Wednesday 16 October 2024: Another writing challenge

I didn’t sleep very well on Monday night. The room was too warm, the bed was too small, I had a gazillion things on my mind trying to remember to do things, and the bed wasn’t very comfortable. The joys of the first night in a hotel room. First night blues?

The poet had long gone to work by the time I surfaced. I went downstairs and had a very filling breakfast, then returned to my room to download Foxit to the laptop. This was so I could check a previous proofreading job against the latest revisions.

Well, as alluded to in yesterday’s post, the download took AGES. I made the mistake of also trying to upload some pictures I’d taken on my phone to my Google drive so I could look at them and choose one for yesterday’s post. 

By the time I finally got around to posting yesterday’s blog post, the poet was back from work! He too then had pictures to upload from his day’s visit, and he too soon lost the will to live. I nipped out to get a sandwich in the time it took to download Foxit. The poet had a shower and a nap in the time it took for his pictures to download. And still they hadn’t finished – in both instances.

We could have paid £5 to have premium internet for 24 hours on up to 3 devices, and we might have considered doing that had our experience been more favourable. But we weren’t confident that the signal would have been any better.

So, not a lot to report about yesterday’s work…Instead, I’ll tell you something I decided to do at the weekend…

The Great Novella Challenge

WMG Publishing is moving most of its office from Oregon to Vegas and to celebrate, they’re having a 50% off (or half-price) sale across all of their workshops, all of their teaching, everything. I’m not affiliated to them or anything, I don’t get any special treatment for sharing what they do. I do, however, try to take advantage of these sales where I can, or I’ll back a Kickstarter if they’re giving workshops away as part of their stretch rewards.

I back other Kickstarters too, and with all Kickstarters, the more people I encourage to take part, the more stretch rewards I’ll get. But that’s all I do. I like what Dean Smith and Kris Rusch teach, and I love Kris’s short fiction. (I’ve yet to read her longer fiction.) I like Dean’s writing too, and I particularly like his blunt attitude, even if it can smart on occasion. 

When I did my publishing challenge 2 years ago, publishing a book every week, no matter how short or how long, no matter the content, it was inspired by Dean Wesley Smith’s ‘magic bakery’. 

This time I decided to join his Great Novella Challenge, to write a novella a month for a year. Yes, we pay for the privilege, but we also get so much back:

1. If we hit the total challenge, he’ll give back a $900 credit to use on any of the courses or workshops. (The intro on Teachable says he’ll do this after hitting 6 targets.)
2. Even if he didn’t do this, you’d still have 12 completed novellas by the end of it.
3. If we hit 5 of the targets but fail at #6, he’ll give back a $600 credit to use on any of the courses or workshops. (The intro on Teachable doesn’t say this, but Smith does say it elsewhere.)
4. Even if he didn’t do this, you’d still have 5 completed novellas by then, 5 novellas you may not have managed to produce without the challenge.
5. If we hit the total challenge AND send him the paperback edition of each of the novellas, he’ll give back a lifetime subscription of your choice for any workshops, lectures, pop-ups and even Vegas workshops.

(Disclaimer: Please check for the latest rewards before taking my word as gospel. This is how it stands following an email exchange between me and them.)

This challenge would normally cost me $600 + $120 UK tax = $720. But I got it half price. I’ll still qualify for the 3 rewards in full, though, if I hit all targets. And some of those lifetime subscriptions are worth a lot of money. 

Now, there are some who will, and have, suggest(ed) that he’s basically charging us for writing novellas, which, in essence, is true. But those people are missing the point(s). 

He’s giving us a deadline, we have to turn our novellas into him on the last day of each month (and we can write to him to let him know when we plan to start the challenge), and if we hit those targets, he’s giving us those credits back, which can be used on a course or workshop where feedback is given. It’s a discipline that some of us need, it’s a challenge that some of us need, and it’s a reason for writing and finishing something that some of us need. It also means we’ll have those 12 finished novellas by the end of it, if we succeed.

Smith defines a novella as 15,000 to 30,000 words. I’d define a novella as 25,000 to 50,000 words. I’d define a novelette as 10,000 to 25,000 words. I’d define a short story as 1,250 to 10,000 words. And I’d define flash fiction as anything under 1,200 words. So for me, this challenge could also include one of my novelettes.

I have branding for novelettes, I have branding for short stories, and I have branding for flash fiction. I also have branding for the bookazine, for the collections, and for the Marcie Craig novels. I’m still working on my branding for novellas and the Rainbow Chronicles novels. 

This challenge crosses 2 of my own definitions, which gives some flexibility. And I already have some cover branding in place when I’m ready to start publishing. We only have to turn in the Word file at the end of each month. He can wait a little for the paperback versions.

We’re not allowed to use something from our inventory (the only people we’d be cheating is ourselves), but we can start something new in an existing series. 

I’m really looking forward to getting going on this and I’ve already done a lot of planning for the year so I don’t run out of ideas. 

Some of us don’t need a challenge like this, and others will recoil in horror at having to turn in a novella/novelette a month. So it isn’t suitable for everyone. I think it’s suitable for me, and the poet agrees, a lot. Wish me luck!