Thinking of a Challenge For Myself…
50 Years Needs to Be Celebrated…
Sold my first two short stories 50 years ago this year.
Actually I sold them in the late fall of 1974. In May of 1974, I was a head golf professional at a Palm Springs Country Club. I would quit that job in July and head back to college at the University of Idaho in September.
Two months later I had sold two short stories and a bunch of poems. So now, 50 years later, I want to celebrate.
I did the 50 years of learning from mentors class on Teachable and the 50 years of learning from mistakes will start on May 7th. But I want to do a little more, so thinking of challenging myself.
From my birthday in early November to my birthday the following year, I think I might like to try to publish 50 major books.
Now what is a major book? I have always followed how Asimov and others counted their published books.
Major books are…
- — Novels
- — Novellas
- — Story Collections
- — Anthologies or Issues of a Magazine I edit with my name on the cover
- — Omnibus
Counting that way I am beyond 850 major books published so far.
I am just thinking about this challenge and will need a lot f help from WMG Publishing. But just thinking about it now and if I do it I might set it up as a form of challenge as well that can push some of you to get some books out and published. If nothing else it will show you how real crazy is done.
Or really crazy might be to do 50 short story collections to celebrate the 50 years and another 25 major books so I publish 75 major books in the year before my 75th birthday. Hmmm, that might be a real challenge.
But in the meantime, in the workshop sale, while it is still going on, get the two classes about learning over 50 years. I think they will be worth your while.
8 Comments
Kerridwen Mangala McNamara
Wow!
You are super inspiring!
(Wish I’d started publishing at 24 instead of 49… I was sending stories out, but Life got in the way and I wasn’t brave enough then to really push.)
dwsmith
I was actually 42 by the time I really started. I will explain how that is in the “50 years of Mistakes” videos.
blitchfield
How large a story collection would be considered a major book?
Around 40,000 total words?
dwsmith
Oh, six to ten stories is usually enough. Actually five story collections work great as well.
Mark Kuhn
That Tour deForce you pulled off a few years back, “Stories from July” was full of awesome stories. It would be really nuts if someone tried to do that 12 months in a row, wouldn’t it?
dwsmith
Honestly, thinking about that at some point. I did over a 100 short stories in 100 days. I think I can do it.
Kate Pavelle
The 50 collections would make you publish all those stories from previous challenges! That’s all kinds of genius, actually. How many Kickstarters would that require, and in what time span? If you do it, I will be curious to see your strategy (and taking notes.) I wonder whether Kickstarter would do a specially structured series for you?
dwsmith
All things to decide… Great fun…