Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

Curriculum Updated and More Information

Finally, After A Year, the Curriculum Updated…

The Curriculum now includes all the new writing and publishing workshops from the last year and the new Pop-Up Weekender workshops we just announced.

No workshop doubles up information. All of them are unique and focused in an area of fiction writing and business. The curriculum is divided into a number of categories to help you decide, but I will always answer questions if you are unsure.

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I’m Still Working On Marble Grant Novel

Actually, making a little progress.

And I am still working on getting back the responses to the last short  story challenge that ended on December 1st. That is going to take me another week due to the schedule this week.

And I have not forgotten about the two nonfiction writing books I have started. I will get back to both of them. Late December and early January always tends to be crazy and this year was no exception. I’m surprised I got as much writing done as I did.

But that will change and the word count will grow as the next weeks go by. A great deal.

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POP-UP WEEKENDER WORKSHOPS

Descriptions… Here are the descriptions of all five. Overall description of the workshops in general are on the post ahead of this.

You can sign up for them on Teachable.com

— Controlling Fear of Failure

Fear cripples every writer, without exception, at one point or another. And the root of that fear almost always is fear of failure.

Early examples of these fears are fear of writing because you might fail or fear of finishing because they you will have to show it to someone and it might fail. Those two fears alone stop 95% of all want-to-be writers.

But how does fear impact you once you are writing and publishing? It manifests differently for all of us, but always has the same root fear of failure.

This weekend workshop helps identify the major fear of failure areas you have and then gives you techniques and methods to kill the fear or deal with it so you can keep writing and producing fiction.

Fear also leaches out all the fun from writing and this weekend workshop will help you get that joy and excitement back into your fiction writing.

We are calling this workshop “Controlling Fear of Failure” because that fear will always remain with all of us in different forms. How we control the fear instead of letting the fear control us is the key to success in our writing.

If you realize you have a fear of failure with your writing in one place or another, this workshop will help you learn how to control and contain that fear.

 

— How to Study and Practice in Fiction (A Study Plan)

We all think we all can write because some teacher in school told us we could. But being able to type lovely words and being able to relay a story to readers that is entertaining are two different things.

The quickest way to learn how to be a better storyteller is to study other writers.

But who to study?

And how to do it?

And when and how much?

And why are we using the swear word “practice” in the title?

This weekend-long workshop will give you a study plan, a way to help yourself become a better storyteller by studying and practicing. You will learn techniques for study and for practice that you can use for years into the future.

A step-by-step guide that will make studying and practice fun in your fiction writing.

And it will make your writing profitable if you do it right. (Yes, practice in fiction writing can and should make you a lot of money.)

 

— Adding Tension to Your Writing

What grips a reader? What holds a reader in a story? The answer is tension. Tension in plot, in writing style, in character.

Tension can be set up in many ways in a story or novel and this weekend-long workshop gives you a bunch of techniques to build tension to make sure your stories will not let a reader go.

Remember the last time you couldn’t stop reading a book because you just needed to know what happens next? That’s one form of tension.

When your readers actually care about what happens to a character in your book. That’s tension.

There are many other forms of tension. This weekend workshop will help you understand them and give you techniques to use going forward in any story in any genre.

 

— Making a Living in 2018/19 With Your Fiction

I get the question about how to make a living with your fiction more than almost any question.

Over the years, Kris and I have done a number of workshops and lectures on how to make a living with your fiction. But all those workshops and lectures are gone because times changed and all the information in them went out of date.

We are in a brand-new world here in 2018, a new world of flat fiction sales and difficult discoverability.

But it still is very, very possible to make a living in fiction. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You just have to know what is needed to do so.

So if you want to know how to make a living in this modern world of fiction, or get planning on making a living going forward, you need this weekend workshop.

There really are techniques and secrets (not handshakes, just sort of secrets that are often obvious) to making a living with your fiction in 2018/19. This weekend workshop details out the path to getting to that goal. Either in one year or five years. The timeline is up to you.

Very simple and direct.

And eye opening.

 

— The Indie Game.

(Rollplay your way through eight years of decisions as an Indie Writer.)

We call this workshop “The Indie Game” because back in 2002, we used to run writers through what we called “The Game” to learn how to make decisions to reach their goals of being full-time writers in traditional publishing.

Then the world of publishing changed and everything we taught in that old game was pretty worthless. So we have waited until this new world stabilized and now we feel we can bring The Game back for indie writers.

Basically, for a weekend workshop, you will make decisions with your writing and business and learn the consequences of those decisions.

In essence, we are giving you a chance to live out the next eight years as an indie writer to see what will happen for you. And what your good decisions were and where your bad decisions got out of hand.

Think of your writing career as an adventure and you get to pick your future in a trial run over a weekend.

And here’s something fun. We’ve put this workshop on Teachable.com so you can play The Indie Game again and again over time as your decisions change.

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Any questions, feel free to write me.

Sign up for workshops at:

https://wmg-publishing-workshops-and-lectures.teachable.com