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More On Challenges For 2022
A Goal vs A Challenge… Right about now, here on the 6th of December, it is a great time to start looking at the year ahead. For many writers, setting a challenge is not a good idea. But in any business or art, setting a goal can really help. So tonight I thought I would talk about the difference between a goal and a challenge. I believe both are good. And by setting a challenge, you are also setting a goal. But often goals are not challenges. Last night I listed four things that I thought were important when deciding on a challenge. They are: 1… It actually has to…
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The Wet Blanket Reality… Chapter Two
Chapter Two… The Query This book is a travelogue through the steps it takes in 2022 to become a traditionally published fiction writer. So please read the Introduction and First Chapter before this one. You do that, this chapter will make more sense, as much as this chapter will ever make sense to a sane, thinking person. (Writers are neither sane or thinking at this point in this process.) So after years of work, you declare your novel masterpiece finished and have a party. So what next? EVERYONE KNOWS (stupid common knowledge and not true, but we’ll go with the myth here) that you must have an agent to sell…
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Fun Box of Books
A Very Heavy Box Arrived Today… Turns out it was 47 of my novels. Not copies the same book, but 47 different novels. One copy of each. Not at all sure which books I am missing still. I will have to go back through and compare them to Smith’s Monthly, which has 52 books out at the moment that were in there. (Actually 53.) I know I don’t have the two of the last three. But still missing a few besides those. But still a really fun sight. Very large piles of COLD POKER GANG NOVELS with the new covers and branding. Very nifty. Another bigger pile of THUNDER MOUNTAIN…
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Come Looking For Anger
Trolls Are Everywhere… But seems for me, they have to come looking. The reason is that I just ignore them and eventually, because they are starved for attention, they go away. Now, I know clearly that my opinions of professional fiction writing are only based on how it is really done, not on how some beginning writers think it should be done. I actually write and publish and make a lot of money, and that just pisses off a large part of the younger writers as well. But if a person doesn’t want to hear how it is really done, they tend to stay away from this blog and anything…
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Learning is Forever…
In Writing and Publishing… Kris and I were talking today on the way back from lunch about some of the writers who have just faded away. And the more we talked, the more we realized that we knew the answer on what happened to most of them. They all just stopped learning. They reached a level that they were happy with their writing and stopped learning for a dozen different reasons. That is flat deadly in just a few years. The reason I hear the most and understand the least is the fear that learning something will upset some perfect balance in their writing and they will never sell again.…
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Nine Years
Talking About the Power of a Streak… Nine years ago today, 3,285 days ago, I started a blogging streak. The idea was to blog about something, anything every day. (I had been doing a few blogs before that on the Star Trek boards and so on.) No excuses. Traveling, sick, computer failures, other more important things to do. None of that mattered. Blog had to be done. And for some reason that got into my DNA and now every night Kris even asks me if I got a blog done. As with all streaks, I had other motives at the start and never, in a billion years, did I think…
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Massive Move Day
Gaining On It… The goal is by 1 week from today, when the movers show up, everything will either be in place in this new condo or ready to go to our new storage unit. Almost no furniture except shelving will go to storage. Just a dining table and chairs, and one desk, but a ton of boxes full of books and files. Basically all our extra author books is the biggest mass. And we will move the digest collection from the other smaller storage unit to this new larger one since the larger one is air conditioned. So everything needs to be boxed and either upstairs in our new…
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Sucked Down a Copyright Hole…
I Do That To Myself At Times… I am such a copyright junkie, when given the excuse, I find myself going deeper and deeper into legal articles and having so much fun. That’s where I lost a few hours tonight. If you have no idea why I would think copyright is fun, take the Magic Bakery classic workshop. Or read my book on the topic. Copyright is magic and is why WMG Publishing exists, five employees have their jobs, and Kris and I live in this fantastic new place. One place I played tonight was the 35 year rule. For example, I signed maybe 60 Work for Hire contracts in…
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Massive Movement on Move Stuff…
Not a Lot of Writing… But Kris and I completed at lunch the first class for the Business Master Class. All I got to do is record it now and get it up. I will put a couple new introduction videos on the Business Master Class as well explaining everything. So as promised, starting up here in the middle of July. I think I have one of our old condos down to only a few hours of work left before the movers come in to take boxes and stuff to storage. The other one Kris and I will tackle together. I think our hardest problem in that one, our old…
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A Challenge Out of Nothing
I Can Make A Challenge For Myself Out of the Stupidest Things… A month or so ago I moved my office from our condo upstairs in this building to a bedroom in the condo on the ground floor. We will be using this condo for workshops in 2022, we hope, if a few more pieces fall into place. But for this last pandemic year, Kris and I used this condo for various things and for good reasons too many to mention, I decided to move my office down here. And it has been fantastic. With the move and such, I worked on a bunch of projects, but not a novel.…