Archive for February, 2009

Feb 28 2009

Streak Update Time

Published by dwsmith under Misc

I have another blog coming shortly in the “Paying the Price” series of blogs, but for the moment I thought I should remind everyone to let me know how their streaks are doing.  If you had an active streak going and missed, let me know that as well and I’ll move your streak over to the retired list.

I’ll work to update the streak page every night for the next five nights as information comes in.

I sure hope everyone is digging in and keeping going. We’re starting into the tough months, when the excitement of the new year has worn off, life starts taking more time as winter turns over to spring, and writing takes a back seat far too many times. Go back and read some of my posts in December and maybe something you read there will suddenly have a different meaning now that we’re plowing into March.

On the workshops front, we finished a wonderful weekend with Denise Little from Tekno books here.  Stories were stunningly good that everyone wrote.  A great time. Next week starts the first of two marketing workshops. Too late to get into the March one, but there is room for one more in the May marketing workshop. Take a look at the workshop page and e-mail me if you are interested.

The June Kris and Dean workshop also still has some room, as does the September workshop, so e-mail me if interested in those as well. And please put Workshops on the title line. Otherwise, I tend to have to dig the messages out of my spam filter.

Now, it’s back to a legal thriller for me.

Keep writing.

Cheers, Dean

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Feb 18 2009

Paying the Price

Published by dwsmith under Misc

Paying the Price is such an ugly term. Harsh, blunt, and yet general because it could mean a bunch of things. So for a moment here, I’m going to start off a new writing discussion topic with this nasty saying. Paying the Price.

A story first. Way back in the early days of my writing, I lived in a wonderful little college town called Moscow, Idaho. Great town, but a long, long ways from anything, so to get any kind of professional help for my writing, I had to travel some good distances.

Was I rich during those days? Oh, heavens, no. I lived with my second wife in a very small basement apartment under a bookstore I owned. (Roof was so low in that basement, I couldn’t stand up straight in most of it.) The bookstore was lucky to break even, so I also worked as a bartender and a bus driver to make ends meet while my wife worked at a local nursing home and went to school. I had already finished my last attempt at that final semester of law school and was never going back. Law was not my passion.

So with no money, somehow my wife and I managed to get me to Clarion, a six week long writing workshop in Lansing, MI in the hot summer of 1982. We dug up the over $2,000 fee plus the cost of travel and other costs, and she watched the bookstore and worked her nursing job while I was gone. We both felt it was worth it to my writing, so we paid the price.

Of course, that six weeks changed my life. I met Algis Budrys, Scott Card, Chip Deleney, and Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm. It turned out that in Eugene, Oregon, Damon and Kate ran a workshop every month in their living room for anyone invited, and after attending Clarion, I was invited, along with my friend and fellow writer, Nina Kiriki Hoffman. We were hungry for more learning, so once a month, without missing, even in snow storms, we drove the eight plus hour drive to Eugene, Oregon, went to the workshop for six hours, then drove the eight hours back to Idaho that same night because most of the time we didn’t have the money for a hotel room. We barely had enough money for sharing the gas.

We made that drive every month from the fall of 1982 to the spring of 1984. We didn’t miss a month and only wrecked one car one icy night. Nina and I paid the price to learn. No one forced us. We did it because we put writing first.

So, with that story being sort of obvious about this starting topic, I want to go on into what Paying the Price really means in writing. It’s going to take more than one article here, so stay tuned.

To start off with, it means focus.

For me, those early years of writing got me more and more focused on just writing fiction and nothing else. It didn’t matter what it took, what I needed to do, I was just like a first year law student. Nothing but writing really mattered. Period.

My wonderful and very supportive second wife and I split up, mostly because I had sort of left the planet and she rightfully wanted me to spend more time with her. We’re still friends and I still credit her with being fantastically supportive of my writing, but at that point I didn’t know how to balance a life and writing. And I didn’t know how to get her on board the trip. So I paid a nasty price there.

Instead of working in the law, or as an Architect, or as a golf professional, I took bartending jobs because they didn’t tax my brain so I could write. I lived in basically a slum apartment, about one tenth the size of my current office, because that allowed me to only work three or four nights a week and still have money to travel to conventions and pay the rent. And I got free food at work. I still love olives to this day. (Now understand, I was in my middle-late thirties during this time, a failure in everyone’s eyes.)

I would go home from bartending at 3 in the morning and write until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, then write the next afternoon until I had to go to work. I got fired from one job because my attitude sucked so bad. As the boss said, “You never seemed to really be here.” Yup, he was right.

I hung around with other writers and made new friends with them because by and large, they understood. I let old friends go who didn’t understand or who wanted to hold me back and didn’t celebrate when I made a sale. In other words, my life now is very, very different than it was before I started down this writing road because I changed it to this. I paid the price in friendships as well as not seeing movies, not keeping up on current trends, not owning a nice car.

