MY NEWEST SCHEME

Today, May 1st, 2022, just happens to be my birthday. BUT… it’s not because of another birthday that I’m setting this new goal, a goal that would normally be a New Year’s Resolution, it just happens to be 5 months too late for that, but at least it’s the 1st of the month so I can run this 12-Month Plan from THIS May Day until April 30th 2023, and then I’ll see what I’ve accomplished.

HERE’S THE IDEA

The Idea is based on Heinlein’s 5 Business Rules:

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you start.
3. You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order.
4. You must put it on the market.
5. You must keep it on the market until sold.

DEAN WESLEY SMITH’S BOOK

This is explained best by Dean Wesley Smith in his book “Heinlen’s Rules: Five Simple Business Rules For Writing.”

In this highly-recommended book, Smith recounts how he, as a fairly-experienced short story writer, discovered Heinlein’s Rules in a 1947 how-to book, and he accepted Heinlein’s challenge. Note that Heinlein never says how much to write, he simply says “You must write” but, to me, the word “daily” is kind of implied because we’re writers, and that’s what we do.

Smith applied it thusly: he pledged, on January 1st, 1982, to write one story per week. He wound up writing 44 stories that year, made his first sale in early 1983, and he has never looked back. Note that he had written 44 stories, keeping them constantly “in the mail” and had probably finished a few early 1983 stories before he made his first sale.

Others have suggested an alternate track of one short story every 2 weeks.

GOOOOAAAALLLL

Since I’m old enough, and have been a writer long enough, to realize that Heinlein’s Five Rules are really nothing more than a motivational tool, not an Unbreakable Covenant, I will be flexible with my goals.

Here is what I will do: I will start off with the one Story Per Week goal to start out. If I need to scale back to One Story Every Two Weeks somewhere down the road, I can do that.

I know myself well enough to KNOW beyond the shadow of a doubt that if I start with the Biweekly goal hoping to ramp up to Weekly in a few months, it will never happen.If I start out doing the Weekly Story Goal, and life intrudes, other writing jobs interfere, or I run out of story ideas, I can drop back to the Biweekly Story Goal. Either way, in one year, I’ll have 25 to 50 stories written.

WESTERN NOVELS

Things could change quickly, though. I just contacted a publisher of Westerns about my nearly finished short Western novel. If they want to publish it, then I may be locked into churning out a new Western novel every month or two. The publishing cycles for such Western publishers seem to run like that.

BLOCKBUSTERS

If I decide to tackle a BIG project, it will probably be writing a big, 80K to 100K Blockbuster Thriller. That’s the one project that I would put all my other projects on hold for. I’d do like Jim Grant, AKA Lee Child did when he wrote his first few Jack Reacher novels… take up to 6 months to write one, then, after short break of a week or two, start writing another one. For a Blockbuster Thriller that’s going to be designed to find me an agent and a Big Six publisher, as opposed to toiling away writing a half-dozen niche Indie Crime novels , writing two a year should be fine. That is IF they are, indeed, bestsellers.

Til later, friends,

Keep Reading, and Keep Writing,

CJB

UPDATE: Dec. 24, 2022:

I’m past the halfway point in my May 1 to April 30 year, and I’d like to report that I only recently submitted 3 Crime short stories to three top markets. Now, I’m writing two SF stories as part of two separate courses, one is the L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of The Future Online Workshop, taught by Orson Scott Card, Tim Powers, and David Farland. And the other is a Udemy course taught by the ever insightful and entertaining Harry deWulf. Hopefully, I will emerge from these two courses with at least 2 well-written, sellable Science Fiction short stories so I can get them in the mail, per se.

UPDATE CONCLUSION:

So, I’m way behind on my goal of one story per week. I should have written 28 stories by now, or at the biweekly goal, 14 stories. But I’m happy that I have 3 done and submitted, and 2 more being written.

Other writing projects like a screenplay, a TV pilot script, and my 3rd King Leary novel for NaNoWriMo, diverted my focus from concentrating on short stories alone. But it’s okay. It’s Saul Goodman. I still have January through April to ramp up my short game. If necessary, I’ll write and publish 20 Flash Fiction stories along the way to April 30th.

YOUR TAKEAWAY AS A WRITER

I realize that this post is all me, me, me, but there’s a method to my madness. By sharing my plans, dreams, and schemes, I’ll hopefully give you some ideas on how to roll in your own writing career. If nothing else, you can say, “What a Bozo. I’m definitely not gonna do it like Becker.” Cool. That’s a form of motivation, too.

