putting up some Smith’s Monthly issues shortly for all supporters. But tonight trying to learn the ropes on this. If some of you who are familiar with Patreon would let me know how I did, that would be appreciated. Thanks!! Master Business Class Finally it has all 13 of the first basic foundation classes up. That is…
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Challenge Still Going
Brain Still On Novels For example, tonight I wrote a 3,600 plus word Thunder Mountain story called “Lost Canyon.” (Saw the phrase on some woman’s sweatshirt tonight at dinner and figured it would be a good Thunder Mountain story. So I wrote it.) Story works great and I wrapped it into a short story just fine and dandy. And if you don’t look too closely after the cute ending, you don’t ask too many “But what happens next?” I sort of explained in the story what happens next, sort of. Or I pretended I did, but in the novel it wouldn’t work out that way, of course. But that wraps…
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Update On Challenge
Haven’t Missed A Story Yet… But one was almost four thousand words of a really fun novel that I couldn’t even wrap into a short story. But since I am writing novels as well in this challenge, it counts and I will have the rough on Patreon soon for some of you who are interested to see a novel start that not even I could wrap into a short story. The last week has been bumpy, beyond words, but I still managed to go 14 for 14. Not a clue how. I have not had the time to do the other stuff with the challenge, like do covers, for them,…
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Writing Challenge Update…
January 12th, 2020 Twelve days, twelve new short stories. (And yes, will start getting them to Paetron shortly. Just been stupidly busy and I have two projects to finish first in the next two days.) I also have not yet done the covers for ten of them. (Again, just too busy.) And a bunch of these would not have been written if not for the challenge. In fact, the story I wrote last night starting late and dead tired Kris said was wonderful and she thinks Queen would take it. I was shocked. Some of the others are clearly starts of novels I wrapped down to end as a short…
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CRIMES COLLIDE Kickstarter
Mystery Collection of 100 Stories… Kris and I liked what happened last year with COLLIDING WORLDS sf collection, so we are doing it again with mystery. Same format… twenty mystery stories per book, ten by her, ten by me, five big books total. Damn these are fun to do. And the Kickstarter has some really fun surprises. Lots and lots of books and stories for readers, of course. Every award included all five of the CRIMES COLLIDE books. Every reward, even the workshop rewards. And wow do we have some great stuff in this one for writers. Two Special three-week workshops like we have been doing. WRITING MYSTERY ENDINGS and…