Am I done paying the price? Oh, heaven’s no. If the money dries up, I might work something part time to make it through a tight spot, but if I really had to, I’d move back into a small apartment as long as I could still write. It’s still that important to me.

So here we all are, in tight economic times. Everyone has money issues. Everyone, in one form or another. And yet when Kris and I announced a couple new professional level workshops in July, 27 professional writers signed up almost over night, some saying they would make the money work somehow.

And we announced a couple of open workshops for writers of all levels (see below a few posts) and a bunch of people signed up at once for those. I have a hunch those people are well on the road as well.

I just looked down that list of names on the professional list and it’s not surprising to me that on that list is a bunch of published novelists, and a bunch who have sold stories and are on the verge of selling first novels. Every name on that list, without exception, has paid a price to get down the road in publishing to where they are, and the chance to keep learning this summer won’t be stopped for many of them because of a few bucks. Many of the names on my list will be on bestseller lists in the very near future, not because of anything Kris and I can teach, but because they have the right attitude, they are hungry for knowledge, and somehow, even in hard economic times, they will find a way to keep learning. And keep writing.

Okay, one more story. Many of you know I used to be a golf professional, and a pretty decent player. For my own reasons, I dropped out of chasing the main tour back in the early 1970’s and when the seniors tour started, I thought it would be fun to try for that. However, it turned out, I really wasn’t willing to pay the price.

Now, in my mind, I had always been a good golfer, but to get to that next level, I was going to have to give golf the focus I had given my writing, and day after day I just didn’t do that. I talked a good game and practiced some, but not enough. I didn’t go after the top help as I had done in writing, and when problems started to come up in my golf game, I didn’t work hard enough to fix them. A good friend of mine turned to me one day and said, “You really don’t want this. You aren’t willing to pay the price.”

Made me angry, let me tell you, because deep down inside, I knew he was right. I knew how to pay the price to become an national level writer, but I didn’t want to do that with my golf game. I wanted it to be handed to me, I wanted to have the fun, but not do the work. I was talented, wasn’t I? I could hit the ball a long ways, couldn’t I? Then why didn’t it just happen?

Nope. Doesn’t happen that way at a national level, not in golf, not in writing. We all have to pay the price. Nothing on a national level is ever handed to you.
I was willing to pay whatever price was needed for my writing and still am. I was not willing to do that for my golf game, even though I had been a talented golfer since I was ten.

If you find yourself always making the decision toward writing, always giving the writing more and more time, getting up early or staying up late or missing family time because of writing, then maybe you have the drive. If not, then maybe there is another place in the world, another activity that has your passion and love. Only you can really check in and find that place, that love.

I love the game of golf, I love playing golf, but my passion and all my desire is toward my writing.

The next issue of this little series will be about keeping your family on board this trip to becoming a professional selling fiction writer. It’s not easy, and frighteningly enough, they will also have to pay a price for your writing.

And other installments this month will talk about how to know your passion is what you think it is and how to deal with some of the issues that a passion toward writing will cause you.

Stay tuned, it’s going to be fun.

Cheers, Dean

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Feb 13 2009

Workshops and other topics

Published by dwsmith under Misc

It’s been an interesting response to my announcement that Kris and I are doing the Kris and Dean show again. If you don’t know what that is, check the post right below this one. Basically, it’s a workshop for all levels of writers, giving a complete overview of how to write selling fiction and what goes on in editor’s offices. We cover both novels and short stories and do a surprising amount of structure of story work. A very intense weekend, so if you know of anyone interested in becoming a fiction writer, tell them about it.

Why did I say this was an interesting response? Because I’ve got a lot of questions about it, far more than I expected, to be honest. And from all over the country. Now understand, we live on the Oregon Coast, two hours from Portland. Flights into Portland are fairly cheap, and the hotels here are really cheap, but that two hour drive from Portland to here has stopped a bunch of people, even though I’ve explained that there will be ride sharing.

So, if you have read my post below this one, and are interested, just write me for where to send the fee to. That confirms and holds your spot and gets you on the e-mail list that will form for the group to help share rides and other details. Both the June and September weekends will be a lot of fun.

On the cover column beside this, I also have a new short story out. Finally, something published I can claim here. I’ve published two novels in the last seven months, neither of them I can tell anyone about. The fun of secret pen names and ghost writing.

Anyway, the story, like a lot of my stories, is very strange.  Crime Spells, edited by Martin H. Greenberg an Loren L, Coleman in an anthology combining magic and crime. My story is titled “The Old Girlfriend of Doom” and stars one of my ongoing characters, Poker Boy. Poker Boy is a lower level super hero, middle-aged, with the same special powers that top poker players have, only advanced and super-sized a little. He travels around saving people and taking people’s money at the poker tables to pay for the travel. In this story, an old girlfriend comes to him to try to get help in saving her brand new breasts. It gets very strange from there, which is pretty standard for all Poker Boy stories.

