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A Week of Different Posts: Day Five
Post Five of Seven Days Still having far too much fun with old friends. Today watched football and just left a late dinner about thirty minutes ago. It’s four a.m. I’m still around here just fine, just not focused on the daily stuff at the moment. But answering e-mail and stuff without a problem I hope. (grin) ———- 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…
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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: 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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More Stuff and Learning
A DAY OF MORE STUFF AND LEARNING Monday errands, lots of workshop stuff, getting ready to do a lot of writing later in the week. ——- THE DAY Made it to the WMG publishing offices just before 3:30 p.m. and then headed out to do errands like banks, mail, and all that. Including fixing a tire that had a slow leak. Got back to WMG offices to work on workshops from 5:30 until 7 p.m. Home to cook dinner, then in here to do workshop stuff. Second day of the two months of workshops crossing over. Always a lot for me to do, especially when I am also running the ramp-up…
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Topic of the Night: Starting Late
I got a great comment from a gentleman on one of my older posts about starting late in life. Basically, what he said was that he felt behind starting at forty-five. His comment brought clearly back to mind how I felt for years about how I felt that I was starting very late at the age of thirty-two. (I had wasted seven years ahead of that writing almost nothing and rewriting everything to death. I hated that I had done that.) And I know that all of us, at one point or another have these sorts of thoughts. When indie publishing came in and Kris and I focused on it, I was…
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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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Topic of the Night: New Challenges
Most people who have followed this blog for any period of time or who know me, understand that I hate sitting still and don’t do very well with the same-old-thing.Yet this blog sure looks like I am doing the same-old-thing every day, doesn’t it?But nope. Working to start a new physical store in a couple of months, having fun still teaching challenging workshops, both here and online, and I hope to do some travel this year for a number of reasons. And I am still doing a monthly magazine that requires a novel per month and four or so short stories plus a serial of some sort. (Issues 26, 27,…
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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…