[PHOTO NOTE: I gave you a look at my previous hometown last week, so this is a look at someplace near my present home. This is Red Haw State Park just outside Chariton, Iowa. There’s a few more pics below.]

I’m getting the newsletter out a bit later on Saturday than usual (I thought it was going to be 5 p.m., but it’s more like 5:30.

/Insert shrugging emoji here.

I’ve been busy with last-minute school year stuff and other items. We can talk now, though. 🙂

Home Front Stuff

From the photos accompanying this newsletter, you can probably tell that we are well into the transition from spring into summer and the air conditioning is now in operation. Red Haw State Park is one of the lesser-known nature spots in Iowa, but I’ve really come to love it in my few years living in Chariton. It’s even got a little beach, and there’s some camping and boating facilities, as well. It finally fully opened back up recently after cleaning up from a tornado.

I’m also looking forward to summer vacation starting in a week. Although the teaching year was not as bad as I had initially feared, I am increasingly glad that my teaching duties will be almost exclusively special education next year. I think it is the educational work I feel most comfortable with. Even though I might not be teaching writing full-time next year, I’m finding that doing my own writing is more than making up for not being a writing teacher.

My daughter’s visiting us the weekend after my classes are done. I’m quite looking forward to that.

What I’ve Been Writing

I do believe the last round of revisions and edits for The Yank Striker are now in the books. Now, I’m waiting for my publisher to move on their end. They have a lot of other projects they are trying to get finished, but I’m hoping I can get a release date for sometime this summer. That would obviously be an advantage for me, as I would be more available for promotional appearances, etc.

I’ve been doing more work with planning and drafting what I’m going to refer to as The Yank Striker 2. I have a better idea of what that is going to look like and the size of that project. I’m hoping that I can have it done as a rough draft by the end of the year and be ready to publish it during Summer 2024. I used to go years between writing projects in my procrastination days, so this is all new to me. I’ve got 16,000-plus words all set to go and I’d like at least another 70,000 for a modest-sized book. Like Tolkien and other fantasy writers know, why write a massive book when you can have a series?

I submitted that essay for the Writers on the Avenue collection I discussed last week, after a bit of revision on portions of the rough draft I’ve been compiling on a memoir project I accidentally started working on over the course of blogging about my past experiences with writing over my life. Whenever they publish that, I’ll announce it here. The collection is going to feature a lot of great Iowa writers and friends like Mike Bayless, Misty Urban, Mica Rossi, and my former high school classmate Juan Fourneau.

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

Reformatting posts on Substack is going slowly. I did do a slight design revamp of the Substack page now that there are more design options available. I decided on a purple and gold color scheme in honor of my old hometown school, Muscatine High School. I’m quite happy with the result. If I’ve got some time later this month, I might look and see if the WordPress site might need a design refresh as well.

Once I have a release date for The Yank Striker, of course, I will have to start firing up my promotional machine (or lack of it) to preview the book. I’ve got some ideas for this, and I might want to begin that promotion even if I don’t have a clear date yet. You might be seeing some excerpts from The Yank Striker on these pages soon.

If you want to check me out when I post Substack Notes, here’s where you can find me.

Writing Advice for the Week

Use active verbs in your sentences as much as possible instead of passive verb sentences.

A passive verb sentence has something happening to the subject of the sentence.

(Example: “The body was dragged by Sam and Dean Winchester into the living room.” The body is the subject of the sentence, and has something done to it, so that makes it a passive sentence.)

An active verb sentence has the subject of the sentence doing something.

(Example: “Sam and Dean Winchester dragged the body into the living room.” Now the brothers Winchester are the subject of the sentence, and they are doing something, so that makes it an active sentence.)

Note the directness of the active verb sentence as opposed to the passive verb sentence. Also note the passive verb sentence takes more words to say the same thing.

You won’t always be able to avoid using passive verb sentences based on the writing circumstances. However, you should always at least see if rewriting a sentence into active voice is a good option.

What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations

Art Cullen has a good look at what’s been going on in the Iowa Legislature and with Gov. Kim Reynolds.

If I’m interested in writing books fully online and on Substack, this might be a way to do it. It seems a bit intimidating to do it all on my own, but it seems to have promise.

I like it when writers, especially those who write about politics, are able to self-reflect when they get it wrong. It is a skill greatly lacking in national news journalists and non-existent among certain opinion writers. Dave Busiek is definitely self-reflective in this piece about the CNN town hall earlier this week. Give it a read.

It goes without saying I’ll be reading and rereading this piece about how to sell a book on Substack. Thank you, On Substack.

Next week, I’ll try to post some WordPress stuff I’ve been reading, as well.

Writing Quote(s) of the Week

Here’s two that seem to fit my mood as I begin this new writing project.

There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.

Beatrix Potter

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.

Neil Gaiman

Final Thoughts

How about this? My first Substack subscriber over the age of 18 to email me at jason.liegois@liegois.media gets an autographed copy of The Holy Fool. Make sure to include your name, mailing address, and any requests for the inscription. The inbox is open, everyone.

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While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. I will eventually be opening some special contests, offers, and first looks at original fiction, poems, and other items. Just click the button below.

[PHOTO NOTE: Since part of this newsletter will talk about me participating in a project with my old writing group in Muscatine, I thought I’d include a random picture of Tom Bruner Field, which has hosted amateur, college, and semi-pro baseball in town since 1910. It’s a nice bit of history.]

This week has been a busy week for me when it comes to real life and odd and ends, but not when it comes to writing, perhaps. I have been doing a few things, though[1].