I even have a full Poker Boy novel I have written called “The Slots of Saturn” which for some reason, I have never mailed anywhere yet. Got to do that real soon now.

In Crime Spells there are a ton of really fun stories, including stories by Mike Resnick, Michael A. Stackpole, Jay Lake, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Ilsa J. Bick, Steve Perry, Phaedra Weldon, Devon Monk, Seven Mohan, Jr., and a bunch more. Get the book quickly before it vanishes. You’ll have a lot of fun reading a bunch of stories about magical crimes.

At the moment, I am working on a legal thriller that, if I am lucky, will come out under a name I can tell everyone about. So got to get back to work on that. If you are interested in the Kris and Dean show, just e-mail me and put workshops in the title line. And if you have e-mailed me and I haven’t gotten back to you, please try again.  Clearly lost in a spam filter somewhere.

Good writing to everyone. Back soon to start a new series of writing articles.

Cheers, Dean

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Feb 09 2009

The Kris and Dean Show

Published by dwsmith under Misc

Well, we’re going to do the Kris and Dean show workshops again. After doing two hours of the workshop at Worldcon in Denver as two panels, and after getting a ton of requests over the years for us to do these again, we’ve decided to go again. Twice. First time in at least ten years. And maybe the last. <g>

So, here on some details. This is open to anyone who is interested in fiction writing at any level. If you’ve always had it as a dream, or are already firing out stories and novels, this workshop will be good for you. Our goal for this workshop is to clear away the fog that all writers feel about the craft and business and give any writer a jump forward to getting to the dream.
So, feel free to pass this information on to anyone who is even interested and talking about wanting to write. As I said, this is open to anyone at any level.

Workshop Name:
THE WRITING CAREER FROM THE FIRST SENTENCE TO PUBLICATION AND BEYOND. Aka, the Kris and Dean Show.

Taught by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith.

A little about us:

Kris is the international bestselling author of over 90 novels and hundreds of short stories. She has been nominated and won just about every major award in four genres. She’s the only writer in history to have a story in all four Dell magazines during the same year. (Asimov’s, Analog, Ellery Queen, and Hitchcock’s). She’s the only person to have won a Hugo award for both professional editing and for her writing. She spent six years as the editor of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her mystery novels and stories have been nominated for three Edgar Awards, and she’s won the Ellery Queen award three times. She’s been a full time fiction writer for over 20 years. You can see a ton more about her at www.kristinekathrynrusch.com.

If you are here, you know me, but let me add in the following bio: I am the bestselling author of over 90 books and a hundred short stories. I have over seven million copies of my books in print. I have written in just about every major universe and every genre, plus I have written comics for DC and scripts for Hollywood. I have also been an editor and publisher and for ten years I edited the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds anthology for Pocket Books. I have been nominated for a ton of awards and with Kris I won the World Fantasy Award for my work on Pulphouse Publishing. I am known for being able to write fast and in any world. I am hired regularly by New York publishers to ghost novels and rescue other writers who are stuck. I also write thrillers and paranormal romance under pen names. I have been a full time fiction writer for over 20 years.

Kris and I are married and we live in a three building compound overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

This workshop covers everything, starting from craft and story structure, how to write stories, how to get to the computer to write, and then follows manuscripts into publishing houses, teaching how to get your work read by both short fiction editors and novel editors. Detailed information about what happens to your manuscripts in editor’s offices, how stories are bought and why. And when you need an agent and how to get one. Also a lot of information about how to simply sit down and write, how to get your family to help you, how to become a selling professional fiction writer.

And Kris and I will be answering a ton of questions for two days.

1st Workshop:
Details:

Date: Saturday, June 13 and Sunday, June 14.

Location: Lincoln City, Oregon. (Exact meeting location to be determined)

Cost: $300.00. Does NOT include rooms(but we will have deals with hotels to get rooms for writers at about $60 per night.)

Schedule: Saturday: 10am-1pm. Lunch. 2:30-5:30. Sunday: 10am-1pm, lunch, 2:30 to 5:30.

To sign up, e-mail me at dean@deanwesleysmith.com and put Workshop in the title line. I will give you more details and tell you where to send in your workshop fee to hold your spot.

2nd Workshop:

Details:

Date: Saturday, September 12 and Sunday, September 13.

Location: Lincoln City, Oregon. (Exact meeting location to be determined)

Cost: $300.00. Does NOT include rooms (but we will have deals with hotels to get rooms for writers at about $60 per night.)

Schedule: Saturday: 10am-1pm. Lunch. 2:30-5:30. Sunday: 10am-1pm, lunch, 2:30 to 5:30.

To sign up, e-mail me at dean@deanwesleysmith.com and put Workshop in the title line. I will give you more details and tell you where to send in your workshop fee to hold your spot.

Please feel free to post the details or pass this on.

These are going to be fun. I hope that some of you can make it to the Oregon Coast and join us.

Cheers
Dean

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