My promise to the Reader:

1. I promise to be clear, honest, and concise.
2. I will write with a sense of humor, even the piece is frightening, scary, or strident. On second thought, I’ll throw in some jokes then, too.
3. I will write with a sense of awe, a sense of wonder, and sense of the phantasmagorical if at all possible, and sometimes, even when it’s not.
4. My influences include The Three Rays: Raymond Chandler, Raymond Carver, and Ray Bradbury. They also include novelists like Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Garcia Marquez; screenwriters like Bill Goldman, Kevin Jarre, and the Coen Brothers; and even advertising copywriters like Michael Masterson, and Bob Bly. They’ve all been great teachers. 5. My Journalism School training taught me the value of What Makes a Story, Dog Bite Man… No Story. Man Bites Dog… now THERE’S a STORY.
6. I will not limit myself to one way of telling a story. If a new story demands I fresh approach, I will do what I need to tell that story in a new way.
7. I promise to use a diversity of voices to tell these stories. I will create multicultural cast of characters, especially in a my Western stories.
8. I write Fiction… including Mysteries, Science Fiction, Westerns, and Literary Fiction. I write Web Content and Blog Posts. I write Direct Market Ad Copy, Reviews, Comedy Material, Memoir, and Personal Essays. And I will write whatever else the Universe sends my way.
9. I will write some of the above… Web Content, Blog Posts, Ad Copy, Reviews, Comedy Material… for money. I’ll write the rest of it… Fiction, Screenplays, My Comedy Material, Memoir and Personal Essays… for love and fun. If any of those works start paying off, bonus!
10. I promise listen to my readers, to hear what moves or doesn’t move them in my writing.
11. I promise to help newer writers if I can, to encourage them to keep on writing, or to offer a few tricks of the trade
12. Finally, I promise to Keep On Writing.

THE BIG QUESTION

Probably the most asked question in the writing game, after “How do I get an agent” and “How do you get your ideas” is “Why do you write?” It should be the first question all writers ask of themselves.

I’ve been writing since I wrote my first creative writing assignment in 5th grade. That was in 1969, over 50 years ago.

BACK IN THE DAY

I’ve considered myself a professional writer since I began writing my first mystery and science fiction short stories for submission to magazines in New York. That was in 1982. Those first stories were terrible. I honestly did not write a sellable story until 1995, and I didn’t actually sell those two stories which I wrote as part of a Fiction Writing class for Writer’s Digest School.

To get to that point, I’d lived an extra dozen years, plus I’d majored in Journalism in college, and the successes I had as a student journalist sharpened my writing skills.

That’s all background, though, it doesn’t answer the question of Why I Write. That’s a difficult question to answer. It might be easier to give you a list of wrong answers. In other words, a list of reasons which are NOT my motivations for writing.

5 REASONS NOT TO BE A WRITER

1. I don’t write to get rich. (Should that somehow happen, cool. But it’s not a certainty.)
2. I do not write to get famous. (Same as above.)
3. I don’t write because I have “Something to say.” (Who cares what I have to say? I don’t.)
4. I do not write because of my huge ego. (My ego is easily deflated.)
5. I don’t write because I feel the world needs to read my writing. (The world does not need to do so.)
6. Today’s Internet market has created a new golden age for writers. Thousands of writers are getting paid to write. Some write Fiction, some Content Writing, some Copywriting, or whatever. I DO have enough ego to know that I’m way more talented than many of those professional freelance writers. I might as well take part in the cash grab.

THE NEW GOLDEN AGE

For Fiction Writers, which I primarily consider myself to be, the Internet, as it is in 2022, is The New Pulp Era, similar to the original Pulp Fiction Era of the 1920s-1950s, and the Paperback Era of the 1950s-1990’s. And for Nonfiction writers, it’s a Bonanza unparalleled since the Slick Magazine era of the 1950s-1970s… with a lot MORE markets than there used to be.

I write because it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I said that I don’t write to get rich or famous because I’m a realist. I’m a very good writer. Some day I may be a GREAT writer. But there are hundreds of thousands of good writers who can do what I do.

Still, I should be able to make a comfortable living from my writing, even if I have to write Web Content and Ad Copy by day, and write my Genre Fiction at night.

LET’S GO

One thing I have learned from studying what works and what doesn’t in Indie Publishing, Freelance Copywriting, etc., is that the more content a writer puts out is the more chance that writer has of finding a paying audience. In Indie Publishing they say an author needs “A Dirty Dozen” titles in his or her catalog before the sales start to show. That could be 12 to15 full-length 100,000 word novels, or 12 to 15 standalone short stories or novellas. Depending on the subgenre, either will work. You still need to market your work like crazy, but all the marketing, paid ads, and Social Media in the world will fail if you only have a catalog of 1 to 3 titles.

I’m still working on my first dirty dozen titles, so I can’t exactly say that I’m leading by example. I’m the preacher whose sermons are 90% for myself.

Until later,

Keep reading and keep writing.

CJB