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Story 18 and Clean Up…
A Writing Day… With some football watching just for fun. And naps. Two napes to be accurate. But mostly the focus was on writing. After coming back from lunch, I spent a few hours this afternoon spell-checking five of my stories to have them ready to go to Kris. She read the first one and liked it and asked for the novel. It is a stand-alone story just fine, but it clearly leaves room for another Thunder Mountain novel. Next year. So anyhow, did that and then found a couple half titles and typed them in and nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. So I tossed half of that title away, kept…
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Story 17 and Last Day of In-Person Workshop Sale…
UPDATES ON IN-PERSON CLASSES This is the last day of the In-Person Early Bird Sale. Here are the spots remaining in the In-Person classes coming up…. Gothic May 5-8th, 2025… 1 Spot Left Time Travel October 13-16th, 2025… 2 Spots Left Adventure January 12-15th, 2026… Waiting List World Building May 4-7th, 2026… 1 Spot Left Detectives. October 12-15th, 2026… 2 Spots Left So until late today (Saturday), as an early-bird discount, the normal workshop fee of $750 is $600. If you sign up and pay today. Save $150. Also, for the first…
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My Story A Day Challenge…
Going Okay, But… The “but” is coming from critical voice, of course. It has been a stupidly busy first two weeks of the month and I got into a bad habit right out of the gate of starting the story too late at night. Way, way too late. Problem with that is being tired I tell my creative voice to do something short, and a lot of my Marble Grant stories and Bryant Street stories are in the 2,000 word range, so even though I never plan it, I default back to them. Amazing how powerful the creative voice is. It wants me to finish a story a day, but…
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Deciding on a Challenge
Setting Writing Goals for the New Year… I have noticed this year that I seem to be very shell-shocked, for lack of a better way of putting it, when it comes to setting a goal for 2025. Never remember having this issue before. I am not afraid of failing with a challenge. I always fail to success with every challenge, and failing is a part of publishing. Just nature of the beast. So no worry there when setting a goal. But these last two years have been brutal in life events for me. First I lost vision and only regained a part of it, then I smashed up my shoulder…
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Some Interesting Plotting
Watching the Old Magnum… For an hour or so each night, to relax, Kris and I watch television, and for some reason we got going on the old Magnum shows. We’ll stop when we find other shows or some network television returns. But tonight we had worked our way through season seven, which was supposed to be the last season. And I wanted to watch that show ender. He’s a ghost through most of the show and at the end walks into the clouds. Really well done with John Denver music. Then they decided to have a season eight because of the ratings and the money and had to get…
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Scheduling the Impossible…
Scheduling Is Something We All Get Used To… Indie writers at some level or another all get used to scheduling publishing projects. Nature of this new world and actually for me, I had so many deadlines in a year in the old traditional publishing days, I had a massive yearly schedule for writing and travel and deadlines and money flow. In indie publishing, scheduling is just something we all do at one level or another. And then there is the WMG Publishing schedule master, Kris. Two major ongoing projects (Pulphouse monthly) and Holiday Spectacular (More moving parts than you can imagine) are year-long things. Plus for our books and such,…
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Introduction to A Class About Learning…
A FIFTY YEAR PERSPECTIVE OF LEARNING… As I said last night, this year marks 50 years since I sold my first two short stories (and started selling a lot of poetry as well.) Over those 50 years, I was stunningly lucky to have some amazing mentors (who also became friends.) Jack Williamson, Damon Knight, Kate Wilhelm, Algis Budrys, Harlan Ellison, Frederick Pohl, Julius Schwartz, and others. As I said, stunningly lucky. So I figured that since I am still around after 50 years of selling fiction and they all told me a lot of great stuff, I am going to do a nine-week class talking about and telling stories about…
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My Writing Off to Slow Start…
Real Slow, But That’s All Right… I got started on the first few days of the new year on a new novel, even though it was a rough start putting the world back in my head. And Mary Jo, the main character. I was barely typing with two hands and the PT was knocking me down. Energy still fairly low overall as I continue to recover. And I took stock and realized after two months mostly gone how far behind I was on recording some workshops, and on reading for Pulphouse. And other things. So I just sort of decided I wouldn’t push the writing for a few weeks. I…
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Don’t Panic Or Give Up…
Just Because the Year is Starting Off Slow… Sometimes, this time after the first of the year can be rough. Job issues, family, travel, and a ton of other stuff. And even though you wanted to get off to a fast start, you didn’t. I sure didn’t this year. Annoying for sure. But no big deal. Let me show you some math on why it isn’t a big deal. Say your goal for 2024 is to write a half million words. An average of 1,370 words per day. If you write 1,000 finished words per hour, about 1.3 hours a day or 9 hours a week on your writing. (That’s…
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Two More Days to Sign Up For Challenges…
Jump In For the New Year! These four challenges will shut off on the 5th. 2,024 Words Per Day in 2024 (Mug and t-shirt included) Kris’s Fresh Start Challenge Dean’s Challenge Full Dean’s Challenge Half Lots of details on these in the last four blog posts. All available on Teachable. As for the regular challenges of a short story per week, a novella a month, a novel every two month, or the publishing challenge, they can be signed up for and started at any time. If you were in Kris’s sprint challenge or my two challenges from April, please send me your total word counts in the next two days.…