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Freedom in This New Publishing World
The Responsibility of What to Do Next… Friday night about twenty professional fiction writers will gather from all over the Northwest at WMG offices for three hours of business and writing discussions. Without fail I know I will come away from the gathering with more things to do. Exciting things. New, shiny things… And thus back to the topic from last night about always being behind and figuring out ways to deal with it. The second part of last night’s post is the responsibility of choice. I have talked in various ways here this last year about the wonderful freedom the new world of publishing gives writers in all sorts…
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The Normal Nature of Being Behind in This New World
I Love Being Behind… In indie publishing, what I hear over and over from indie writers everywhere is that they are behind. Always behind. A simple reason for this. There is too much we all want to do, need to do, feel we MUST do. And we have to have it done YESTERDAY. I am no exception to this. I always have more things that need to be done than I can cram into a single day. Always. And I honestly am coming to love that. Am I Nuts? I have strong memories of the alternate road. There were times in traditional publishing I didn’t have enough to do and…
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Curriculum for a Career
Strengths Workshops Function as a Curriculum of Study for a Commercial Fiction Writer… At least that is our intent. Let me see if I can explain as I did this afternoon to a couple of other writers who were interested. As writers, looking into the future, the biggest question is always “What do I do next?” Second biggest question is “How do I get there?” Now Kris and I have been crazy enough to try to lay out that path just as someone going into a college would get a path through courses to get to a certain resulting education in the end. Only in these workshops, we also test…
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The Magic Bakery and a Disappearing Bundle
Full of Magic Pies… I have been working with Kris on the Strengths Workshops and in both the business and the sales workshops, the concept of the magic bakery keeps coming up in varied ways. I had forgotten how powerful the concept actually is. I haven’t talked much about the magic bakery here in the last few years. And to really understand all the ramifications of it and how to use it, you will need to take the Strengths Workshops, both business and sales. But for those of you who do not have a clue what I am talking about, imagine your finished story is a pie. The copyright property…
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A Giant Ape Kind of Day
How was that for a silly blog title?… But that’s what it sort of was, actually. Kris and I decided we needed a day doing something different. Can’t call it a day off when our job is having fun writing and playing in publishing. But we do need to do something different at times. So we drove into the valley and saw King Kong: Skull Island. Fun. Exactly as expected. I ate too much popcorn. Then we had a nice dinner, found a good pie shop for pie, then headed home after walking around a big discount store for a time to make sure we had our steps. When we…
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Strength: Regular Business Now Available
The Strength: Regular Business Workshop is now available and live… As I said a few days ago, Kris and I will be looking at writer’s work and testing writers to help each writer personally find out where they are at and what they need to learn going forward. So now the Regular Business workshop is up, focusing on Copyright, Money and Cash Streams, Business Structure, Time Management, Wills and Estates, and a ton more. Find out how much you know about all those topics and also where to find help for what you don’t yet know. THE POINT… All the Strengths Workshop are designed to help you understand story craft, business,…
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More Information and Some Questions on Strengths
We got some great questions today about the Strengths workshop. So thought I should spend a little time here tonight answering those. Remember, we will have six of these workshops when all loaded up in about two weeks. Regular Craft is up now. Regular Business will be up on Sunday. And so on. (See yesterday’s post for all the details.) — First off, we are only limiting the sign-up time for these six Strength Workshops. But once you sign up, you can take your time, clear into the fall or next winter if you want. The speed you take the workshop is completely up to you, in your control. Videos…
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Strengths Workshop Starting Up!!!
We All Wonder How We Are Doing… Now is your chance to find out. Kris and I are doing the Strengths Workshop again after almost two years. We are doing it differently this time. More intense (if that is possible) and more focused so we can give each person better help. THE POINT… Strengths Workshop is to help you understand in story craft, business, and sales where you are at at this moment in time. We will tell you where you are strong and where you need to work. And we will give you help on how to find ways to improve in each area. We will do this in…
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I Have A Publishing Belief System
Actually, a number of them… No surprise to anyone who follows this blog, huh? So let me explain a few of my belief systems. Agents… Agents should pay authors what is called a “shopping agreement fee” for the right to submit their manuscript to editors. Shopping agreements are used all the time in Hollywood and are basically a fee like $1,000 for a limited time (six months to a year) for the right to shop the work. Author keeps the money no matter if the work sells or not. (That would put some skin in the game for agents.) The writer is the one who did the work, owns the…
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Why Is The Strengths Workshop Hard?
A Couple People Asked That Question Today… I will be announcing the new Strengths workshops (yes, there are more than one this time). And I said in the comment yesterday we don’t do these except once every few years because they are so difficult ON ME AND KRIS. Kris and I have writing to do, a business to run, life to enjoy. We contain our help of other writers to our blogs and to the online workshops and only four coast workshops a year. It might seem like a lot from the outside, but actually it’s not bad from our side. However, to do service to the writers signing up…