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One Week Until The New Year
I Know, Another Holiday First… And I hope everyone has a happy holiday, no matter how you celebrate. But at the moment, I have been working on my goals and challenges for the new year. So I will show you here, out in the open, what I am now thinking. First off… Health. Can’t write if I am not healthy. My doc a few weeks back told me I could drop my blood pressure medication in half once I got under 190 pounds and could end it completely if I watched my pressure, was running almost every day, and was under 180 pounds, if not before if I started getting…
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Last Hours On Two Things.
And Some Fun Stuff… Very short time left on both of the Christmas Boxes from WMG. They end at NOON on Wednesday, the 19th, West Coast Standard Time. So if you get this after noon, never mind. (grin) Second, I have three in the Mentor Program for 2019, but I will take just one more. Kris and I have decided I can handle four without a problem and it will be more fun, actually. Write me if interested in the last spot. Details in a post a ways back. Do, if you get a chance, read that post from Steven Barnes I put up yesterday. Amazing. And if you want…
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New Pop-Up Available
The New Year is Coming… How to set goals and challenges and streaks and habits and so much more for the new year is in the 5th Pop-Up now available on Teachable. It is called “Remaining Focused” and has all sorts of things that can help you hit your writing goals in 2019. Plus it will be there for you for the entire year on your dashboard to review if you remember. — Also, a spot still open in the Mentor Program I am doing for a few writers for the entire year of 2019. Information a few posts back if you are interested. — Another thing on this late…
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How to Think About a Challenge
New Year Is Coming… And many writers, me included, are starting to set up challenges to help us reach goals with our writing. But the question is how to make the goals large enough to be challenging and yet not set up for failure. So let me tell you how I do it, since I have started and backed off a challenge twice now that I will be starting for the third time on January 1st. I do not consider the two first false starts as failure. Not in the slightest, actually. They were learning. So that is point one… Never think about failure. Just think positive about the challenge…
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Mentor Program
Yup, Going To Do It… Over the years, lots of my friends who are long-term writers have unofficially taken on younger writers to mentor. This has been a standard way in publishing for centuries now. And for a young writer to get into one of those positions is pure luck. Kris and went another way. We started off doing talks at conventions, basically trying to be entertaining and tell younger writers what we wish someone would have told us twenty years earlier. Then we went into the workshops a few times a year on the Oregon Coast, and then into online workshops, which has grown far, far larger than we…
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A Bunch of Workshops Moving to Classic
It Will Take Me A Week… But I will get them moved and announce which ones. I wanted to get a bunch moved before folks buying the writer Christmas Box had a chance to decide what to take in ten days. There will be more selection. Right now, this is the last day or so to sign up for the December Regular Workshops. They have all started last week but no too late except for a few of them, which I have pulled off the schedule. Jump in on Teachable. So the following ten are still available for another day or so. Then January workshops will be up and available and…
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Straight to Discount
A Question About a Comment I Made… Most of you know that I flat out think that KU with its exclusive clause is the stupidest thing a writer can do in a career. (Outside of going to a traditional book publisher.) Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, for a short time you can make some money. Good for you, but it is still stupid for an overall indie career. You are not gaining readers. So I made this comment about how I wrote a couple of books for a straight-to-discount publisher and got a few questions about wanting me to explain that more. To put it simply, same as going to…
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December Workshops Starting
And Some Bundle Deals… I forgot all about announcing the December Regular Workshops were starting up. Available for less than one week. They have all just started. Jump in on Teachable. Class #61… Dec 4th … How to Study Writing Class #62… Dec 4th … Endings Class #63… Dec 4th … Point of View Class #64… Dec 4th … Writing Mysteries Class #65… Dec 4th … Speed Class #66… Dec 4th … Teams in Fiction Class #67… Dec 5th … Depth in Writing Class #68… Dec 5th … How to Use Tags Class #69… Dec 5th … Character Development Class #70… Dec 5th … Writing Secondary Plot Lines Class #71… Dec 5th… Information Flow Class #72… Dec 5th…
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Some Numbers on Income
I Got This Question About Numbers of Sales It Takes… Now, I have done this post a bunch, mostly on making a living with your short fiction, so thought I would twist it a little just for fun. And to show some extremes. But everyone should be doing these numbers for themselves at times. And, of course, there is no right answer to this. Not a one. Since the 20Booksto50K conference was here and I did that talk which you can see a few posts back, let’s just use $50,000 for goal number. Novel Price is $5.99 electronic so you get $4 per sale. (You make extra paper and audio…
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Stay Away From Traditional Book Publishing
Yes, I Know That is a Dream for Many… But it is a horrid (and I mean horrid beyond words) path for writers now in 2018. But Dean, how can you say that? You first published with traditional publishing, right? Yes, I sold my first novel in 1987 and did my last work for them in 2008. I did 106 books (that I can remember) through traditional big-five book publishing. I am pretty convinced that even by my math, most of that was last century. Let me repeat that. Last century. You know, dial phones hooked to a wall with cords, no internet, no email. That century. Yet traditional book…