Category Archives: How To Revise Your Novel

Spinning Back The Reel
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421 words on TalysMana tonight—it was another interlude chapter, this one taking me into Kettan’s world after she returned to the What Is to make her talysmana to protect her Fendles.

Tonight I got as far as showing what happened to them after she left. I have not yet gotten to the point of showing what happens when she works out the idea for the talysmana. That comes next, and I’m looking forward to it. Tonight, the writing was grim.

Elsewhere, it’s been a zoo. I’m still coughing up junk and tired all the time. I remembered income tax stuff in time (barely) to get the info for the 1099s I have to send out to my accountant. It was pretty cool this year to have a handful of affiliates who made enough money that they NEEDED 1099s. There would have been a lot more, but many of my affiliates are outside the US, and don’t have to report their earnings in this country.

We’re looking for new digs, which is about the least fun thing ever—but rent is high, and our current neighborhood isn’t great. Somewhat better than the place that had the crime scene tape a couple buildings down from the building we thought we wanted into, though. Amazing how much less attractive “Police Line, Do Not Cross, Crime Scene” makes a neighborhood.

And I’m doing the HTRYN course. So I was AWOL from the writing diary for a lot of last week.

Hoping this week will be better, but I’m remembering that every January is a zoo. So I’m not holding my breath.

How’s your writing coming along?

TalysMana: Hunting Demons By Smell
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HAH! I love this world.

Finally grabbed the chance to sit and write again, and the story raced onto the page. I had to put on the brakes because I still have to work on Lesson 10 of HTRYN tonight, but wow. The time I’ve had when I could only think about this really paid off.

Kettan is on the warpath, in her own unique way, determined to save her creatures and her world from her ex-boyfriend’s onslaught.

The magic system is landing on the page the way I’d hoped it would, and I’m getting some cool conflicts.

And hunting demons by smell? It’s critical. Think of that moment when you smell something and remember it, and for just an instant you’re six years old again, and back in the place where you first smelled it, and where that scent imprinted itself on your memory.

Imagine the worst memory you’ve ever had, and smelling something that took you back to THAT moment…

551 words before I slammed on the brakes. I’m so excited.

How’s your stuff coming?

Write a book with me…pretty soon
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I’ve been sick since last Thursday, and I spent the entire day today catching up on the HTRYN customer service e-mails that accumulated over the weekend. Got the course closed until late this year, got the main page set up so you can get a sneak peek inside the community, (just a tiny part of it, but still…) and I THINK I got everyone who needed help getting into class answered.

But. No writing tonight.

I feel like roadkill, and having JUST finished customer service, I’m going back to bed.

However, I have high hopes for words on TalysMana tomorrow.

Meanwhile, how YOU doin?

Why I’m MIA this week, too.
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Two weeks of vacation. Followed by the official launch of How To Revise Your Novel, because in my infinite wisdom (NOT!), I decided months ago that the week after two full weeks of wild course-writing mixed with tons of holiday family stuff would be the perfect time to launch a new course. (Insanity doesn’t run in my family. I think I’m breaking new ground here.)

I close the doors on HTRYN Saturday 9th at noon EST, though, so NEXT week I’ll only be writing lessons, and I’ll be able to get back to TalysMana, which has been my casualty for these three weeks by virtue of being the work nobody is paying me to have done on schedule.

This is your WABWM thread until I get back next Monday. By then, maybe I’ll have had more than four hours of sleep on any given night, and you’ll have recovered from the holidays, and we can get back to writing fiction. :D

In the meantime, you’re in my thoughts. And I’ll be back soon.

How do you make your life what you want it to be?
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So I DID get over 600 words done on TalysMana done Sunday night. Posted the chapter, which will go out on schedule.

I’m not doing fiction tonight, because the holidays ate my deadlines alive, and I’m pedalling insanely trying to catch back up.

But I wanted to tell you this, which relates to my New Year’s Resolution, and which I want to make available to everyone:

Here’s how you turn your dreams into reality.

