• Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    New Pop-Up Coming

    How Your Business Can Survive a Downturn… It will be Pop-Up #19. Available in a few days. It will be put inside of the Decade Ahead First Quarter class. We had always planned on putting it in there, with Pop-Up #18 in February and this new one in March. But we did not expect what is happening now when we planned this. Scary times. This Pop-up will help. So the Pop-Up #19 will be available in the Decade Ahead First Quarter or as a stand-alone or in the bundles for Pop-Ups. I will announce it here when it is posted. Honestly, the best deal is the Decade Ahead Bundle, get…

  • Cave Creek,  Challenge,  Writing in Public

    What Is Writing In Public?

    Got That Question Twice Today… Because I mentioned it when talking about writing the first Cave Creek novel. So even though I will show this and talk about it later this week when I start the novel, here is what I mean. I have, over time, basically did a chronicle here of my day, most of the details, and how much writing I got on a certain project. I did that when I wrote the novel in five days while traveling, and that is the name of the book that came out of the blog posts. And I started the practice when I wrote a novel in ten days as…

  • Cave Creek,  On Writing,  publishing

    Some Shared World Fun!

    Cave Creek… Tomorrow, if all things work, a Kickstarter campaign will be firing up called Cave Creek. It’s going to be a fun one and I will announce it here when it launches, either tomorrow or Friday early. One thing to know. The Shared World Class is still open for sign-ups. It is where writers will be not only learning to write for shared worlds (and have been getting background for a bunch of months), but writing for Cave Creek anthologies. I will also be writing a Cave Creek novel in public, meaning I will keep track of the writing here, out in public, on this site, as I do…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Got a Couple Letters

    About the New Pop-Up… Called “Nothing’s Good Enough.” Basically, this is about how critical voice creeps in when you least expect it. And ways to identify what is happening and stop it, get back to having fun. We put it as the first Pop-Up in the Decades Ahead Class as well as a regular Pop-Up you can buy directly. Why in the Decades Ahead Class in February? Because right about now is when this evil little part of critical voice starts showing its head and mucking around with your New Year’s resolution. One of the questions from someone who hasn’t taken the Pop-Up was if it would help the critical…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    February Workshops Starting

    That’s Right, Starting Tuesday and Wednesday… So here is the list of the February 6-week workshops and descriptions about each class. And a link to each one. A really good group of workshops this month. All workshops are on Teachable. February Regular Workshops Class #11… Feb 4th … Endings in FictionClass #12… Feb 4th … Attitude in FictionClass #13… Feb 4th … Writing RomanceClass #14… Feb 4th … Writing with SpeedClass #15… Feb 4th … Teams in FictionClass #16… Feb 5th … Depth in WritingClass #19… Feb 5th… Information Flow Descriptions of Workshops #11… WRITING FICTION ENDINGS Understanding how to end novels and short stories in every genre. An old…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    Lifetime Workshops

    And Other Nifty Things Such as Mentoring… I wanted to do a post here to let everyone know what was possible in the mass of workshops and lectures we have on Teachable. Lifetime Workshop Subscription… As more and more workshops and classic workshops and special workshops came on board over the last few years, we offered this. It has enormous advantages since you can do workshops at your own pace, are automatically signed up for new workshops, and can go through workshops that have been retired, yet still have value. This has over $17,000 in workshop value and the price is $3,000. Lifetime Lecture Subscription This is a subscription to…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    Saturday Night

    Fun stuff… I will talk tomorrow night about why only seven short stories are turned in over six days from over 45 writers writing this week for the anthology workshop. The rest all have less than 23 hours to the deadline. And I know exactly why that has happened this week. I caused it. I love messing with writers for lesson’s sake. (evil grin) I also just posted the second video in the Publishing Challenge about what I did this week on the publishing side. And in the Novel Great Challenge, I posted the second week’s video there about my writing this last week. I will be doing that in…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Lost Five Challenge Writers

    Five Short-Story-Per-Week Writers… They didn’t make it through the holiday season. And actually, that is fewer than I would have expected to lose. Middle of the winter, flu and cold season, holiday, travel, and who knows what else. A ton of reasons to not complete a story in a week, or even think about writing for a few weeks. And this year, with the holidays smack in the middle of the week so none of us had a clue if it was Monday, Tuesday, Friday, or what? Sunday deadline just seemed alien to many, me included. And what was amazing is that all five writers that dropped out over the…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    All Focus On The New Year

    Everything Kris and I Are Doing is Focused on 2020 and Beyond… That focus on the new year seems to be taking up a ton of our time and effort over the last week. Tonight, on occasion, I heard swearing coming from Kris’s office because she was focusing on putting her calendar system for 2020 together. It is extensive. And complex. And she has been doing it for all of the thirty-plus years I have known her. And I really appreciate that she does the organization because, to be honest, I depend on her a lot to tell me when we are scheduled to do something here in Vegas. That…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    The Decade Ahead

    Four New Classes To Help You Get Through 2020… …And to Plan For 2029 You have been creating all the stories and novels. Getting them out to readers, promoting them, then moving on to the next story. Great! But how do you keep that going? How do you make sure you have a successful year, and at the same time plan for the new decade ahead? In fact, how do you even plan in a realistic way that will help you long term? In other words, how to keep going in 2020 and where would you like to be in 2029? These four quarterly classes will help you with that.…