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Today was a no-writing day. Instead, today was all about the kids. Off in the morning, intent on seeing a movie – which wasn’t out yet. The kids were sort of bummed, but we decided we’d shoot for the movie next week instead. I was secretly not really sad – because the movie they wanted to see was the silly penguins of Madagascar thing. It will be funny. I hope. Went off to Friendly’s for lunch. Also for planning. Needed to figure out something AWESOME to do. And we came up with some good ideas. We hit the Boston Aquarium …

Writing in Public, Too: NaNoWriMo Day 24 Read More »

If you haven’t been over there yet, check out www.deanwesleysmith.com. Dean’s the inspiration for this blog series, and has been doing the daily writing in public thing for over a year now. He’s doing something awesome this month. Instead of writing one novel (which he does every month anyway), he plans to write THREE novels of at least 40k words each. An awesome way to step up for a special challenge for NaNoWriMo. I think that’s what NaNo ought to be about, really: challenging yourself. For a novice writer, getting anything down on paper is a great challenge. For a …

Writing in Public, Too: NaNoWriMo Day 3 Read More »

Just leaving a quick note today, with a link to a good article. Sometimes, life does explodey things. Kris and Dean call these “life rolls”. Best advice is usually to stop, breathe, acknowledge them, and then prepare to step forward again. It was not a writing day today. Will try for one tomorrow, but no guarantees. Here’s the article. A good one. http://kriswrites.com/2012/04/25/the-business-rusch-one-phone-call-from-our-knees/

Today was a day off. Was still working the day job… But took an actual day off the writing. Watched my show with Susan, went out with a friend in the evening. Just took a night to relax. The writing will still be there tomorrow. And I think it’s wise to spend time on all the things that matter to you.       Totals for Day 13 Daily Fiction Wordcount: 0 words    Month to date fiction: 16900 words Daily Blog Post Wordcount: 84 words    Month to date blog posts: 7573 words

Today was a busy day. Aren’t they all? (grin) I rolled out of bed at about 9am. Not a work day, so not a problem. Spent the morning hanging out with the kids and wife. Helped her cook up a dish to bring to a party she was going to, and made chocolate chip cookies for the kids. Also checked email and did a few posts to LinkedIn. I’m not counting those toward writing totals. I value the LinkedIn discussions – they’re about publishing and writing, and educational – but they’re not something I can produce and publish. So I’m …

Writing in Public, Too: Day 1 – First Steps Read More »

Couple of days ago, author Chuck Wendig made this post on his blog: NOT EVERY WRITER WANTS TO BE A PUBLISHER This is something I see often enough: an author talks about losing a series or having some difficulties with a publisher or whatever, and someone from the crowd eventually says, “You should self-publish. We want more of you, the money’s better, we’ll support you. Plus, so many options! Amazon! Kickstarter! Bookflipper! Pub-Burger!” Sometimes it’s a polite suggestion, sometimes it’s double-barrel proselytization and they start spouting off “facts and figures” along with a dose of venom against the oppression of …

Reality Doesn’t Care Whether You Want To Be A Publisher Or Not Read More »

Couple of days ago, author Chuck Wendig made this post on his blog: NOT EVERY WRITER WANTS TO BE A PUBLISHER This is something I see often enough: an author talks about losing a series or having some difficulties with a publisher or whatever, and someone from the crowd eventually says, “You should self-publish. We want more of you, the money’s better, we’ll support you. Plus, so many options! Amazon! Kickstarter! Bookflipper! Pub-Burger!” Sometimes it’s a polite suggestion, sometimes it’s double-barrel proselytization and they start spouting off “facts and figures” along with a dose of venom against the oppression of …

Reality Doesn't Care Whether You Want To Be A Publisher Or Not Read More »

Way back, some of my first long fiction books were the Skylark and Lensmen series by Doc Smith. These were fun stories. By the time I read them, they were all in book form, of course. But originally, they were serialized in magazines. So were later works like Heinlein’s “Farmer in the Sky”, most of which first appeared in Boys Life. People would read a section of the story, and then have to wait a week, or often even a whole month, before they would get the next section of the story. Unfortunately, I don’t really remember those days. A …

Everything Old is New Again: Science Fiction Serials Read More »