  • Decide that what you want is valuable because YOU value it, and because it matters to you.
     
     
  • Figure out WHY it matters to you. If it matters to you because someone else told you it’s important, it matters to THEM. If you feel guilty because you aren’t doing it, the reason you aren’t doing it is because it doesn’t matter to you. Walk away. You can break you life on thing you don’t care about because you think you should care about them.
     
     

    What you want, what you love, what you want to build your life into, what you want to leave behind when when you’re dead and gone…These are what you build. If you look at some action you could take and you don’t care about the work and the inevitable failures that you are going to have to get through before you can even hope to succeed—you’re going to do it, create it, build it anyway because it’s what you love—you’re on the right track.
     
     

  • Figure out the steps you’ll have to take, the changes you will have to make, and the price you will have to pay to create your dream in the real world.
     
     
    Cut out TV? Probably. Spend time teaching yourself everything you can about how others successfully accomplished what you hope to accomplish? Certainly. Sleep a little less? Maybe.
     
     
  • Take action KNOWING that you will fail initially, and do everything you can to learn from each mistake so that you shorten the cycles of failure, and determine that you will commit to action—even when that action results in failure—until you succeed.
     
     
  • Commit to improving on your successes, and learning how to do what you do well even better, so that success becomes easier and more certain over time.
     
     
  • As you master each dream and make it a reality, add a new dream.
     
     

These are the steps I’ve taken in my own life.

I hope the help you find the joy and fulfillment in your own life they have given to mine.

What My New Year’s Resolution Means For You
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The path that brought me to this moment started exactly 25 years ago today, when in my diary I wrote, “Before I turn 25, I want to write a book.”

25 years later, I’ve written 33 novels (plus one I did anonymously as work for hire), am working on a couple more, and intend to keep writing novels as long as I live.

I’ve also written 100,000+ words on writing on my website (a very fat nonfiction book), five Writing Clinics (“Scenes” is also a clinic) with a sixth, “World” in progress, one massive course on writing/creativity/career creation, and I’m working on the second massive course, “How To Revise Your Novel.” I’ve done some smaller writing projects, too, both fiction and nonfiction.

I built and ran the free writing community Forward Motion for years. Have a much smaller writing community growing now inside the ThinkSideways/HTRYN course umbrella.

So that writing thing turned out pretty well.

But in ten months I’ll be 50. And I have a resolution.

Before I turn fifty, I want to show people how to FIND their dreams, how to dream BETTER dreams, and how to turn those dreams into reality.

This is a resolution that, like “write a book”, entails much more than anyone can hope to accomplish in ten months, and I know that. I’ve been writing with intent to sell since I was about 23, and I still love the work. “Write a book” became a lifetime calling for me.

It’s also a resolution that, in many ways, I’ve been working toward my whole life. Some of the ways I hope to accomplish this are already in place—the writing courses and the writing community and my website help writers who already have their dream in place figure out how to make their dreams real.

But my daughter wants to create handcrafted jewelry. My father-in-law is a public-school science teacher looking for a different way to teach science. I have one son who wants to make movies, and another who currently wants to build robots.

I have friends who want to leave jobs they hate, but aren’t sure what they could do instead. I know hundreds of writers who are looking for a new way to break into publishing and get paid for their work.

And I know people who have no better dream than just to get through the day. And so do you.

Over the past three years, I’ve been quietly investing in training and education, learning how to create businesses, how to create products, how to reach the people who want those products. Most of my life, I’ve been learning to teach. I’m studying professional publishing.

And I have projects that have been pending while I work on other things, or on hold because they’re in software development. I offered an e-mail course for a while called Money To Write. I’ll be bringing that back with some serious bells and whistles—it will focus on letting writers create businesses that will free them from day jobs so they can write.

Margaret is making good progress writing the software we call “the seller piece,” the engine that will allow me to PAY writers for the Rebel Tales serialzine, and PAY product creators with the Money to Write program. When that’s done, we’ll get Rebel Tales and Money To Write going.

