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Writing and Lost Track of Time
You all know how that happens… I planned tonight to write one of the longer blogs on one of the questions from last week. So I’m banging along on a fiction project and I had taken a few breaks, but didn’t think to look at the clock until I realized it was 5:30 a.m. Those longer posts take me an hour or more, and a clear mind. Not happening at this moment. (grin) So soon. Time… when you are writing a story and having fun, it sure zips past. (grin) —————- FEBRUARY ONLINE WORKSHOPS Workshops start next Tuesday and Wednesday. Yes, it is February already. Still room in all of them, but…
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A Very Different Day
Wow, was today a different day than normal… Started off out at our south store moving a couple of bookcases for Allyson and also moving an antique beautiful 11 foot long old candy counter into our south store. That took four of us. Then moved the wonderful shelves into Allyson’s place. Then Kris and I headed into the valley to have a nice lunch, see Rogue One, have a nice dinner and pie, then back home by 1 in the morning. In the process, after the movie, I also got from the theater for our north store the standee for Rogue One and another one. Took a ton of work…
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End of the Month Catching Up
Time for some writing numbers and regular stuff… Going to catch up all the numbers here, since the last time I did this was almost three weeks weeks ago. January turned out to be a pretty good month for writing. And as things get slowly back to normal again, I will start back up the “thing I learned today” feature. That was fun. I still did it every day over the last three weeks, but not going to spend time here going over them. I wrote about 125,000 total words during January, with everything except post comments counted. Decent amount of fiction. Working to ramp that up. Totals are below.…
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Official Approval Fear
Did I Get it Right?… What a stupid, silly, useless question when it comes to writing stories. And yet… That one question covers some of the largest fears that fiction writers have. I got some of these expressed in the questions from last week. Thanks everyone. So let me see if I can make some sense out of all this… —Wondering if they got it right (fearing that they didn’t) makes beginning writers often spend thousands on book doctors or some other editor term, almost always from a person who has never published a word. —Wondering if they got it right (fearing that they didn’t) makes beginning writers rewrite the…
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The Fear of a Real Paycheck
Economic Basis for Fear… Last week I asked some basic questions, the premise being that I am questioning why I made simply writing for five days on that last novel something special. And on Thursday I asked a number of questions that got some fantastic responses. It is pretty clear that it is fear in one form or another stopping or slowing down or influencing most fiction writers these days. In all sorts of areas. Lots to talk about this week. And I believe some of the fears are just bogus and some have some pretty solid basis in reality. So I want to address a fear I have fought…
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Some Fun Stuff
A Partial List of My Books… If you want a sort of graphic list of some of the books I have done over the years, a nice person sent me a link to my page on some web site that attempts to follow my work. It doesn’t begin to have all the books (not even close) that I have written under the Dean Wesley Smith name there, let alone all the short stories and such (Missing a few hundred is all). And forget about pen names there. But it is still pretty nifty how they do it, so at a glance you can scroll down and see a bunch of…
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Questions and Lecture Announcement
GREAT RESPONSES… First off, the response on yesterday’s question post was amazing. I really didn’t respond to any of them because I hope to do so in longer posts next week. Some of the responses require longer posts, so I’ll do the first one of those on Sunday. Thanks everyone. Great stuff for discussions. Now to the Lectures I’ve been meaning to announce the new site for the lectures and just kept forgetting. We are also going to be doing new lectures again now that they are on this new site, so watch for those announcements. Over the last six months we’ve got some great ideas from all of you…
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More Questions
A Bunch More Discussion Questions For Writers I have been mostly talking to myself over the last four days, trying to make sense of some questions I have that don’t flat seem to have answers. Or at least not easy answers. So on the idea I might keep this up, I thought for a short post tonight I would just toss out a few more questions that would be fun to talk about in coming posts. Again, just sort of talking with myself, but feel free to chime in with other ideas. —Why is every writer I know in a hurry? —Why are most writers totally incapable of planning longer…
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What Is Special?
With Writing, What Exactly Is Special? A nasty question I got a hunch I shouldn’t ask. Making a project, a chapter, a story special is a quick way to problems and critical voice issues. Making the speed of writing a project special is also a problem I just fell into. And have fallen into a number of times over the last few years. I did a book of blog posts called Writing a Novel in Ten Days where I did my last ghost-written project. Then I did another series of blogs into a book called Writing a Novel in Seven Days. And then to make writing speed even more special,…
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What Is Possible?
How Much Can You Write? I have always wondered why writers can’t produce more words. Back to that evil “Why?” question I talked about a few posts back. In fact, that question about why we can’t write more is the torture of all writers I know. And I am clearly no exception. I always think I should be doing more. Always. Satisfaction with my writing never comes in making the number of words I wanted to write in a certain time. I always fall short. So for fun I thought I might ask what is more? What is the ceiling? What has been done in the past and what can be…