For those of you working on streaks that MADE IT, send me your information anytime over the next five days or so, until Feb 5th. After that, hold the information until March 1st. That way I don’t get so confused.

And please put the words Writing Streak on the title line of the e-mail. I’ll update all five days. And if I missed anyone this last month, just let me know as well.

If you missed, or haven’t yet made a streak under the rules, just keep firing and let me know in March if you hit a streak.

No streaks for me this month, and the weight loss is a pound behind as well. I wasn’t really trying for any writing streak, since I had a ton of work that was scattered that I had to finish. More than likely I’ll get a streak going when I finally fire up on a book. Right now I’m doing proposals and first chapters for two different series for a publisher and waiting on a final answer for a third series. And a 4th series is out there with possible offers as well, so lots of stuff mixing. Interesting, but frustrating at the same time.

And none of that is counting the books I have out on my own on the market not asked for by a publisher. Three different paranormal romance comedy series at a numbers of different publishers. One is fully written, two just have chapters and proposals. Actually, they are science fiction series, but slanted to romance and under three pen names. I have a large thriller I wrote a few years back finally out on the market as well. I think there’s another one or two books out there, but I forget. My records aren’t in front of me at the moment and there’s just too much going on, which is great.

But in the same breath, I’d love to just settle in and write a couple of different series for a while. It’s fun jumping around on a number of projects, but at the same time just writing on one project over a longer period of time is fun too. But that will come.

As I did in December with goals, in February I’m going to do a series of blogs on writing again. Stay tuned. And coming on February 11th, I think, I will have a blog on the Novelist Inc. web site as a guest blogger. For those of you who don’t know, Novelists Inc. is a writer’s organization for novelists. You must have published at least two novels to join. I am not a member because I tend to not join things, but I support the organization. If you can join, do so.

My blog is about writing a book fast, really fast, if you have to. I mean an entire novel in under three weeks, or two weeks, or even under one week. And let me give you a hint about the blog: I don’t speed up my writing speed.

Also we’re going to be adding a few more workshops into the mix this summer, and maybe one time bringing back the general weekend workshop people called The Kris and Dean Show, which is for writers of all levels. Basically on that one we cover all of fiction publishing and how to break into the business of fiction writing in one long weekend. We even show you how to write fiction and the structure of fiction. And we keep the workshop cheap. I’ll announce the workshops here when they are firm.

So here we go into a brand new month, a brand new week. A fresh start yet again.

Have fun and keep pounding those keys.

Cheers, Dean

Into week three of the new year. I have a hunch that many of you who are reading this are having some trouble right about now if you had a new year’s writing goal, or started a streak, or decided to lose weight, or whatever. Right about now, and over the next six weeks, things get tough. Life tends to get in the way, the pages mount slower than expected, the pounds don’t want to fall off like we hoped, and other things just sort of come in to take focus. Things like paying the bills in a down time, kids and school, that sort of thing.

This is the time to go back and look at some of the tricks I outlined back in December and in my last post that will help you keep going. But one thought will help you more than anything else in tough times or having a tough week where you missed.

The thought: Where do you want to be next December when you are looking back at this year?

Then, remember that and go and just focus on the coming week, nothing more. One week at a time, remember. One week at a time. Let the weeks just build up and forget the failures along the way.

So, how am I doing? Well, I had one clear weight loss goal, like half the rest of the planet. In the next 40 weeks I want to be down 40 pounds. That will put me back at my old weight when I turned 30 and ran a marathon. I hope to train for a marathon over the next two years, but with my bad skiing and golf and running knees, I don’t dare do too many miles at this weight. (I can run a few miles without stopping, but am always sore the next day because of the extra weight.) So my focus was one pound per week, no big changes, just more moving around and eating less. So far I’m down two pounds in two weeks, right on schedule. Or as my friend I’m checking in with and doing this with calls it (remember, checking in with another person was a trick that helps), my number is 38. When my number hits zero I have made it. His number is 35. He got off to a great start.