But it all starts with DREAMS

Our reality, both good and bad, begins as someone’s dream, someone’s vision, someone’s abstract idea that “this could be different.”

Some dreams are magnificent, some are terrible.

Grocery stores and skyscrapers, cars and computers, paintings and literature, music and movies, roads and silverware and dishwashers and clothes and shoes and agriculture and every other form of creation and production all started as someone’s dream.

Nursing and medicine, education and food service, telephones and the Internet all began as someone’s dream.

So did the genocides of Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Adolf Hitler, and other monsters. So does every murder, every molestation, every enslavement. Drug cartels, prostitution rings, and street gangs all arise from someone’s dream, too.

We live in the reality created by the people who act on their dreams, whether good or bad.

There is no way to force people to dream better dreams, to want better things. “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” (Alfred in “The Dark Knight).

There is no way to dream for others—anyone whose dream is to “make your life better” is imposing a his dream on you. And what is better for him will not be better for you.

You can only dream for yourself, you can only change yourself.

But you can provide the example of your own life, the tools and the teaching, the means, and the direction, to others who also want to dream better dreams, make them real, and in the process, live better lives.

This, then, is my dream. My resolution. To be the person who does that. To create ways to help you, if you choose to use them, live the life you dream.

Happy New Year.

May 2010 be your best year yet.

Happy Old Year. Good stuff coming.
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Time and work have devoured this week.

I’ve been writing HTRYN lessons, putting together some internet stuff with my father-in-law, working toward my New Year’s resolution, getting the Official Grand Opening of How To Revise Your Novel ready, and trying to relax. I gave up on that last pretty early on, really, and this has been another long week with no breaks, and no fiction.

But.

HTRYN opens on January 2nd at 12 noon EST, and you’ll be able to register for class up until January 9th at 12 noon. After that, it’s going to be quite a while before I offer the class again, because, as you’ll find out tomorrow, I’m going to be working on other things.

In the meantime, while the HTRYN scholarships have landed on the back burner, they’re not forgotten. You can vote for, comment on, or still create and enter an entry in the HTRYN Scholarship Contest here.

I hope the end of your old year is wonderful, and leads to a 2010 that is better than you could ever imagine.

I’ll see you again in 2010.

Words. No Words. But back to work.
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So. I’m back.

Got 2299 words on a worksheet, and another thousand or so on the revision of a lesson, both for HTRYN, but no words on TalysMana. Instead, the rest of my time went into doing my customer service e-mails from the last couple days.

I’m caught up on everything that doesn’t require a long reply. Still have a few of those to do.

So I got lots and lots of words, and no words at all.

But I’m back, I’m now caught up, and tomorrow I head into the dark places with Kettan, where she discovers that not even heroes can survive if they just live on sunshine and butterflies.

Getting close to the New Year, I’ve done the better part of another draft of my New Year’s Resolution…

It’s complex. I’m struggling to get it right.

How have you been, and how’s your story coming? I’ve missed you.

A Question about the TalysMana Theme
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Got an e-mail today from a TalysMana reader disturbed by the turn the plot was taking, and afraid that I’m heading toward “people who create bright, happy stories and worlds are good, and people who create dark, scary worlds are bad.”

She’d never read any of my work, so as a creator of some really dark novels, (including, by all indications, some sections of this one) I’ll give her a pass on thinking that.

But no—this is not a story in which only the creators of fluffy-bunny-and-unicorn worlds are the good guys, and writers like me, who explore both the dark and the bright sides of humanity are villains.

I’m not going to bluntly state the theme—I’ll let you read on and figure it out on your own—but rest assured I have not suddenly recanted my entire body of work or my own personal philosophy.

With that said, I have worked all day on How to Revise Your Novel, (and completed the Lesson 4 Demo in time for students to get it when Lesson 4 goes live next week, so YAY there).

And did some facilitating for Becky as she gets the first batch of Talysmana Viewers ready to go out.

But no words of fiction today.

So. How’s your writing going?