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Excellent presentation, even to a beginner like me. Comprehended difficult art in motion and encouraged me to learn. Thanks!

this video is prescient. at the end of it he's talking about the female revolution in the publishing industry.

This was an excellent workshop. Thank you, Sonja and SWW.

Thank you. And I think I love this person. 🙂 My popular memoir has received much praise.

Cycling, I fell into that with my latest book and it is so comfortable to do. makes alot of sense but I too thought I was the only one. Thanks Dean!

Boy this was good time to party

Surely "cycling" is a form of rewriting!

This is more about social engineering than writing...

I enjoyed the video- Thank you for sharing!

Great video- Thank you!

Thank you.

Thank you. Writing humor is, perhaps, the easiest of writing.

Thank you. My observation is that nearly 100% of "hybrid publishers" are predatory vanity presses.

Thank you.

Thank you.

From the interweb: A Message to Garcia is a widely distributed essay written by Elbert Hubbard in 1899, expressing the value of individual initiative and conscientiousness in work.

The Science Fiction Writer he mentioned that taught at Penn State must have been William Tenn.

Promo-SM 🌟

Thanks Dean. Just finished my third novel this year (speculative fiction series), so when you speak of ‘cycling’, it jumps both my brain cells to the way I write. I come out of film writing and directing and teaching writing at University, and I use strange writing chemistry as well [1. conjecture - 2. questions (such as: What is the impact on each character about what happened?) 3. conjecture again - 4. run the movie and take dictation.] When it is down on paper, I finish the chapter - finishing is important. I do not do a rewrite pass of any kind. I do exactly what you do - cycle - conjecture - cycle - conjecture] It is a loose system. I cycle a whole chapter rather than 400 or so words. I repeat that 30 to 40 times. I give the completed chapters to my ace editor (my wife, a professional British Shakespearean actress), who approaches the material as an interpreter of meaning and a reader. It is not complicated - I write, she reads, I publish. I take ‘cycling’ from your talk with much gratitude. PS I got my students to read ‘Writing into the Dark.’ It freed them to write. Did the same for me.

Absolutely outstanding presentation! Alan Diehl

Thinking about what Mr DWS says, I realize my best writing was fun, and I NEVER rewrote...🙍🏼‍♂🤓Rule 1: You Must Write...Rule 2: Finish What You Write...Rule 3: Do Not Rewrite...Rule 4: You Must Put It On The Market...Rule 5: You Must Keep It On The Market

What an eye opener! I've been cycling this whole time and getting frustrated by it because I felt like I was doing this writing thing all wrong.

This is not really helpful unless you're already an amazing writer

wow... this was one of the most useful talks on writing i've seen in a loooooooooong time. and it rings true! and it makes me think about how effortless it was when i was a kid and how ARDUOUS it has become since i "learned how to write" or at least "learned about the process of writing".

“I sold two short stories back in the seventies. I wrote them on a typewriter and used whiteout…” We live in a VERY different time now.

This is amazing! 💯♥️

This talk was recorded on Feb 22, 2023

Sound advice here from Dan

Everything said here makes perfect sense. A ton of sense. Except for one thing: Writing a novel as a single draft and not ever rewriting is of course a particular approach to writing a novel. This is presented here as 'how you write'. Later, there is a description of cycling, which is apparently going a short distance, possibly running out of creative steam for the moment, going back, going through that chunk that has just been written, fixing things, fleshing out things, and then finding more creative steam and continuing forward from there for another chunk in first draft mode, and repeating that process. Loop, loop, loop, all the way to the end. And that is then presented here as 'how you write'. Also described is jumping in and out of the reader timeline pseudorandomly to make changes in various parts of the manuscript when necessary. All good stuff, but isn't that actually the textbook definition of rewriting? Or rewriting as you draft? Are not these two approaches then mutually exclusive? And how is this considered analogous to how readers read? My understanding is that readers do start on page one and read each word serially all the way through the last page, and that they don't go back in any kind of'cycle' mode or jump in and out of the reader timeline and only encounter the passages a single time. So while I agree with many of the other things you say, and they make sense to me, I find this particular thing to be exceptionally confusing. Maybe this is a terminology issue. Possibly you are not 'rewriting', in the specific definition of that word, but are 'revising', in the specific definition of that word. If it can't be explained that way, I find this completely impossible to understand. If we accept that terminology, that means I also have never once 'rewritten' anything. But I've done a lot of 'revision'. It's honestly not very different from my own approach. I write in larger chunks, and I revise in larger chunks, but it is really pretty much the same process. I am technically a pantser. I never ever create an outline or think deeply about what I will be writing ahead of time. But I am not just a pantser. I am also a reverse plotter, meaning once I've written something, I try to evaluate it to make sure it will make sense to a reader. If it doesn't reach that bar, I revise it. That's when the deep thinking comes into play. Tinkering after the fact does have the possibility of diluting the quality of the story. But in my experience, it has never failed to improve it. All art flows from the unconscious, so the drafting, the 'writing', the creating, comes from there. The evaluating, fixing, editing, revising, all come from the conscious mind. All I know for sure is that my process works for me. Your process apparently works for you, but I'm having a devil of a time understanding exactly what it is.

Rest in peace you sweet kind soul

RIP Robin.

Thank you for placing this video on youtube. "Courage" is not a word I could use regarding memoir writing. My well-selling memoir was fun to write.

Thank you.

The links on this page don't go to the site stated. So, be careful when clicking.

Wonderful video.

Thank you.

There was a band of Apaches along the Arizona / New Mexico border that let one fright outfit pass unmolested, as the owner of the outfit was a brave fighter who won the respect of the leader of the band. When that leader died, the new leader was asked "whom do we kill?" The new leader said "Everyone wearing a hat."

Thank you.

this is what I'm trying to do now. write from the creative head and not the critical head. Allow the story to write itself. Allow it to unfold naturally.

Thank you. Gosh, I did this already. 🙂 My book has 17 "Five Star" reviews. Woo hoo!

Thank you for posting this. Work demands have been blocking me from SWW meetings, so it's a great convenience to be able to learn from the CZcams postings.

Always good to hear from Dean!

Thank you. It sounds like hard work to me. 🙂

2nd obligation: That our story will be of consequence. 15:13

fantastic talk Thank you for posting

Good stuff. Thank you for posting

I loved this workshop! It was so good his words were really inspiring to me.

Great stuff! Good insights into the reasons to write a particular story, wrier's block, the beautiful madness of writers for film, and how to avoid making the silliest mistakes when writing ... whatever you don't know about.

The Best! Thank you posting this to be seen and heard.

Way cool. Thank you. His book on how to write is in my opinion a "must read" for writers.