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104 Days to Make Something Real
Reframing Summer as the Season for Creating Instead of Coasting Veteran writer Dean Wesley Smith dubs the summer months the Time of the Great Forgetting. It’s that point in the year when the good intentions of New Year’s Resolutions made in the depths of winter fall by the wayside in the bright light of hot summer days when the pull to do just about anything other than write draws writers away from their keyboards. It’s only in later summer and early fall when writers remember their annual goals and either charge full-stream ahead and barrel to the end of the year, desperately hoping to achieve their milestones, or just give…
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May 1: My Writing New Year
Every May 1, I give myself permission to start over—without pretending I haven’t been here before. Thirteen years ago today, I made a resolution to write more stories, and I was going to begin with the image in my head: a man in a fedora, knocking on a door, and bullets ripping through the wood. That idea became my first published novel, Wading Into War. Every May, I come back to that decision and take stock of the work. I call it my Writer’s New Year’s Day. Some years are good. Others aren’t. But on May 1, I reflect, reset if necessary, and keep going. In past years, I laid…