I have no idea what happened to Thursday. It was there, and I know I did stuff. But it seems to have vanished into a puff of thin air. I’ll see what I can do…
I know I had a quick whizz through my courses on Teachable to see if there were any more free codes to other workshops on there. I found two codes for two classic workshops and a third one embedded in another course.
The classic workshops are previously live workshops that have been archived. I had some already:
- writing mystery
- think like a publisher
- science fiction
I think these were stretch rewards in Kickstarters. We can still attempt the assignments in the courses and we can still send them in and either Dean or Kris will read them if they have chance.
There was already a bonus course there too, picked up from the fantasy thriller workshop I attended last month:
- writing thrillers
The bonus course I found embedded in the archived study along short story writing course was:
- making a living writing short stories
And the two other codes given away as part of the writing time travel romance course I found were:
- writing romance fiction
- writing time travel
All of these extra courses are worth $180 inc. tax. That’s $720-worth of courses on top of those I’ve already either won or paid for in a sale.
The courses I think I could do with first are the ones on depth. One of those is live now, I think, or it was earlier this week. But Dean has suggested an order in which to take them, if I find myself in a position to do so, and I’m going to park the order here so I can find it easily:
- depth in writing
- advanced depth
- applied depth
- plotting with depth
- depth in action
These are all £360 each, inc. tax. (So they’re cheaper if you’re in the US.)
The other courses I think I’d like to try are the collections classes, where you take the course and write a collection of stories and publish them at the end, and the challenges, where you challenge yourself to write, say, a novel every two months, and publish it.
For the challenges, you pay the fee to join in with the course. If you miss the challenge, you get a credit for the full value of the course ($600 plus taxes) to use again on either the same course or towards another one. If you hit the challenge, you get a credit for $900 to spend on other courses. I think these are no-brainers – but you do have to have the $600 + tax up front.
Honestly, this bloke could make a fortune out of me, if I had a fortune to spend. The latest sets of courses are ones where you can submit your assignments and if Dean likes them, he’ll buy them for the corresponding anthologies he’s publishing. He pays 6 cents a word.
So I know I had a good look at all of those. I listened to bestseller experiment podcast #12. And I sat and watched a short story writing course that was a free taster for a paid-for comprehensive course. It was all right, but I won’t be paying for the comprehensive course.
I also have gig list admin ticked, both in my diary and on my ClickUp.
I didn’t do any writing, I didn’t do any proofreading… but I did go and read some stories on Deadlines for Writers for this month’s 12 Stories in 12 Months challenge, I commented on two, and I thanked those who had commented on Take Your Pick so far.
While the poet was at band practice, I read a few short stories in the Mysterious Christmas anthology, and I started to read From Plot to Print to Pixel by Lawrence Block.
And that, folks, was Thursday – I believe.
Today I want to get a few stories/articles up on Vocal and/or Medium, and I want to get some short stories sent to market. Or at least ready to go to market.
We don’t have anything planned for the weekend. Nothing. Nada. Nought. If the weather’s fine, we may spend some time working in the garden. But we won’t be driving far as the poet has a long trip again next week.
Have a great weekend.
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Lawrence Block and I used to cross paths at a lot of the same conferences. He’s a great guy, and his wife Lynne is an artist (I went to one of her opening nights at a gallery in NYC). His original FROM PLOT TO PRINT was very good, and I can only imagine the expanded version is even better. He’s always stretching and learning new things.
I’m sure I read FROM PLOT TO PRINT as well, but it’s such a detailed book, and I would have read it such a long time ago. Despite the detail, it’s an easier read than many. He’s apparently put the updated bits in a different font, in order to retain the integrity of the original book. But it’s all the same on the Kindle.