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Two Cool Things!
Really Worth Checking Out… The first is a brand new series of blogs/articles from professional writer Chris York, who writes mystery and science fiction, but these days mostly really amazing cozy mystery novels under a couple of names. Chris is married to writer J. Steven York and they have been our closest writer friends for more decades than any of us care to think about. Anyone who has come to a major workshop for WMG, either on the coast or here in Vegas, knows Chris. Anyhow, since the beginning of this year, Chris retired from her long-time day job as an accountant for a major hotel and condominium complex and…
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What Is The Point?
My Blog Tonight… No Point… I was going to write a blog tonight about something beginning writers do that I got three different notes about just in the last two days. One from a new professional writer who knows better, one from a full professional sending me a link that was funny, another was from a beginner asking me what I actually thought and how to do it. The subject: Tracking Rejection Times. So what do I actually think about doing that? I think it is just about the stupidest thing a writer can do. And then it dawned on me (while I was writing back to one of the…
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Just Hit 5th Stretch Goal!!!
How Cool Is That? I am, of course, talking about the Return of Boss Kickstarter campaign that is going on now. And we have a nifty sixth stretch goal and a seventh waiting in the wings. So I figured that with 5 days left (ends Thursday evening), and since we still have another stretch goal we are aiming for, I should detail out what every backer at the $5 level and above gets at this point in time. To start off, anyone, backer or not, can follow the link in the campaign story and get a free electronic copy of the novella “Diving into the Wreck.” That is the award-winning…
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Jennifer Lopez Quote…
From World of Dance… Kris and I liked watching both The Voice and World of Dance. It sure makes writing seem like an easy profession, and makes most want-to-be writers look like wimps, that’s for sure. But at times, in both shows, one of the superstars says something that makes Kris and I stop the show and write it down. On the show we were watching yesterday, there was a young dance group, a little ragged, but working hard and driven that was up against two professional dancers who were so good it was stunning. But they had no excitement, and one judge made a comment to them that they…
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1st Post… 9th Year
Going to Keep Going… Daily… See no reason to stop the blog streak now. But since my focus is changing some this year because of my upcoming 70th birthday this fall, I think I will add in the exercise part of things here at times. And maybe a little more on the writing updates. For example, I have a story to do tomorrow, two introductions to different book projects, and then two more stories to write. Then I will fire back on the Cave Creek novel and finish it. So writing is fun and jammed at the moment. The exercise, on my schedule, was to really ramp up today, August…
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Got to Have Help
Especially with Streaks… It is flat impossible to not have help with long streaks, either writing, exercising, or blogging as I talked about last night. For example, I help Kris with her streak of steps by asking at times, especially on days when she is tired or distracted, if she has her steps. Not nagging, just being a support. Tonight, because she knows I am still off-the-charts exhausted, she reminded me three different times about doing this blog. Not nagging, just helping out. And it means a great deal to me. I know a couple writers who had weekly story streaks going that had family asking if the story was…
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Decade Ahead
A Crazy Thing… Right now, one of the main conversations I am having with writers is how is this year going to turn out? No one has a clue. And we are all afraid to try to forecast anything in 2020, since this year started here in the States with an impeachment that didn’t hold and then gave free run for the same president to really screw us with this pandemic. So at the moment the States are a dangerous place to be as almost a thousand people a day are dying from this virus. That’s right… Every day. So it was a great, great idea in January of 2020…
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Changes In Publishing
A Glimpse of a Future As many of you know, I have been around and working in publishing and fiction writing professionally since 1987. Sold my first two short stories in 1974. Over the years, I have watched publishing change numbers of times. I knew the distribution collapse of the 1990s, caused by Safeway and invoicing, would alter publishing forever. And it did. And I watched as the Kindle changed everything in publishing and created the indie movement which is now the major part of publishing (even though traditional writers and publishers don’t want to think so.) And I have watched and wondered how this pandemic was going to change…
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More Organization
We’re Having a Sale… Everything on WMG Publishing Teachable site, including Lifetime Subscriptions and challenges, is half price. Simply hit purchase, then put in the code word… SummerSchoolSale and you will get what you want at half price. Lasts only until July 7th at 5 pm West Coast Time. While that is going on, I thought I would spend some days trying to give order to all the massive number of workshops, classic workshops, lectures, classes, and Pop-Ups we have. And the order I am trying to get this all into I decided to sort by areas of learning. So two nights ago I listed the top twenty workshops to…
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An Order To Workshops
Craft Courses First… I have a workshop curriculum that has been posted for a while, but since we are doing a half-price sale right now for everything on Teachable (see last post for details), I thought I would revamp the curriculum some and help writers decide what class to take next. Today I will do the foundation courses for craft. Tomorrow I’ll update the foundation courses for publishing, genre, and attitude. And the numbers are my suggestions on the order to take these workshops because many of them build on others. (Two types of workshops are included. Regular and Classic. It is a regular workshop offered monthly unless noted as…