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A Celebration
A Celebration I want to have the 36th issue out of Smith’s Monthly this month. (Go ahead, try to wrap your brain around that. A novel, four or five short stories, serial novel, all mine, every month for 36 months. Yeah, go ahead, imagine doing that. (grin)) Why this month? Because this is the 36th month since the first Smith’s Monthly came out. So since the writing is slow at the moment due to massive amounts of other things which will clear shortly, I decided to put my entire first published novel, Laying the Music to Rest, in the 36th issue. Thought that would be cool. I had been serializing the…
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New Stuff
New Stuff As I said yesterday, I drove to Salt Lake and spent a few fun days at a great romance writers conference there. Well run, lots of great writers. It was an honor to be invited. I ended up teaching two classes, one about indie and one about business. Of course, both topics are so large an hour didn’t begin to start to cover either topic. But tried to cover some basics and then opened it up for questions. Got some great questions. What I noticed the most and that was the most fun for me was being around so many writers hungry to learn. That hunger is infectious.…
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Comics and Workshops and Business Diversity
Comics and Workshops and Business Diversity Last few days was a pretty good example of the business diversity of WMG Publishing Inc. Kind of fun to look at, actually. It started off a few days ago when the electronic issues of the new Fiction River went out to subscribers. Paper copies will be headed out to authors and subscribers as soon as they arrive, which should be any day now. I will also have out a few more issues of Smith’s Monthly shortly and a new novel this month will go out. All on the publishing side of things. We are publishing about five projects a month now on a normal…
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Point of View
Point of View As I said yesterday, Kris and I took a day off and drove into the valley, an hour to two hour drive, depending where you go from the coast. And along the way we were talking and brainstorming about the new online workshop Point of View. I was telling her what I saw from beginning writers since she doesn’t see beginning writers much with what she teaches and edits these days. I was telling her about the character having “thoughts” like … I wished I was there, he thought… A huge viewpoint problem if not done right in a story. And I was telling her that I…
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Workshop Finished Here On The Coast
Workshop Finished Here Today was the last day of the Historical, Time Travel, and Alternate History workshop here at the coast, taught by Kris. What a fantastic group of writers who attended from all over the world. Kris was the instructor on this one, so I played behind-the-scenes support, but last night I got to read a group of stories from them because Kris wanted me to be reader feedback. I was impressed and got to give them my feedback today. Some of the most innovative ideas came out of there and I got a hunch I’m going to be seeing a lot of those stories as parts of new…
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A Workshop Day
Workshop Day I spent most of today, in one fashion or another, on workshops. For those of you who missed it, the workshops now have a curriculum, or at least a suggested order to take them. That is under the Workshop Curriculum tab at the top of the page. The entire things is broken down into core workshops, business workshops, craft workshops, and genre workshops to make them easier to find. I also in two areas suggest order and what you should take first. And for those of you who signed up for workshops through our Kickstarter drive, the first week of October I’ll send out a survey through Kickstarter…
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Just Hours Left!!
Just Hours Left! The only has eleven hours left as I write this around 4 a.m. Pacific Time. What is in the subscription drive? Discounted subscriptions, of course, on Fiction River and Fiction River Presents. Both electronic and paper. We are also offering a package of writing books. And discounted lectures and discounted online workshops. And since we have hit the fourth stretch goal, even if you sign up for a workshop you get four free books as well as a Fiction River subscription. That’s right… FOUR FREE BOOKS for the support. Discounts on Workshops! Numbers of people have taken advantage of either the single workshop or the three workshop package.…
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Workshop Curriculum
Workshop Curriculum 9/19/2016 I’m going to divide these down into areas of study. And the numbers are my suggestions on the order to take these workshops because many of them build on others. FOUNDATION COURSES 1… Depth 2… Advanced Depth (Depth required) 3… Plotting with Depth (Depth required) 4… Teams (Depth suggested to help) 5… Advanced Character and Dialog 6… Point of View (Depth suggested) 7… Author Voice (Depth suggested strongly, as well as Advanced Depth) 8… Pacing 9… Cliffhanger These nine workshops will jump you so far ahead in your writing skills, you won’t be able to see it, but your friends and readers will. And I know, interesting that Teams workshop…
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A Regular Sunday
A Regular Sunday Writers meeting with just a few writers today until after four, then I headed out for a walk with a half mile of running in the middle, then back to the office to work on workshop stuff until time to go home at 7:30 to nap and then cook dinner. Spent the evening on workshops and other things, then watched a bunch of television. Slowly feeling more rested. ——————– New Workshop and New Schedule As I said last night, a number of people have used the reward for supporting the Fiction River Kickstarter drive to buy workshops from November forward, so I wanted to get more choices up. So now…
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New Workshop: Point of View
POINT OF VIEW Understanding every detail about how to use a character point of view. Most writers will think, “I don’t need this. I know Point of View. It’s not hard.” And yet most of those writers still work under their old beliefs and learning they got from non-writers like English teachers. The truth simply put: Most fiction writers know little or nothing about the power of viewpoint. As with the Speed workshop, this area Kris and I have avoided for two reasons. First, we don’t believe many will sign up for it, believing writers think they know it all about viewpoint. Second, this is such an advanced technique area, it…