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Busy Monday (Normal)
Busy Monday (Normal) Mondays are always nuts. Plain and simple. And today was no different. – THE DAY IN GENERAL I managed to say goodbye to the caged raccoon I had been feeding all weekend to keep alive so it could be hauled away. Then off to walk with another professional writer and talk about a session or two he and I will be doing at the Master Class in October. Great discussion while we got exercise walking in circles around a mall parking lot. Usually we walk around the mall, but it’s crazy tourist season here and the mall if full of herds. Then I went off to the…
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How to Write Fiction Sales Copy: Chapter Three
HOW TO WRITE FICTION SALES COPY CHAPTER THREE (Summary. This book is coming about because I need to write 32 story blurbs for the 32 short stories I wrote in July for a book titled Stories from July.) In the first chapter of this book, I touched on what I call “The Author Problem” and gave a basic formula that I sometimes use to give blurbs a structure. And in chapter two I laid out another formula for writing blurbs. This chapter, my friend, professional fiction and extraordinary comic book writer, Lee Allred put in the comments on my web site a great way of looking at blurbs to stay out of…
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Title Problems
Title Problems For two years I had a simple title at the top of all these daily blogs. I just had to change a number every day. Got old after two years so decided to title each day. Yeah, that’s working. But it seemed like such a good idea at the time on August 1st. – THE DAY IN GENERAL The day was the day. But I can say it was full of workshop stuff. Today, tomorrow, and Tuesday are cross-over days, when I have homework from the last of the July workshop and the first week of the August workshops. Three days every few months are busy like this,…
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How to Write Fiction Sales Copy: Chapter Two
HOW TO WRITE FICTION SALES COPY CHAPTER TWO (Summary. This book is coming about because I need to write 32 story blurbs for the 32 short stories I wrote in July for a book titled Stories from July.) In the first chapter of this book, I touched on what I call “The Author Problem” and gave a basic formula that I sometimes use to give blurbs a structure. One point right now before I jump down into more of these. I got a question from two people privately, wondering where I would use these blurbs exactly. So here is exactly how I plan to use all of these. — Introduction to each…
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How to Write Fiction Sales Copy: Introduction and Chapter One
HOW TO WRITE FICTION SALES COPY INTRODUCTION In July of 2015, I managed to write one short story a day. Actually had one extra, so ended up with 32 stories. I did a cover for all of those stories as well, usually the next day. My goal seemed simple on the surface: — Write 31 or 32 short stories. — Put them all in a book titled Stories from July. — Later publish all of them as stand-alone stories in electronic and paper. — Also put each story in my monthly magazine (Smith’s Monthly) one or two a month, mixed with other stories and new novels. — Include the stories in theme…
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Stages of a Fiction Writer: Last Summary
(Last very short summary chapter for this book. Patreon supporters, you will get the full book sent to you when it is all done. Please note: This is advanced reader copy. This has not been proofed. That will be taken care of when I turn in the final book to WMG Publishing.) Links to first six chapters at the bottom of this short summary. STAGES OF A FICTION WRITER Summary As I have said a number of times, no writer skips over any of these four stages of a fiction writer. We all go through them starting at the beginning if we ever get to stage four, the top level of…
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New Lecture Available: Short Stories into Novels
Lecture #28 Short Stories to Novels The Basics of When to Turn a Short Story into a Novel. 9 Videos. This lecture covers the various ways that you can turn a short story into a novel. And what you need to do so. And when you should even consider doing so. This workshop covers the basics of the idea of turning a short story into a novel. Price $50.00. Sometimes short stories can start great novels. Sometimes a short story should remain just a short story and should never be expanded. This lecture will help you understand what you need to learn to figure out when and how to convert one form into a larger…
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The New World of Publishing: The Real Price of Traditional Publishing
Authors Pay a High Price for Traditional Publishing. This new world of publishing now allows authors to make many publishing choices after they finish a book. That’s a great thing compared to just ten years ago. Now an author can go the old traditional route, they can go full indie and do everything. Or they can publish somewhere in the middle, taking responsibility for all the work, but hiring out parts, or all of the tasks needed to be done. A thousand choices in the process now. And that’s a very, very good thing for authors in the abstract. But all choices have costs. This post is about the costs of…
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The New World of Publishing: The Impossible is Now Possible
The impossible in publishing really is possible these days. This new world of publishing has allowed a ton of new things to be possible that would have flat been impossible in traditional publishing. And one of the best illustrations of just one of these now possible things just finished yesterday. Kristine Kathryn Rusch, my wife, published the last six books of an eight book science fiction saga, one per month starting in January and ending in June. Now, these are not short books. They range from 60,000 words up to almost 100,000 words long. And they all got reviewed in one place or another and all were up for pre-orders.…
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Stages of a Fiction Writer: Chapter Six
(Almost done with this short book. One more chapter after this. Patreon supporters, you will get the full book sent to you when it is all done. Please note: This is advanced reader copy. This has not been proofed. That will be taken care of when I turn in the final book to WMG Publishing.) STAGES OF A FICTION WRITER Chapter Six Stage four in writing is hard, at best, to describe because for most writers, it is a level of craft that is impossible to see. So how do you move through stage three and get to stage four writing? Mostly, the answer boils down to one simple thing:…