Writing, well I didn’t really set any writing goals to start on January 1st. I have some books I’m working on, and a proposal and chapters for three mystery novels that needs to get out, and I want to get more proposals in the mail for books, including a couple of sf books and a couple of humor paranormal romances that I want to write. And I’m waiting word on a thriller project that might come through. So the writing is moving forward, and since it’s my main job, I really didn’t set too many goals for it this year, other than making more money and writing more books. Of course, I’d love to get to the 100 book sold mark this year, but that’s out of my control. All I can do is write proposals and go after projects and see how it turns out.

One interesting challenge I had with myself was concerning eBay of all places. Kris and I have set a goal around here to slowly get these places in shape. And slow is the word on that. She’s slowly putting a 25,000 volume nonfiction library into shape that takes up most of one building, and she’s also working on moving all her extra copy issues down into a major storage area/library we built last summer in one room. When you have published as many hundreds and hundreds of stories and books as Kris has, not counting overseas editions, the extra copies take up rooms. While she’s doing all that, I’m cleaning up slowly a vast amount of books and toys and comics, deciding what I want to keep and what I don’t want to keep.

And there comes eBay into the picture. I have a person hired to do all the shipping and tough work for me, so I’m having a blast putting stuff up on eBay and every day another box of stuff goes out the door full of things for my shipper to ship. So in January, I thought it would be fun to see just how many things I can list at the same time. I reached 840 auctions at once today and I think I can go higher, although it’s starting to take up too much time, even with help on the packing and shipping side of things. But since it’s playing with toys and books and comics, I’m just having too much fun while I get rid of stuff and get this building organized.

Of course, in the first 16 days of this year, we had two major power outages here on the coast, standard for the winter. Both killed entire evenings of my work. But right now, while the rest of the country freezes, it’s been over 60 here and sunny. Nice for the middle of January. I love this coast, power outages and all.

I was going to also talk about marketing a little here, but this has gone on too long already and I have a few novel chapters to finish, so better get to it.

Hang in there, everyone, on the goals. And if you have questions, just e-mail me.

Cheers, Dean

I sure hope those of you who started working toward your dreams this January 1st have had a good first week. Chances are life got in the way in one way or another and it was only partially successful and you’re feeling worried a little. Or life let you alone and you accomplished wildly over what you hoped and you’re feeling great.

One week down. Now comes the interesting times. Week #2, and then week #3 and so on. Remember, the key on this is to keep your focus down and tight and if something happens, just start over the next week. But wow is that easier said than done.

A suggestion I didn’t make earlier. (You have read all the goal blogs in December, right?) Reward yourself a little when you have a good week. Something small, yet fun and important in some aspect of your life.

For example: You really love ice cream bars but don’t allow yourself to have them due to weight, expense, whatever. Stock in a box of them in the fridge and them when your week is done and you had a good week, you hit your page and mailing goals, give yourself an ice cream bar. Make it a big deal, and enjoy it. You missed your goal, open the fridge, look at the box of ice cream bars, then close the door and say, “Next week.”

You get the idea. Rewards are a nifty thing and something small can be very meaningful at times.

Now, as I promised before I got ten posts on doom and gloom in publishing and got fed up, I want to talk about something that could really hurt your goal and the eating of those ice cream bars. The feeling that you are writing crap.

If you’re not feeling it yet, you will. So listen up.

First off, this is normal for every writer I have ever met. Period. No exceptions. We all feel, at one point or another in a project that our writing sucks, that there is no point in going on, that we should stop and take up plumbing as a profession.

A normal feeling, and one that stops most beginning writers from finishing stories, and stops even more writers from mailing their stories to editors. And this feeling really, really plays into the rewriting myth, making beginning writers “polish” their story until their is nothing left original or different in it.

As I said, this is normal and a feeling you have to live with and get used to and figure out ways around. And, of course, once you figure out one way around for one novel or story, the feeling will come up in a different way in the next novel, and you have to come up with yet another way around it. Sounds impossible, doesn’t it? At times it feels that way.

I’ve written and published close to one hundred novels now and this feeling has hit me in every book. No exceptions. And it is almost always around the first third point in the writing. Charles de Lint did a great article on this and if I could remember where it was, I’d send you there.

Kris and I call it the “Third Point Wall.” One of us will walk into our home from one of our offices muttering about how the book has crashed and we might need to start over. The other person asks simply “Where are you in the book?” After all these books for both of us, that’s usually enough to bring on a few swear words and the writer then turning and going back to his or her office to keep going. It’s happened so many times, it’s a joke, but it still happens.

