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Topic of the Night: Writing a Novel in Seven Days: Chapter Eight
WRITING A NOVEL IN SEVEN DAYS Chapter Eight: Day Five The Challenge is Simple. Day One: 3,000 words. And then each day after that add 1,000 words to the amount needed. Seven days, if my math is right, I will have a 42,000 word novel. 3,000… 4,000… 5,000… 6,000… 7,000… 8,000… 9,000 words. 7 Days. Day Five (7,000 word day) Once again made my goal for the night. I paid a ton more attention to the challenge today than I did yesterday. Seven thousand words is a serious number of words in one day and I gave the writing of that much the respect it needed to make it happen. Counting 3,000 words for Day…
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More on the Time of Great Forgetting
More on the Time of Great Forgetting Last night I mentioned the Time of Great Forgetting for writers and a number of writers wrote me privately wanting to know more about what I meant. Well, basically, the Time of Great Forgetting is when a part-time writer’s attention is taken by life in general and all New Year’s Resolutions and streaks and challenges are forgotten. This normally each year starts around the first to middle of May and runs until the last of July when writers suddenly remember their writing and then fight to restart. Why May? Sunshine, gardens, kids graduations, golf, spring sports, and on and on and on. For some…
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Topic of the Night: Writing a Novel in Seven Days: Chapter Six
WRITING A NOVEL IN SEVEN DAYS Chapter Six: Day Three The Challenge is Simple. Day One: 3,000 words. And then each day after that add 1,000 words to the amount needed. Seven days, if my math is right, I will have a 42,000 word novel. 3,000… 4,000… 5,000… 6,000… 7,000… 8,000… 9,000 words. 7 Days. Day Three Once again made my goal for the night. Barely. Counting 3,000 words for Day One and 4,000 words for Day Two, and 5,000 words for Day Three, I needed to be at 12,000 words or beyond. Hit that once again. I had 1,800 words in the bank before today but didn’t want to use the words…
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Topic of the Night: Writing a Novel in Seven Days: Chapter Five
WRITING A NOVEL IN SEVEN DAYS Chapter Five: Day Two The Challenge is Simple. Day One: 3,000 words. And then each day after that add 1,000 words to the amount needed. Seven days, if my math is right, I will have a 42,000 word novel. 3,000… 4,000… 5,000… 6,000… 7,000… 8,000… 9,000 words. 7 Days. Day Two Once again made my goal for the night. Counting 3,000 words for Day One and 4,000 words for Day Two, I needed to be at 7,000 words or beyond. Hit that. The Day Managed to crawl out of bed around 12:30 p.m. and get to the grocery store and then to WMG Publishing before 2 p.m. to…
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Topic of the Night: Writing a Novel in Seven Days: Chapter Four
WRITING A NOVEL IN SEVEN DAYS Chapter Four: Day One The Challenge is Simple. Day One: 3,000 words. And then each day after that add 1,000 words to the amount needed. Seven days, if my math is right, I will have a 42,000 word novel. 3,000… 4,000… 5,000… 6,000… 7,000… 8,000… 9,000 words. 7 Days. Day One Here we go. I’m going to detail out my day so that anyone reading this can extrapolate their own days and see how it works. The idea is to help others with similar challenges like this. And help writers with just controlling their own fears and time. Side Note First on Structure On the comments on…
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Seven Day Novel Challenge Started
SEVEN DAY NOVEL CHALLENGE HAS STARTED Novel challenge has started. See details of the day in the post above. And I also have managed to put up the reading order of all 36 Poker Boy stories. And where they can be found besides stand-alone. The full list is under the reading order tab above. ———– Note Since I am writing a Thunder Mountain novel, I am putting up the books from the series as featured books of the day. They all stand alone, but there is a reading order above if interested in starting from the beginning. Tonight is book four in the reading order. ———– FEATURED BOOK OF THE DAY…
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Topic of the Night: Writing a Novel in Seven Days: Chapter Three
WRITING A NOVEL IN SEVEN DAYS Chapter Three This is going to be fun. I want to repeat that often. The Challenge is Simple. Day One: 3,000 words. And then each day after that add 1,000 words to the amount needed. Seven days, if my math is right, I will have a 42,000 word novel. 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 8,000… 9,000 words. 7 Days. Ready to Go I’m going to start writing tomorrow. Honestly, I could have started today without much problem. But I scheduled starting tomorrow because of the work day outside of writing that I have on day three, where I will need to do 5,000 words. Day three…
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Topic of the Night: Writing a Novel in Seven Days: Chapter Two
WRITING A NOVEL IN SEVEN DAYS Chapter Two This is going to be fun. I want to repeat that often. The Challenge is Simple. Day One: 3,000 words. And then each day after that add 1,000 words to the amount needed. Seven days, if my math is right, I will have a 42,000 word novel. 3,000… 4,000… 5,000… 6,000… 7,000… 8,000… 9,000 words. 7 Days. Writing into the Dark Two days until I start writing. Tonight is Thursday, I plan on starting the novel on Saturday. So am I planning the book at all? Nope. This book I have a rough idea, more than normal, because of the short story in Stories…
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Topic of the Night: Day-Job Thinking
DAY-JOB THINKING VS LONG-TERM THINKING In the great comments on the last topic of the night, this new topic was brought up. So thought I would expand on the idea. Day-Job Thinking goes like this: I need a certain amount of money to make my bills this month and a day job gives it to me in a “secure” fashion. Nothing at all wrong with that thinking. Nothing. We all have to live and make bills and eat and all those sorts of things. This is survival thinking, folks, plain and simple. So again, nothing wrong with that kind of thinking. Critical. Long-Term Thinking is the ability of a person to see…
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Topic of the Night: About Time and Sales
ABOUT TIME AND SALES At the writer lunch today we talked about a royalty statement I got recently from Pocket Books on one of my many Star Trek books. It showed that the book had sold six copies. Under the old system, I would have glanced at that and just tossed the sheet laughing at how a book can only sell six copies in six months. But I am trying to move my thinking to readers. The old traditional thinking (and those in traditional publishing to this day) never considers readers at all. Just sales, numbers on a piece of paper to be batted around with graphs and profit/loss statements.…