In today’s Journal
* Sorry to have been away
* Update on the Master Business Class
* Today
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Sorry to have been away for a couple of days. Honestly, there just wasn’t much to report, even in “Of Interest.”
I’ve been working mostly on a lengthy copyedit and doing some things for my mentoring student, as well as working on the bible for the shared world I’ll reveal around the first of the year.
Update on the Master Business Class
Kris Rusch let slip in her most recent Patreon post (I’ll link to the whole thing in a week or so) that the final MBC is 3/4 full at this point, so if you want in, you need to act fairly soon.
After careful consideration, I’ve decided we won’t attend that one. So that frees up one more slot.
The thing is
* I’m already up to here deep in studying along with Dean and Kris as they transition their own business from publishing to licensing, and
* I’m also deeply involved with both the 9-month Shared Worlds class AND with developing my own shared world before we’ve even really gotten into the class, and
* I already own several of Dean’s advanced business lectures that I haven’t even looked at yet, and
* Beginning in January, I’ll be able to set aside a lot of the business end of this thing when my wife and partner is able to pick up those aspects she’s interested in, and finally
* More than anything, I just want to get back to writing. For the sheer fun of it. Without “business” seeping into my head at every turn.
So today I emailed Dean and asked him to take me off the list.
Soon we’ll receive a small windfall, a refund from an education retirement fund I was paying into about a million years ago when I was a college and GED and ESL and New Citizens Project instructor.
We’ve already decided to invest that windfall in the business. But we believe, in our case, there might be better investments than spending roughly a third of it on the upcoming Master Business Class.
Of course, we might be wrong.
But if I’ve learned one huge thing about (the publishing and licensing) business, it’s that every decision is just another round of gambling. And at the moment, for us, this seems like a good bet.
Today I’ll press ahead with the copyedit that’s consumed the previous few days. The story is so good, so compelling, that I wish it was already copyedited and I was reading the clean version.
Which is why I don’t mind missing my own writing at the moment.
Oh, as a test and to save time, I’m not hyperlinking the articles below. Just copy-paste any that interest you into the search bar at the top of your browser (in a new tab) and it will redirect you to the appropriate article. Let me know how this works.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “Interesting Summary” at https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/interesting-summary/.
See “Exposition Should Serve the Scene, Not the Other Way Around” at https://www.janefriedman.com/exposition-should-serve-scene/.
See “A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats” at https://prowriterswriting.com/20-books-vegas-conference/. Good time to subscribe to PWW if you haven’t.
See “How to Read like a Published Author” at https://www.authorspublish.com/how-to-read-like-a-published-author/. Better than it sounds.
See “2020 Writers’ Police Academy/MurderCon” at https://www.leelofland.com/2020-writers-police-academy-murdercon-mark-your-calendars/.
See “What Makes Readers Give an Unknown Author a Chance?” at https://www.janefriedman.com/give-unknown-author-chance/. I’m posting this just in case you get something out of it. Frankly, my overall take was “Well, duh.”
The Numbers
Fiction words today…………………… 0
Nonfiction words today…………… 590 (Journal)
Total fiction words for the month……… 6481
Total fiction words for the year………… 391574
Total nonfiction words for the month… 8920
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 290000
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 681574
Calendar Year 2019 Novels to Date…………………… 7
Calendar Year 2019 Novellas to Date……………… 1
Calendar Year 2019 Short Stories to Date… 4
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 43
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 197
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31