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Quick Update On My Word Count…
This is for Kris’s Motivation Challenge… I sat my total high, especially for starting off mostly cold, and with my having to stay focused on my own publishing challenge to hit that in the next six months. I knew it was high. I needed the focus, just as Kris needed the focus when she came up with this challenge. So I am now working on a brand new Cold Poker Gang novel titled at the moment CHECK RAISE. If I was on schedule, I would be around 4,000 words with a 7,000 word goal this week by Sunday night. I am just over 3,000 words, so feeling good about the…
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Learn to Listen…
If You Can Hear Yourself, You Make Better Decisions… This last week I had a decision to make about getting my writing restarted. Kris had come up with this great summer challenge idea to keep her focused on her writing through the summer. It is called the Kris Summer Motivation Challenge and I have written about it a number of times and yes, there still is six spots open. Sign up on Teachable. Information in previous blogs. So my decision as to what to do with the challenge for me was three-sided. 1… Was it too early in the organizing and publishing process to bring the writing back in? 2……
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I Am Going for the Kris Challenge…
Still Open for Signing Up… Kris and I are offering the Kris Motivation Challenge Seminar, with two motivation videos every week (30 total videos) and three webinars. Jump in and make sure you stay focused, even if your family is taking a trip, you can write in a notebook or on a laptop. Or get your words for the week done ahead. The focus in the key, and in the videos Kris and I will be giving a ton of motivation tips on how to stay in the writing, even when the garden is calling, the pool is waiting, and the hamburgers on the grill smell wonderful. You don’t have…
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Kickstarter Live!
MY STORIES HEADED INTO THE WORLD! FIVE SCIENCE FICTION COLLECTIONS by Dean Wesley Smith Can’t begin to tell you how happy this makes my creative voice to finally have my short stories started out into the world. Amazing, just amazing, and I want to thank you ahead of time anyone who decides to back this. Thank you. This is my 60th Kickstarter campaign and we already have a “Project We Love” from Kickstarter. Really cool. This is the start of me getting out a bunch of my short stories finally. (Story in the introduction as to what happened.) The base of this campaign is five science fiction 10-story collection. But…
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Short Story Organization…
I Am Slowly Winning the Battle… I think I have most of my short stories that I want to move into the future on my spreadsheet now. Maybe I will find another thirty or so, but for now I am happy. A whole bunch of stories are just dropping into deep storage. And at the moment I am not reprinting any of my early short sales that I sold to different markets because I wrote them on a typewriter and I see no reason to bother with them. (Yes, I know how to scan, but again, no point at this time.) Only exception is my story that was in Writer’s…
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Time of Great Forgetting!!!
It’s That Time Again… The time when a bunch of other things take writer’s attentions, all seemingly more important, and the writing and publishing just sort of get forgotten. This is not a problem for professional writers, but for those coming in and striving to build a publishing business, this time can just make months vanish. And sometimes even professional writers need a focus to get through. Kris and I have been talking about this for a few weeks now, and she has come up with a really fun idea I will talk a about here in a few days when all the details are worked out. I think it…
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A Writer Thing…
Watching People… Since I sometimes don’t get out of the condo for entire days, I took the opportunity to go with Kris tonight to the Strip. That’s right, the Strip on a Saturday night. Not a place I would normally ever think of going, but Kris had a concert in Caesar’s Palace and I offered to drive her and explore Caesar’s Palace, one of the only major casinos I had never been in, even back in my team card days. So since it was a really nice evening, we parked at the Wyn and walked. Lots and lots of people around 7pm. Very crowded. (In fact the rumor of how…
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WRITING STORY BUNDLE!!
It Is Now Live!! 14 Exclusive Books and a Class! This is through Storybundle.com/writing and is amazing. Kris put it all together and it is amazing. Here is her introduction and details about Storybundle.com The 2026 Write Stuff Bundle – Introduction by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Long about January, I got the idea to do an all-exclusives StoryBundle. I knew we had our annual StoryBundle on writing coming up in April, and I figured if I asked nicely, I could get a dozen writers to come up with something new just for the bundle. Most of these writers blog already. They’re experts in their field, not just in fiction, but also…
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Exercise is Tough…
At Any Age… And especially when you are way out of shape. In 1980, as I was about to turn 30, I had gained a ton of weight in law school, so started to slowly run, just blocks at first and then more as each month went by until later that year I ran in my first full marathon. Did great for 20 miles, last six I try not to remember, but I finished. Over the years after coming to Vegas, I did a bunch of 5K and 10K runs and every year I finished the half marathon in the Rock and Roll Vegas Running Series. Some years I did…
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Working Over Another Writing Book…
Actually Three Books Into One… This weekend I went over and updated to 2026 “How to Write a Novel in Five Days While Traveling.” And today I went over and updated, “Writing a Novel in Seven Days.” Both books are a series of long blog posts detailing how to get ready for the challenge, day-by-day the process, the thinking, the attitude. And here in 2026 they stand up very well after I added a bunch and cleared up a few things. Next few days I will go over and update “How to Write a Novel in Ten Days.” I am hoping it holds together as well and then I will…