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September Regular Workshops Now Available!!
There Are Now 9 Regular Workshops… Last month we brought back THE MAGIC BAKERY six week workshop. Critical to understanding how this new world and copyright is working for indie writers. And we brought back to regular status PLOTTING WITH DEPTH. It will also might have new videos as we think they are needed. And last month we started a brand new workshop in the depth series called DEPTH IN ACTION. Basically how do you use depth when writing action scenes, how much, how little, and when, to make sure readers know what is happening and stay with your story. Everything is on WMG Teachable. WARNING: You must have taken…
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The Myth That Writing is Hard…
I Wrote This in 2009… I have updated it for 2023… It is long but I thought it needed to be said again. And note, this was written before I was doing a blog per day. ————- This myth comes in many forms and has many faces, but let me put it as plainly as I can to start. Myth: To be Good, Writing Must Be Hard. (And it can’t be fun.) Total hogwash, of course, yet it is stunning how many new writers believe this, and how readers, when they bother to think about it, believe the myth as well. And, of course, almost everyone who teaches creative writing…
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Moral Rights
A Friend Reminded Me… That I had not yet talked about moral rights in the Bite-Sized Copyright class. He did not intend to, just sent me a great moral rights topic letter., So I just finished recording that for Monday morning. Basics, but considering most writers don’t even understand copyright or licensing, I had to keep it basic. And nope, will not explain it here. Google is your friend for the basics. It is also in the Copyright Handbook which you should own. Keeping it short this Friday night because after three full days now of my new exercise routine, I am beat up. Tonight I did 4 miles around…
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Started Another Streak
I Have a Monster Streak Going… That is the one I wrote about blogging every night here for over 11 straight years without a miss. So I know how to do a streak successfully. And over the years I have started a lot of streaks and challenges for myself. Some are writing streaks like a short story a day for over a hundred days that I did in 2022. That was fun. And I have started a ton of streaks that just went nowhere for one reason or another. Mostly I gave them no power, or they had no end goal. I think a solid goal is maybe the most…
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Weird Feeling
No Printer… Finished a short story tonight and couldn’t print it up. So it still feels unfinished. Amazing the power of a habit of over 30 years. For all that time, when I finished a story or novel or anything, such as an introduction to a book or issue, I would print it up almost immediately. Within minutes. Manuscript format. And I would give it to Kris to read. That made the story finished for me, solid and on paper, and I seldom (like never) looked at it again except to correct typos Kris found. But Kris’s printer went crazy a week or so ago, and I was busy with…
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Thanks for the Responses
Both In the Comments and Email… I just really think that block of notes, 700 note pages it seems, would be fun with the art from one of my Seeders’ novels on it. Someone also sent me a place where you can bulk oder them. 100 of them minimum at a time. Can you imagine the shipping of that much solid paper? Yikes… But the one place everyone found does them POD. Have not figure out that price yet, but will. Thanks!! We got some Pulphouse Fiction Magazine products in today and Kris had me film her doing an “unboxing” of two of them. I guess that is a thing.…
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Got Behind… So A Product…
Late on Writing and Workshops Tonight… So nothing here as I had planned. But I have to post something to keep my daily blog streak alive. Yup, the power of a streak. So instead I am going to post a fun merchandise thing I have had since the early 1990s and never used. It is a note pad about 3 inches by 3 inches and 3 inches high of blank sheets of paper. About a thousand sheets of thin paper I am guessing. It is called a “Note Cube.” No idea what this would cost today, or if it could be done POD, but I thought it was cool when…
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Direct Sales
Been An Interesting Journey… I came into traditional publishing as a young writer almost 50 years ago. 49 to be exact. And that traditional publishing that was in place at the time was the system I learned very, very well, until the system itself became so corrupted I could not longer stomach working in it. Thankfully, indie publishing started up just about the time I was headed to do something else, and I fell in love with the freedom of being able to write what I wanted and publish it when I wanted and just let readers decide instead of gatekeepers. Problem is that it has taken me years to…
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AI Not Protected Under Copyright…
Decision Upheld on Friday… Here in the States, and in different forms in Europe and other countries as well, all forms of AI generated art and text cannot be protected under copyright law and the Berne Convention and thus hold no copyright. You can’t own it. No one does. Last March the copyright office issued decisions on that, and a Federal judge on Friday stood with the copyright office. This is an oh-oh of major proportions for any of you using AI for art or text. To own a piece of work, it must have human creativity. You have an AI cover on one of your books and yet you…
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Trademark Silliness
Jane Friedman Post… I have gotten numbers of questions about this post. Basically what happened is that Jane Freedman, one of the great traditional publishing apologists in her Hot Sheet, had some of her own books up indie on Amazon and someone copied her name and the titles of the books and did some poor AI books and put them up for sale. The books were put up under another account, so any sales would go to the other account. Jane wrote Amazon and asked them to be taken down. Amazon wrote back and asked if her name was a licensed trademark. Jane said her name was not trademarked under…