Why does this point happen? Simple, actually, when you step back and look at it. When you start a large new book, you’re excited and scared. The fun is working the opening, getting the characters established, the plot moving, and everything in its place. That usually takes about a third of the book, to really set up everything.

Suddenly, you surface and days and weeks have gone by, everything in the book is set, the excitement of starting a new project has passed, and all that lies ahead is an impossible number of pages, a bunch of stuff in the plot you don’t yet know how to fix, or if you outline, a ton of outline left that looks daunting and just not much fun.

The excitement, the fun, the reason for doing the book is all gone. And all that’s left is a bunch of words that you are convinced are crap.

What you have done at that moment is stepped back, looked ahead at the huge project left, and your mind has said you “You can’t eat that elephant.” (If you don’t understand what that means, go back to the beginning of these goal blogs in early December and read forward.)

How do you get through this point? Sit down, put your butt in the chair, focus only on the next scene ahead of you in the book, and write it, and then repeat. Once scene at a time, not allowing yourself to look at the entire project. And thus, back to where this post started. Focus down, only on one week, only on one scene. Nothing more. Get the page count done and then start over, getting it done again.

Will that scene feel awful? Yes. Will it feel like you are writing crap? Yes. Will it be hard to force out? Yes. So give yourself permission to look back at it when you get done. If it really is that bad, you can toss it out and redraft it then, after the book is done. Tell yourself that right now your job is to hit your weekly page goal and nothing else.

Chances are, you won’t be able to tell by the time you reach the end of the book where you had this small crash. The writing from your feeling “excitement” early scenes will be the same as the writing in the “pulling teeth it’s all crap” scenes in the center and the writing will be the same as the “white hot writing” scenes you will do when you are close to the end of the book.

The key is follow your goals, get your weekly page counts done, and never look up at the elephant you are eating one bite at a time. Just stay focused on what happens next to your character(s) and getting it down.

And warn those around you about this point coming, the point one day when you will come from your writing muttering and saying there’s no point in going on. Have those around you just tell you to stop looking at the big picture and get the pages done.

Eventually, the end will come, the book will be finished, and you will not remember the rough days because the fact that you have finished the book will just overwhelm it all. Trust me on that as well. Just as this third point crash always happens, it always feels good to finish a novel. Always.

So it is now week two. Focus only on the short term weekly goal and have fun.

Anyone got any questions, just fire them to me.

Cheers, Dean

Over the last few months I’ve heard lots and lots of the rumors about how this awful thing or that awful thing was going to happen to publishing and how writers were never going to sell books and how publishers were never going to buy new books, and… and… and…

Sigh. (I must be getting old because I remember at least ten other times when this exact thing happened in publishing. I sort of believed it the first time, never again.)

So instead of talking about how we all hit that spot in our stories where we think they are crap and thus stop, I need to talk a minute or two about the business of publishing.

First off, most writers out there have no clue how really, really large this business is. Simply walking into a BEA main room gives you some sense, but that’s no where near all of the size. And numbers about gross income and numbers of books sold every week or month or year just don’t sink into people’s minds. Honestly, I have no idea how to really describe how really, really large this business is in any fashion that will make it real to you.

Maybe a good way to understand the size would be to walk down a major street in New York City and look up at a sixty or seventy story building, and realize every floor, every office in that building is one publishing company, and more likely than not, that is only one of a number of buildings, or parts of buildings owned by the huge company, that also owns smaller companies, and those smaller companies own smaller companies still, and then there are imprints and book lines inside each company, sometimes only a few, sometimes a hundred or more.

And that’s only one publishing company. Scattered all over New York, and in Europe, and in Toronto, and in many other countries are more buildings just like that one, all full of people working in publishing. Because I have had the luck with my almost one hundred books to work with many, many publishers and imprints, I’ve been inside a lot of those buildings over the years. Still stuns me at times, to be honest.

