Writing Go Vroom

It was my final summer: The last year I’d experience a summer break between school sessions. After that year, it would be just summer, not summer. For some reason lost to the mist of time, I was only able to secure thirty hours a week for work. And that summer… I decided to go for it.

I was going to write.

That summer I intentionally followed a method I’d read that Ray Bradbury used: He’d write a short story rough draft on Monday, revise the story every day until Friday, and then send it out. I thought that sounded like a fantastic idea. A tough one, but a fantastic one. After all, who could live at the speed of a short story a week?

I could. That summer, every week I wrote a short story. Every week I sent stories out, attempting to sell one. Just one.

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And Then There Were People

And lo, did the people come
From near and from far.
“Tis summer!” they proclaimed
As they knocked on the door.

“Tis not!” said I,
But they paid me no heed
As they pounded and pleaded
And demanded to be seen.

They broke down the door.
They trod on the carpet.
They ate all the food.
They dined on the sherbet.

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Kickstarter Debrief

This past Thursday morning, our Kickstarter campaign to fund Madelyn of the Sky ended. How did it go?

Really, really well. I’m honestly blown away. It was a risk to take this route. We might not have been funded at all. We were fairly certain we could get that much, of course, but whether or not we would was a completely different story.

We weren’t just funded. Every single stretch goal was unlocked. We made almost 200% of our goal.

So, what are some brief takeaways, in no particular order?

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To All Things… An Ending!

Write until the story’s done. Then stop.

There are plenty of series that have gone on too long. Jumping the Shark is a trope for a reason. When people get greedy or don’t realize they’ve run out of ideas, series end up not just losing quality, but failing in general. My wife and I often joke that Ross stopped being a character somewhere around season four of Friends. (Your mileage may vary.)

It’s not just tv series, of course. Book series can run on for literally hundreds of books. It’s the common wisdom of the day that series sell better than stand-alone novels, so why not set up a series that lasts a long time?

True, some readers love that. Of course, then you run into the problem of having too many books. The Honorverse has a great start, and I’ve heard it continues in fantastic ways, but… there are just too many books. I haven’t read farther than the first book in the series because of that. It’s intimidating!

So, how do you know when to end?

When the story’s done.

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