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MOTIVATIONAL MONDAY
We Finally Pulled the Trigger… Motivational Mondays have been launched on Teachable and our now live. Kris and I have been talking and planning this for some time and we think it’s going to be great fun and very valuable for those getting it. Here is how it works: Every Monday on Teachable (actually Sunday night late so you can view them on Monday morning), Kris and I will put up at least three videos on some motivational topic or another concerning writing, publishing, and all the stuff around writing and publishing. See the partial list below of topics. The idea is to help writers stay on track, get unstuck,…
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More On Challenges For 2022
A Goal vs A Challenge… Right about now, here on the 6th of December, it is a great time to start looking at the year ahead. For many writers, setting a challenge is not a good idea. But in any business or art, setting a goal can really help. So tonight I thought I would talk about the difference between a goal and a challenge. I believe both are good. And by setting a challenge, you are also setting a goal. But often goals are not challenges. Last night I listed four things that I thought were important when deciding on a challenge. They are: 1… It actually has to…
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Some Clean Up… And Writing Stuff
Special Workshop Codes Are Out… First, if you signed up for a special workshop in the last Kickstarter, either Making Place a Character or How to Use the Rule of Three, the links and codes are out. If you were signed up for one or both of those workshops, and didn’t get a letter from me with the Subject Line “Special Workshop” (or Workshops), please check your spam filter over the next day or so. If not there, no worries, we have time. Write me and I will get you the codes when I get back later in the week. Second, refunds on the Diving Game are slow, and I…
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Next Chapter Will Be Coming
Right Now I Am Having Fun Writing… I will get to the next chapter of Wet Blanket Reality about traditional publishing next week. The next chapter is all the things you have to do to get an agent. That will be a fun one, I promise. Also today I got forwarded a link to an article that might be right up there with the most stupid article I have ever read about publishing. All stuff that I am pointing out as really bad and stupid, this article manages to turn it into positive to help writers. I just read it with my mouth open and thinking about how writers trapped…
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Ground Effect
With Writing… Basically, ground effect with airplanes is a feeling that the plane pushes away from the ground as it gets closer, can just float over the ground once it is in the air. It has a lot of technical stuff about what causes it, but I don’t really care. What I am talking about is that feeling that it is easier to keep writing day after day when you have been writing day after day. In other words, easier to keep the writing aloft than stop and then have to restart. Stay floating over the runway instead of letting the wheels hit and coasting to a stop. A ton…
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Surveys Out for Kickstarter
Very Quickly This Time… The surveys were sent out today for the Spade/Paladin Kickstarter campaign. If you didn’t get one… — First check your spam filter. — If not there, check your other email address in case you used that for Kickstarter. — If not there, just hold on until Monday. It might appear as email sometimes does. — If you were a backer of the Space/Paladin kickstarter and your pledge went through all right, and you still did not get your survey by MONDAY or TUESDAY, contact Josh at WMG Publishing and he will fire you another one. Subscriptions@wmgbooks.com ON ANOTHER MATTER… Today I managed to get another 4,000…
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Ends at 7 PM Tonight
West Coast Time… At every award level you get a great new book from Kris called TEN LITTLE FEN. And every backer at $5 and up gets seven stretch goal rewards. That includes seven new books and six new Pop-Up writing classes for no extra charge. But the real key is you don’t want to miss the last few hours of getting two special workshops that will never be available anywhere else again. Only through this campaign. So here one last time is the information about the two special workshops and the six Pop-Up writing classes. This ends in just hours. Spade/Paladin Kickstarter Campaign. EXCLUSIVE TO THIS CAMPAIGN — How…
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Fantastic Writing Advice by Keith Johnstone
Maybe Worth Really Looking At… I found it amazing. This advice came from a blog post Johnstone did back in 2020. Sadly, since that time he has done very few. He is 87 years of age and no longer teaching as far as I can tell as well. But he is an actor, a writer, and is known as one of the pioneers of improvisational theater. In essence, he is amazing. One of his many thoughts in this random blog post of misc. stuff was called Five Ideas. You can read the entire post here… https://www.keithjohnstone.com/post/_misc I was sent this part of the post and think it is amazing. Thanks,…
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Learning is Forever…
In Writing and Publishing… Kris and I were talking today on the way back from lunch about some of the writers who have just faded away. And the more we talked, the more we realized that we knew the answer on what happened to most of them. They all just stopped learning. They reached a level that they were happy with their writing and stopped learning for a dozen different reasons. That is flat deadly in just a few years. The reason I hear the most and understand the least is the fear that learning something will upset some perfect balance in their writing and they will never sell again.…
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Nine Years
Talking About the Power of a Streak… Nine years ago today, 3,285 days ago, I started a blogging streak. The idea was to blog about something, anything every day. (I had been doing a few blogs before that on the Star Trek boards and so on.) No excuses. Traveling, sick, computer failures, other more important things to do. None of that mattered. Blog had to be done. And for some reason that got into my DNA and now every night Kris even asks me if I got a blog done. As with all streaks, I had other motives at the start and never, in a billion years, did I think…