One of my biggest writing inspirations is Dean Wesley Smith. He's written an absolute ton of stuff, some of which I have read. But I'm more interested in his online courses and lectures, several of which I have gotten for incredibly low prices on his Kickstarter projects. Five or six short online courses as stretch goals with a minimal investment? Sold, thank you. He has a lot of really useful information, accumulated over more than four decades as a professional writer. And he's willing to share it, so I'm taking him up on it.
The course I just picked up on a half-price sale was on Heinlein's Rules. These are well-known in the writing community, at least the successful writers. And the first rule is, You Must Write. I watched some of the videos in the lecture course, in which he points out that an estimated ninety percent of would-be writers can't get past this first rule. "WRITE!" Not research, not plot, not plan...just plant your butt in front of the screen and get typing. It's a rule I followed pretty faithfully in my first year as a real writer, but I let it go as we approached our move, and in the past year as we've gotten settled on the farm.
It's time to get it back together.
The other course of Dean's that I watched was about the pulp writers and how they worked. It goes hand-in-hand with the Heinlein's Rules, because the pulp writers followed those rules to the letter. That's why they were successful; they wrote fast, they wrote a ton, and they kept trying to sell it no matter what. And they wrote good stuff, too, especially the 'genre' writers who wrote science fiction, weird fantasy, and pulp heroes like the Shadow and Doc Savage. And at the end of it, he offered a challenge that he didn't expect anyone to really do: Write a pulp-style short story and send it in.
Challenge accepted.
I'm halfway through this story; it's going to run about six thousand words. I'd worked on it on-and-off for the past couple of months, but always managed to get distracted instead of getting it done. Which, of course, is Heinlein's second rule: You must finish what you write. I've got plenty of half-written or unfinished stuff on my hard drive; it's time to put the second rule into practice and get those stories done, too. That includes two Cameron Vail mysteries, a Japanese-style fantasy, another fantasy book, and several Meterran short stories. I've had plenty of time to recharge the creative batteries; it's time to get them running again.
I hope I can keep this up; my goal is to finish this pulp story in the next day or two, and get it sent off to Mr. Smith for his perusal. After that, I want to maintain the momentum and keep doing some writing on a daily basis until the New Year; then, it's time to get serious again and get some stuff published.
It's still going to be crazy busy on the farm, even in the winter; we still have to get the rink built, and Christmas is in less than three weeks. So, there's plenty to do. But there will still be time to write, too. And blog, of course. Blogging is good.
And writing...that feel darn good as well.
