70 Book Challenge,  Challenge

Update on 70’s Challenge…

With Just Under One Month Left Before I Turn 71…

My number is 65. So far.

54 books published, eleven in and scheduled to be published this month. (5 publishing tomorrow, actually)

Allyson and Gwyneth at WMG Publishing are just amazing, and are stunningly supportive of this craziness. None of us want to try it again, granted, but we are all focused on making it this once.

And Kris has been very encouraging even though it has taken me a vast amount of time and energy.

I will list here the titles of each book and when it was published when this is over, so no worries there.

(And we have also published just about 50 stand-alone short stories that I am not counting at all. With 5 or 10 more by the deadline.)

So I have 5 books to turn in and publish to make the 70 major books in my 70th year.

Four of those left to finish on my side are collections. I need to do the covers for three of them.

One is Green Valley: A Thunder Mountain Novel. That will get me to a smooth 70 books during my 70th year on the planet. Plus around 60 short stories published stand alone.

Lucky for WMG I was not older. (grin)

And I know this is just almost impossible for any regular writer who buys into all the myths to even begin to grasp. I will publish more books in my 70th year on the planet than 99% of writers will publish in entire careers because the myths just stop them and for some reason those writers can’t clear them out.

And yet every day I get writers asking me how to make a living with their writing. Answer: Work as hard as I do at 70 years old and have more fun than I have.

 

13 Comments

  • Mihnea+Manduteanu

    Congrats, Dean. You are an inspiration. Green Valley, how many days did it take you to write it? Considring that it was regular pace, no challenge or anything.

    • dwsmith

      Not quite done yet. And this one will not count since the world got crazy for me in the middle of this. Normally, if I am just in normal stuff, I take about 3 weeks puttering along for a 40,000 word novel. That’s sort of “just getting to it” and writing a bunch of other stuff at the same time. Focus, ten or eleven days is comfortable for 40k. Not really a push, just a focus.

  • Judy Lunsford

    I can’t wait to see you hit that goal! 70 books in a year is amazing.

    I have noticed that the more I increase my output, the more fun it is. And I still have 20 years to get to your level of crazy! (grin)

  • Vincent Zandri

    Congrats Dean. Very inspiring. I too will reach my goal of 100 indie IPs by end of the year. In fact, I’m beyond that now. In January I will announce a new challenge. See what you started?! LOL.

    It’s funny (well not funny), but a really good writer I’ve published with at two different traditonal houses is currently going through a career crisis. His agent dropped him and he asked me to make an intro to my agent. My agent said he couldn’t help his career.

    Now he’s sort of depressed thinking his career is regressing. I’m like, this is a great opportunity for you to write as much as you want, when and how you want, and get it to market right now. You already have an audience who are dying for more of your books.

    But he insists on going traditonal exclusivly. I just don’t understand it. The answer is right in front of him but he doesn’t see it. And this is a guy who coauthored a book with Konrath about ten years back!!!! Really nice guy to and only 60 years old I believe. My guess is he’ll see the light sooner than later.

  • Karen+F.

    Hi, Dean! Congratulations on the progress so far! That is so inspiring. As always, your challenges get me to figuring out just how I could do something similar. It’s always EASY to FIGURE out what numbers it would take. Harder to build the mental and physical stamina to do it.

    Got a long long long way to go mentally before I do, but I’m getting there.

    I’ve watched you write a book in public in 10 days, 7 days, and 5 days , some of them even while travelling. Seen you start and restart challenges. We’ve been watching you fill Smith’s Monthly with YOUR OWN writing for years now. Now, 70 books published in you 70th year.

    Can’t wait to see what comes next!

    Rock on, Dean!
    Karen

    • dwsmith

      Thanks, Karen. Glad my challenges are helping a little. Sure helps me make more money with book sales. (grin)

    • dwsmith

      Not at all sure what the means, but since you used Ferrari, I’m going to take it as a positive thing, so thanks. (grin)

  • James+Palmer

    I love your challenge update posts, Dean. You’ve inspired me to do something similar. Last week on Facebook I announced that I am going to publish 50 IPs by the time I’m 50 (I just turned 47). So that’s a novel, a novella, a short story, a short story collection, or one of my anthologies. I’m already right around 38 or so, and I’m about to bring out my Kickstarter-funded anthology as well as a short story collection with 6 stories in it (I count both the story itself and any book it appears in, so 6 stories in 1 book equals 7 IPs).

    Bottom line is I’ve decided to take a page from your book and just have fun with it. I was putting too much pressure on each thing I wrote to make money, and it sucked all the joy out of it and made it harder to write.