About 500 words today, but the night is still young. I’ve finally got the novel off the ground now and it always takes a day or so for me to start hitting regular numbers. My goal is always 2,000 words per day, which I probably won’t hit today but should tomorrow.
I got the manuscript from my editor for my QA book, so that’s ready to go. The cover will be done Monday so I’ll publish it Monday evening assuming all is well.
I’ll be ordered the cover for the next Good Necromancer book tomorrow probably. That’ll be fun…
Anyway, I stumbled upon an article about Dean Koontz today that sums up the attitude and the commitment to writing that can set you up for success.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-02-14-ls-31707-story.html
It’s a lengthy article but I suggest you read it, even if you aren’t a Dean Koontz fan.
Koontz basically gives the entire game away, and this article was written in 1995.
Takeaways:
#1: He believed in himself when no one else did. He was able to buy the rights back from tremendously stupid publishers who thought the books had no potential (who’s laughing now?).
#2: He’s disciplined. He writes every day, rain or shine. Now, at the age of 76, he has over 100 books to show for it.
#3: He used technology to his advantage. It was a different era in the 90s, but he developed a computer software that contained all of his licensing and rights information. It would alert him on important dates so he could either get the rights back or follow-up on a contract clause. It’s quite easy to do some mental gymnastics to find technology that can help us with our self-publishing business today.
People can be quite silly about Dean Koontz—it’s amazing how many people look down on him. But he’s quite an amazing writer with an eye for business, whether you like his writing style or not.
As I keep saying, the mega-bestsellers are the best mentors if you want to learn about craft and attitude. Business, not so much because they came up in a different time and they are, for the most part, still traditionally-published. But as far as craft goes, there are no better writers you can study.
