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Only You Can Kill Your Writing
Seriously, You Can’t Fail At Writing Unless You Quit Writing… That’s why I called those twenty items in yesterday’s blog tombstones. They mark the moment a writer stops writing. The reason for the death of the dream. And it is always the writer who makes the decision to quit. The failure is always self-inflicted. But today I got some wonderful comments and private letters about how many of you have made it through some of these death markers. And that is fantastic and each letter and comment made me smile. Because few do make it through. How to you get through all the traps that can kill your writing? First,…
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The Many Deaths of a Fiction Writer
A Sort of Look At Tombstone Markers… I’ve been thinking about trying this post for a year or more now, but this last news about the agent ripping off 3.4 million from writers (at least) brought this back to the front. So I’m going to try it. The idea is simple. From my position of being around for 40 years, liking to watch other writer’s careers, and editing and teaching and interacting with writers now for over thirty years, I have seen what flat kills writer’s careers. They are always, and I repeat always, self-inflicted wounds. And one note before I dive into this. Those of us who have survived…
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Just A Few Thoughts…
The Agent Theft News Has Me Thinking… I am sitting here in a beautiful condo high over the city of Las Vegas, staring at this screen on my little iPad and wondering where I would be if I hadn’t fired my agents and then found this new world of Indie Publishing. I might be here in Vegas somewhere, but I would not be writing. Of that I have no doubt. I was fed up with all the crap with agents and baby editors and lack of respect. I was done with writing and always hurrying up to hit some deadline or another then only to wait until someone got around…
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Slight Extension
Special Time of Great Forgetting Offer Extended… Just two days… The reason is that I got busy and forgot to warn everyone the offer was ending when it ended this weekend. So we’re going to extend it just two days. Here is the offer: Two Regular Workshops and Two Classic Workshops for $500.00 total. You can keep them as credits until you use them, be we hope you use a few of them in the next few months to fight back the Time of Great Forgetting. You will be happy you did when you hit August and September and are trying to restart. So to be clear. — Two regular…
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Very Tempted…
To Say I Told You So… But that would be petty. (Grin) Yes, this is a post about book agents. You see, for the last decade or more I have been trying my best to talk sense into normally very intelligent people when it comes to agents. But the myth is so powerful that really smart people do the stupidest things when the word “agent” is mentioned in publishing. Example… Writers allow agents to tell them how to write a novel, even though the agent has never written a novel in their life. Yet writers will rewrite and rewrite to try to please some agent, spending years of time. Example……
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Long Day…
And A Short Post, Plus Repeat of Workshop Information. I am headed to Vegas once again, this time with Kris and my books and art in a uHaul Truck. Two great and very strong young guys packed the truck this morning in Lincoln City and I headed toward Idaho to go down through Salt Lake and to Vegas. All freeway that way and easy. Best with a truck of books, shelves, and art. I hope to have another blog on writing tomorrow night because, barring unforeseens, tomorrow is my easy day on this trip. I’m going slow because it’s been seven years since I drove a uHaul. And, yeah, I’m…
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Got Lost In Time
Blog Time Got Lost Tonight… Between doing assignments, watching the Voice finals, and packing boxes of books, time just got away from me and now I need to go get some sleep. So here I am again doing a filler post because of the blog streak of doing a blog every day. I think I am over 2,000 straight days now without a miss. I would have to figure it out. And that shows the power of a streak. ——————– So Here, Once Again, Is Workshop Information… Easy to cut and paste. (grin) But two offers have ended as of yesterday. Vegas Workshop Special ended and the Webinars closed off.…
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Time of Great Forgetting Special Offer
Yes, We Are Smack In The Middle Of The Time Of Great Forgetting… This time of the year, writers sort of forget about their writing with all the distractions of life, summer, vacations, graduations, and so on. All the wonderful writing goals set early in the year are just sort of pushed aside. This Forgetting time period lasts from late April until late July. Then writers sort of wake up, try to get restarted, and wonder what happened to all the goals of the year. Very disheartening and it happens to many year-after-year. And it is very, very hard to restart at that point. Since we have a bunch of…
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Some Observations and an Idea
Product Focused Might Be Truly Evil… (grin) Not really kidding that much. The more I think about how being product focused causes so many writing issues, the more I see how it has invaded just about everything in fiction writing the last few years. And I was no exception to that at times in how I phrased my challenges and such. It’s just so darned easy to keep score with numbers of books done, numbers of short stories finished, and so on. But I have trained myself to stay out of the critical voice issues that kind of focus brings up for almost all writers. So coming up as I…
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Product Focused vs Process Focused.
A Nasty Problem of Early Writers… I hear this all the time. Writers, especially indie writers the last few years, have focused on the finished product. And I must admit, that is how we keep score in this new world. Numbers of books and stories equals more readers and more money and so on. But in most of our workshops, except a few of the business ones, we focus on the process of writing. To long-term professionals, the process of writing is where the focus is, or at least in a balance on both sides. We would all have not made it for 40 or more years of writing without…