So, let’s drop down to a size we can all understand and grasp. One tiny little imprint in one of these major companies, lost in the mists of levels of publishers, vice presidents, company names and such. This one imprint, let’s call it IMPRINT, has a monthly list of five books. Got that. 60 books a year. IMPRINT takes up about three small offices in one major building, plus it will mix with other imprints on sales force and art department and such. Maybe six offices total (in the huge building) assigned to this imprint, not counting the assistants sitting in the hallways. Next to it down the hall is another imprint, and next to that is another imprint, and above and below it are other imprints and book lines, and so it goes. Starting to get the size a little?

Now to justify its very existence, IMPRINT must continue to publish 5 books per month, every month, and generate a set amount of income and cover a set amount of overhead. Got that? It flat can’t stop or the bean counters upstairs will come to attention, heads will roll, people will hit the streets and another imprint will start up to take it’s place that will earn the needed bottom line. Those offices, under one imprint or another, one editor or another, must put out five books per month.

So, here comes the big bad economy issue. For a few months, things are tight, and it looks tight into the coming year as well. But people still need entertainment, people will still buy books, and by the end of 2009 the number of books bought, the gross sales, will once again have gone up as they have for decades and decades and decades.

So, from on high in these monster companies comes the word that things need to be tightened. Each publisher looks around and finds places to cut a corner, a way to combine functions, a way to make an editor work even harder than they already are, if that’s possible. That saves a little.

But where does some real savings come from right now? Cash flow, of course.

Take our sample IMPRINT line of books, putting out five per month. How do they cut some money right away? They can’t cut a book per month, because that would cut their income and send them to a certain death in front of the bean counter’s suicide squad. Nope, can’t do that. But they can slow down buying.

Now I heard a chorus of “Huh?” out there. How can they slow down buying while not cutting the number of books? Simple, actually.

Books that are coming out right now have, more than likely, been on the schedule for two years. That’s right, IMPRINT is working two years out with purchasing. By today, IMPRINT’s 2009 schedule should be very, very solid, all books in or coming in, sales meetings done for a large part of the year. The editors will have a large part, if not almost all of 2010 schedule already set as well, and are working on 2011 schedule, buying books, putting in second books in contracts, and so on. Some 2012 books are even penciled in.

And thus, right now there’s room to flex, work a little closer to deadlines, worry about catching up the extra slack later, as the money flow eases. Publishers and editors do this all the time and in the short term it makes a real difference to a publisher working against a 4% margin of profit.

So what does the rumblings come down to the writers sound like? Editors are not buying much right now. And thus PANIC sets in, writers make stuff up, that’s their job description, but now we have writers on networks making stuff up from rumors, with no real understanding of the real business. Of course editors are slowing down a little at the moment. It’s called cash flow. Duh.

But IMPRINT must turn out five books per month. When they buy those five books has some flex in the schedule and the cash flow, that’s all, and right now the companies are using that flex a little. They might not buy that great book for the 2011 slot, but instead sit on it or if the book is only just good enough, pass on it hoping to find something better. But over the long haul, they still have to have five books per month.

Will there be lay-offs and cut backs in publishing? Yes, and they will make news. But all the lay-offs will go to streamlining something, getting rid of dead wood in other places, cutting a line that’s losing too much money every month (to replace it shortly with another new line or imprint). All this will happen, but keep remembering how really large this business is. And imprints and lines of books come and go all the time, even in good times. They just don’t make the “splash” in the good times as they do when the fear mongers are pushing every bad thing as news.

Remember, the only way this monster business can make money is put out books, lots and lots and lots of books. And writers have to write those books, since we are the supply side of things.

So stop listening to the doom sayers and go back to work. Publishing will continue right on, changing as it always does, but moving forward in a very study pace. Your job is to stay on top of the changes, change with it, not ahead of it or behind it, and save the making stuff up for your fiction.

Cheers, Dean

Happy New Year, everyone. I hope the year is starting off well for everyone.

I have posted the first month’s Streak Listings on the Streak page.  Feel free to jump into the fun at any time, or if you have an active or retired streak you would like to have listed, just let me know. We’re in this for the long run, years and years.

The next planned blog here in a few days is about that point in writing we all fight through that stops many of us from finishing a story. I call it the “Everything’s Shit” point in the story or novel. Since many people are starting stories today, I figure that’s a good thing to talk about next to keep many of us going to the end, maybe me included.

Stay dry and warm.

Cheers, Dean