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Topic of the Night: Writing a Novel in Seven Days… Prologue
WRITING A NOVEL IN SEVEN DAYS Prologue This is going to be fun. That’s how I am going at this new project and these chapters leading up to the challenge and the challenge itself. I will be doing a chapter a day here on my blog through the writing of the entire novel, so you can follow along with the time involved, the thinking behind the idea to do a novel in seven days, the preparation, and everything else. And I will detail out the writing sessions as well as I start up. Today is Tuesday night, and I plan on starting writing on Saturday night. So a decent amount…
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Business Shift In Thinking
BUSINESS SHIFT IN THINKING Well, Kris did a great article about some of the issues facing long-term professional writers like her in this new world of publishing. The shift from old publishing thinking to new publishing is hard for everyone. Information below. —— THE DAY Meetings from 2 p.m. until after 5 p.m. In three different locations. Then worked for an hour or so at WMG after taking a walk with Kris, then home to cook dinner, then in here to do e-mail before taking a long nap. Then downstairs to watch television, back in here to work on things on this site and do one session on the book of…
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Killing Even More Sacred Cows of Publishing: #3… Getting An Advance to Help You Write Your Book
Book three in this series. Book one was KILLING THE TOP TEN SACRED COWS OF PUBLISHING. Book two was KILLING THE TOP TEN SACRED COWS OF INDIE PUBLISHING. Both books are available everywhere in electronic, paper, and audio. What I call a “Sacred Cow” is basically a myth spread around publishing like the truth. Myths such as “rewriting must be done for every story.” Myths such as “you need an agent to sell a book,” or “sell a book to a different country.” And so on. You can either buy the first two books to get all twenty of the Sacred Cows, or just click on the tab above and read them…
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Challenge, Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing, On Writing, publishing, Topic of the Night, Writing in Public
Another Sacred Cow Treatment
ANOTHER SACRED COW TREATMENT Well, read one too many articles about the stupidity of giving a traditional author an advance so they could be free to write their book. That myth had to be stabbed at with my little sword. Oh, and I got back to work on the novel. —— THE DAY Did an interview for a podcast this afternoon. Great fun and I’ll link to it when it comes out. Then off to walk, then to the mail, the store, and back to WMG offices where I worked on different stuff until 7 p.m. including starting on the Sacred Cow chapter. Home to cook dinner, watch some television,…
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Where Did the Day Go?
WHERE DID THE DAY GO? Blink and the day is over and I have no idea what happened. Hate that. —— THE DAY Let me see if I can make some sort of sense of the day. Made it to the WMG store by 2 p.m. to meet a nice guy with some marbles, then for an interview with a possible future employee. Got out of there by 3:30 p.m. Post office next, bank, grocery store for some lunch, but no time to eat it. Got back to WMG Publishing around 4:30, did some deposits and headed for another bank. Finally got back to my lunch around 5:15 p.m.…
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Killing Even More Sacred Cows of Publishing: #2… Getting a Critique is a Good Way to Learn
Book three in this series. Book one was KILLING THE TOP TEN SACRED COWS OF PUBLISHING. Book two was KILLING THE TOP TEN SACRED COWS OF INDIE PUBLISHING. Both books are available everywhere in electronic, paper, and audio. What I call a “Sacred Cow” is basically a myth spread around publishing like the truth. Myths such as “rewriting must be done for every story.” Myths such as “you need an agent to sell a book,” or “sell a book to a different country.” And so on. You can either buy the first two books to get all twenty of the Sacred Cows, or just click on the tab above and read them…
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New Sacred Cow Reason
NEW SACRED COW REASON I’ll talk about the reason below. But it has been a while since I wrote one. I have a few more waiting in the wings. (grin) But wanted to do this one before starting in on some posts about the no-time aspects of publishing these days. —— LAST DAY!!! MARCH ONLINE WORKSHOPS All of the March online workshops below have openings. Last Day to sign up!!! Remember, each regular online workshop is six weeks long and takes about 3-4 hours per week to do at your own pace and your own time during the week. All workshops have openings. Class #21… Mar 7th … Pitches and Blurbs Class #22……
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Topic of the Night: TIME GOES BY
I have talked a ton about the value of long term thinking and understanding copyright. So for fun tonight, let me give you a fun example of what is possible. And what Kris and I are planning in the future. Let me take the book Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Long Night. Kris and I wrote the book in 1995 and it was published in 1996. Twenty years ago. I think the contract on it was an all-rights contract combined with a work-for-hire contract. At least all the later media books were, but not sure on this one, I will have to check the contract. If I remember right, the novel itself…
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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.…