In today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* Best Advice Available and Christmas Gifts
* What? Me Doing a TKZ Guest Post?
* Of Interest
Quotes of the Day
“It’s much more likely that an asteroid will strike the Earth and annihilate life as we know it than AI will turn evil.” Oren Etzioni, founding CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
“People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better.” – Ray Bradbury
Best Advice Article Available
My “best advice” article is now available in its entirety, tidied up and with a new introduction, as a downloadable, searchable PDF document on the Journal Archives page. Sometime in early January I’ll make the archive for 2022 available there as well.
As an early Christmas gift, I’ve also put a few more things up there, again in downloadable, fully searchable, free PDF files. I suggest you visit. (grin)
What? Me Doing a TKZ Guest Post?
Garry Rodgers, retired RCMP detective and coroner, international best-selling crime writer, and blogger at both his own Dying Words blog and at The Kill Zone blog, has asked me to write a guest post for TKZ.
I almost turned him down, given the winding down of my own Journal and how many regular TKZ contributors’ heads will explode if I write an article for those hallowed pages. (Oh, it’s all right. They’ll explode only metaphorically.)
But Garry wrote, “You and I are on the same page on Heinlein and DWS Writing Into The Dark, and I believe this wisdom needs to be shared as often as possible.”
Of course, that pulled me over the line. He’s right. Heinlein’s Rules and trusting your characters to tell the story that they, not you, are living should be shared with as many people as possible. I mean, that’s why I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing for the past 8 years. But TKZ has a much broader reader base than the Journal does. Hmmm.
I wrote recently that I probably get through to only one in 300 with my blathering, but knowing that One is running free of the myths makes it worth it. In fact, that One is why the Journal is only scaling back instead of going away permanently.
So I wrote back that barring any unforeseen complications, I’d be happy to. I’ll let you all know when the post is scheduled to go live.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “Flash Sale On Regular Workshops and Decade Ahead” at https://deanwesleysmith.com/flash-sale-on-regular-workshops-and-decade-ahead/.
See “6 Ways to Write Better Interview Questions” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/6-surprising-ways-to-write-better-interview-questions/. Thiis can help with writing sales copy and with interviewing yourself for your bio or for publicity.
See “The Making of A Six Figure Author: How Authors Evolve With Their Income” at https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/how-authors-evolve-with-their-income/. Much about marketing.
See “Routine Writing Is About to Be Free” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/routine-writing-is-about-to-be-free/. If you’re interested in AI, there are several posts that might interest you today on The Passive Voice.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 530 words
Writing of WCG 7 Santa Fe 2 (novel tentative title)
Day 10… 2524 words. Total words to date…… 27438
Day 11… 3156 words. Total words to date…… 30594
Day 12… 1065 words. Total words to date…… 31659
Total fiction words for December……… 48073
Total fiction words for the year………… 263047
Total nonfiction words for December… 19760
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 217840
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 480887
Calendar Year 2022 Novels to Date…………………… 4
Calendar Year 2022 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2022 Short Stories to Date… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 70
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31
Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. Because It Makes Sense, I trust my characters to tell the story that they, not I, are living. This greatly increases my productivity and provides the fastest possible ascension along the learning curve of Craft because I get a great deal more practice at actually writing. It will do the same for you if only you trust it.