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Topic of the Night: Learning in the New Year
At the professional writer lunch today, a lot of the conversation on writing turned to how the industry is changing, bookstores, and so much more about the future. Great conversation. And tonight on a nifty program on the Travel Channel, I learned a little about how books were sold door-to-door after the Civil War and up into the last century. It was a major way books were distributed, and publishing company sales forces were basically door-to-door salesmen. When I came into the business in the early 1970s, the major publishing sales force had morphed into selling to bookstores, and only encyclopedias were sold door-to-door. Wow, has publishing changed. (grin) Now…
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Topic of the Night: New Challenges
Most people who have followed this blog for any period of time or who know me, understand that I hate sitting still and don’t do very well with the same-old-thing.Yet this blog sure looks like I am doing the same-old-thing every day, doesn’t it?But nope. Working to start a new physical store in a couple of months, having fun still teaching challenging workshops, both here and online, and I hope to do some travel this year for a number of reasons. And I am still doing a monthly magazine that requires a novel per month and four or so short stories plus a serial of some sort. (Issues 26, 27,…
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New Year: First Day
New Year After much dithering and pestering people around me and working out details, I have finally decided to just go for this new challenge. All outlined in the Topic of the Night that is above this. ——- THE DAY Pretty standard up to a point. Headed up to WMG Publishing around 3 p.m. and talked with a couple of other professional writers there for a time before getting to work. I did a bunch of workshop stuff and getting the office ready for Monday. Then headed to the grocery store to get dinner and went home, took a short nap and cooked dinner. Then I got in here…
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Heinlein’s Rules: Chapter Eight and Epilogue
HEINLEIN’S RULES Five Simple Business Rules for Writing CHAPTER EIGHT On to the fifth rule. Rule #5: You Must Keep It On the Market Until Sold. “It” in the rule refers to your story or novel. In 1947, when Heinlein wrote this rule, for the most part the only markets were pulp magazines. Paperbacks were just gaining strength and hardback publishers were very, very selective. So all short stories and most novels were sold to pulp magazines, and the few digest magazines that were starting up, and maybe to the slick magazines such as Saturday Evening Post, if you were good and well-known as a writer. But as with…
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Finishing Off The Year
FINISHING OFF THE YEAR Hope everyone made it through the night and are starting this new year with some writing and fun. ——- THE DAY Standard running around to banks and such. Lots of fun. (Nope…just kidding on that.) Then walked with two other professional writers and talked about this past year and the coming year. I’m pretty happy with the 1.2 million plus words I wrote last year. As Kris said in her blog about how writers are focusing back on writing this year, my focus is to increase my writing in 2016 as well. So are the other two writers I was walking with. It really is going…
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Heinlein’s Rules: Chapter Seven
HEINLEIN’S RULES Five Simple Business Rules for Writing CHAPTER SEVEN On to the fourth rule. Rule #4: You Must Put It On the Market. “It” in the rule refers to your finished and not rewritten story or novel. On the surface, this rule is very, very basic. And yet it was this rule that I had the most problem with over the years. This and Rule #5. Old Traditional Publishing World What Heinlein meant when he wrote this business rule in 1947 was that you had to send your story to some market that would buy it, publish it, and pay you money. When I started with these rules…
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More Year End Stuff
More Year End Stuff Kris and I went to see Star Wars. No I will not talk about it here or anywhere for that matter. (grin) Stay safe on New Year’s Eve. It’s amateur night with the drunks. Dangerous out there. ——- THE DAY After the movie we had a nice late lunch. Then I headed up to WMG offices to work on year-end stuff there. Then home to cook dinner and get my 10,000 steps done. Haven’t missed since November 11th. Then in here to get the new chapter of Heinlein’s Rules up. Then after some television, I started into the big switch of computers. I bought a brand…
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Heinlein’s Rules: Chapter Six
HEINLEIN’S RULES Five Simple Business Rules for Writing CHAPTER SIX Continuing with the third rule. Rule #3: You Must Refrain From Rewriting Unless to Editorial Order. I wanted to go at this rule one more time to make sure I’ve been clear. Most of the time, in this modern world, rewriting is when you do a sloppy first draft with the intent of “letting it sit” (dumbest thing I have ever heard) and then “fix it” later. That assumes, of course, that your story is broken. And that you have suddenly gained a vast amount of new skills since doing the story the first time. I will often get comments…
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Working On Year End Stuff
Year End Stuff Mostly a normal day. Dialog workshop announcement below. New chapter of Heinlein’s Rules book above this. And for fun I looked at how many words I wrote so far this year. Ready?…. 1,257,000 original words. 711,000 of that was fiction and nonfiction. The rest was e-mail and blogs. I did not count replies on the various comment sections I moderate. That’s Pulp Speed Two. (Pulp Speed One is over a million words, Pulp Speed Two is over 1.2 million words. Pulp Speed Three is over 1.4 million.) ——- THE DAY Got a bunch of walking in and planning for 2016, did workshop stuff, cooked dinner, got…
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Heinlein’s Rules: Chapter Five
HEINLEIN’S RULES Five Simple Business Rules for Writing CHAPTER FIVE Moving now to the third rule. Rule #3: You Must Refrain From Rewriting Unless to Editorial Order. So this is the rule that gets all the attention here in the modern world, even though it is the first two rules that stop most want-to-be writers. And the fourth rule also stops writers who can finish something from becoming professional writers. Everybody in this modern world looks for ways and reasons around this rule. That’s how ingrained the modern myth of rewriting is in our culture. One good thing right off about this rule. If you don’t rewrite, just get it…