This post is partly inspired by a post from P.C. Haring. P.C. has had a very bad September. The theme of his post is “Why do we fall, sir?” The answer, of course, is so we can learn to get back up. But that got me thinking… There are many reasons why we fall. Some trip. Some will leap for greatness and fail to catch themselves. And some… are pushed. Read more...
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Yes, this is a #WriterWednesday post, but as I am writing it, it is Tuesday, September 3rd. This posts marks the 99th consecutive day that I have written something as tracked by The Magic Spreadsheet. So why am I writing about Day 99 when the post goes live on day 100? Well, for one thing, there is a long-standing tradition that you never talk about something you are about to do, because if you do, the forces of the universe realign to create situations where you cannot achieve the very thing you just told the world that you are about to do. And that would be very bad. Read more...
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It seems a very strange thing to talk about money in a #WriterWednesday post. It seems even stranger to think that I’m talking about me receiving money. Let’s be realistic for a moment here: for all the talk about improving one’s craft and telling stories, and expressing the ideas in your head, the real reason that we write and keep writing is to make money. Ben Bova said that the only reason for writing was the expectation of being paid for it. To a lessor or a greater extent, this is true. Writing is work. Hard work. Even when we give it away, we expect to be paid for it eventually. Read more...
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A lot can change in a year, and yet, a year can speed by you so fast, leaving so much undone.
This time last year, I was looking back at what I had done since my last birthday, and making plans for how I was going to move forward over the next year. Looking at it now, it sure seems like a lot of the things I had planned out last year didn’t end up happening. At least, the way things developed certainly was not what I originally planned. Whether that will turn out to be for good or for ill, time will tell. Perhaps I’ll know next year. Read more...
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This is going to be a short, and somewhat late, #WriterWednesday post. Work has kicked my ass of late, and while I was Posty McPosterson last week, a few things have happened that are going to take up a bit of my time. So it may be a little tough to keep the posts coming on time. Part of this is because I am dealing with edits, again. Read more...
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Sometimes, it seems like no one tells me anything. In 2012, I narrated a story for the Protecting Project Pulp podcast. Yes, they seem fond of alliteration. Anywho, I recorded The Hand of the Mandarin Quong by Sax Rohmer early in the year and sent them the raw audio, which I thought was what we had agreed upon. After several months of not hearing back from them, I contacted them to ask when I could expect the story to go live. It turns out that they hadn’t scheduled it because they didn’t have anyone to edit it. They had expected me to send them edited audio, not raw. Read more...
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Time for a little mid-summer ramble.
Sometimes, when you’re a writer among a group of writers, it seems like you have the most fantastic community of like minds to draw upon. Other times, it seems like everyone is totally ignoring you. The oddest part is that, on the average, both of these extremes are true. We are writers, so we are a community of like minds. We support each other. We will promote each other’s projects. We’ll give up our blog space to guest posts and promotional opportunities. We’ll give advice, and share techniques and resources. We’ll challenge each other to friendly competition. We’ll even buy each other’s books, or pledge funds to each other’s Kickstarters. But do you know what is the single most difficult thing to get another writer to do in support of your project? The single thing they are least likely to do? Read more...
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Wow. Will you look at that. It’s July now. July. 2013 is half over. Halfway done. I’ve set some ambitious goals for the latter half of the year. Perhaps I should also take some time to take stock of what I’ve done so far. Let’s see how it breaks down… Read more...
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In part 1, I talked about some of the wonderful people, both old friends and new friends, who make Balticon such an amazing event for me. In part 2, I went over a couple of the highlights of the first half of the weekend. Now, in Part 3, we’re going to look at the rest of the weekend. Read more...
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Things have been slowly returning to normal, or at least what passes for it around here. My wife has done much better with her recovery, and that has given me time to get back into my writing. So, at the end of March, I returned to the Magic Spreadsheet and began a new writing chain. This has led to some interesting developments. Read more...
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