So every spring, Kris Rusch puts together a bundle of books on the craft of writing. This year, I was lucky enough to be included in The Write Stuff bundle. There are some new and interesting books up this year, including Kris’s book on Creating Your Author Brand and Dean’s book about writing a novel in five days while traveling, because Dean’s crazy. I’m somehow up there with my newly released Business For Breakfast book: The Three Act Dramatic Structure.
This one I wrote because many folks writing fiction come in via the typical creative writing courses in high school and college. I tried that. Honestly, I did. My last college creative writing professor was one of those people who would never give one of her students an A if they possessed a penis. True story. I knew that going in, and scored as high a B+ as she would allow, and probably would have been an A if I was a girl. Shit happens. Learned a lot, even if I suffered a serious amount of abuse from that “person.”
I took the abuse the wrong way. It was as a sign I that I should stop writing fiction at that point, and instead transition all my effort into epic, long-form poetry. There are six volumes of stuff, mostly dark fantasy, most of which have never seen the light of day. Maybe one of these days.
Later, I started running with a different crowd, and spent some time writing short stage plays (for sale in many places, if you’re bold and a little crazy).
When I finally stumbled into Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm), she convinced me to write fiction again for the first time in roughly 25 years. And I’ve done pretty good at it. But along the way, I learned a whole different way of story-telling. The 3 Act is different than the typical 7-Point Plot Structure, so she convinced me that not many writers knew about that way of doing things (and the 2-Act, the 4-Act, etc.) so I should write a book about it for writers looking for more tools to go into their toolbox.
That’s my story, and I won’t tell you the truth without free booze and sushi.
But Kris liked it enough to include in the bundle for writers. As she said in the intro: ”
…in the past, when I’ve compiled these bundles, I did my best to make bundles that would help all kinds of writers.
This year, that includes writers like me.
In this bundle you’ll find ten different writing products. They have a lot to teach you.”
M.L. Buchman wrote a fantastic book about how to set up your literary estate. I helped review it in early drafts, and provided copies of my (very weird) will and estate as an example of some of the strange things creatives need to think about.
As a creative (more than just writers, I’m addressing you artists of all flavors and shapes), did you know your copyright will outlive you by 70 years, right now? That means your great-great-grandkids can continue to collect royalties and residuals for something you did today.
GET YOUR WILL DONE AND KEEP IT UP TO DATE!!!
“Hollywood” Hendrickson has a book on how to get your book into schools (assuming you aren’t writing erotica, etc. heh) and significantly increase your revenue and discoverability.
The other books and things in this bundle are just as impressive, and will go a long ways towards helping your be a better creative. Note: I didn’t say writer, I said creative. These things go far beyond just writers. There are important lessons and ideas for any crazy person like us.
You should reach out to the artists in your life and let them know about this bundle. They will get a lot of material, from some amazing people, at a really good price.