Home Front Stuff

It’s finally beginning to get warmer here in South Central Iowa, although today is a quite comfortable sixtyish degree day. These are still in-between days, like I remember as a kid going to school with my coat on and leaving school with it wrapped around my waist. We didn’t have a massive heat wave last year around here, so I hope we get lucky again. My wife knows that this is absolutely the farthest south that I’d ever want to live[2].

I’ve gotten more solid confirmation that I will be teaching close to 100 percent high school special education next year, and I’m pretty happy with that and the district. I’ve had a chance to meet some of the new incoming teachers for our district, and I’m looking forward to working with them. Although not a lot is going well for education at times, I am glad that I work for a good district with good colleagues.

It’s also the end of the football (AKA soccer) season in Europe. My beloved Liverpool might have a chance at European football after a long hard season, Wrexham got promoted to the Football League after years of struggle, and Napoli won Serie A (the Italian top-league) for the first time in 33 years, the third time in its history, and the only time without the great Diego Armondo Maradona in their lineup[3].

What I’ve Been Writing

I am still in the third round of “final” revisions on The Yank Striker. In my first review of the book and the changes that were made on the second round, I’ve found only a couple errors to note for my publisher. I’m going to undertake a read-through just to look for any remaining proofreading errors. Hopefully, I will not find any others, and this book will begin the final steps of the publishing process and I’ll have a book ready to sell by this summer.

Not to go into word count here in detail, but it has been down for the past two weeks. A big reason is that I have been busy with revising The Yank Striker one more time.

The other reason is that I’ve been putting together an essay for a collection by Writers on the Avenue, the group of writers I belonged to in Muscatine and I really do credit for encouraging me to get back into writing on a regular basis. The essay is an excerpt/refashioning of a memoir project I accidentally started working on over the course of blogging about my past experiences with writing over my life.

When they finally publish the collection my essay should be in, I’ll let you know. WOTA has a lot of very talented, experienced writers that I learned a lot from.

With all of that, I’ve only had a little time for original writing except for a few paragraphs. I’m hoping this next week goes better. I won’t be publishing a paid-subscriber exclusive or another post this weekend, but I am hopeful that I will be getting something ready for next weekend. I have to say that I have been impressed that I have been blogging more consistently than I have since I started my WordPress blog back in 2017.

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

All quiet on the Western Front, as they would say. Updating some of the old posts I imported from WordPress to Substack and WordPress itself are at a standstill, but I’m hoping to restart that soon. Part of the problem is that I’m trying to get grading done for the end of the year and more than a few students have late assignments.

What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations

I’ve mentioned them before but the

Iowa Writers Collaborative is a great group of writers here in this state doing a fantastic job of letting their subscribers know what’s going on in Iowa. Their weekly roundups are a must-read.

I might have also mentioned this place somewhere, but The Library will probably be one of my first contacts once my new book is out. I’m always loving to see new resources for writers out there.

Writing Quote(s) of the Week

I referred to it last week, so here’s Stevie King’s Rule #1 and #2 of writing.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.

• Stephen King

But, there’s this quote to consider if you ever think that you’ve learned everything there is to know about writing.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

• W. Somerset Maugham

Final Thoughts

It’s been great to see that I’ve been slowly gaining some subscribers, and I hope you have been getting something from my newsletter. If there is something you want to see more of, or you are liking something that I put out here, please let me know. I’m trying to see how I can be of the best possible benefit for my readers.

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Footnotes:

1. I really am writing this at the last minute, so I’m hoping I get it out by noon today [EDIT: Nope lol].
2. South toward the Equator, that is. Moving to New Zealand or southern Argentina doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
3. Yes, there is a definite reason I decided to write a dramatic book series based in the world of football.

While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. I will eventually be opening some special contests, offers, and first looks at original fiction, poems, and other items. Just click the button below.

[PHOTO NOTE: Since I’m on the road this weekend, I decided a picture of a road (Iowa Highway 14) might be appropriate. Ignore the fact it’s a winter picture.]

It’s been another week for me. Let’s talk about it.

Home Front Stuff

Can’t say I have any complaints about the weather this week in Iowa – relatively dry (except for Friday) and temperatures right in the 60’s. It only gets a bit awkward at work when you don’t have good control of the furnace and you have to turn on the AC in the afternoon or else everyone gets sweating to death and nobody wants that while people are trying to teach and learn.

I had a chance to get out of town for a day so I went trekking back to Muscatine for my dad’s birthday. Since it’s even tough for me to get together with my kids, if I can find a time to do that with my parents, I want to try and take it. Nowadays, I treasure every chance I get to see them, because you never know when I’ll get the next chance to see them[1].

In other professional news, it looks like I will be teaching again next year at my current school district. This year was a bit of a strange one for me, because it was the first time in a decade when I was teaching 100 percent language arts to both middle and high schoolers. All indications are that I will likely be doing all or nearly all special education next year. I’m starting to find that I seem to prefer the special education field better than the general education field, so I’m looking forward to what will come next year.

What I’ve Been Writing

I am now in the third round of “final” revisions on The Yank Striker. My hope is for a considerable amount of close reading and a bare minimum of changes. I would like this to be the last round of changes made before my publisher and I make the book available for publication.

What’s frustrating me about this and the sequel to the book I am now writing is I’m having to try and do some more planning for the sequel rather than straight writing. As much as some writers like to write by the seat of their pants (“Pantsers,” as some of the fellow members of my Iowa Writers’ Corner put it), I never could feel comfortable with not planning where my stories are going to go. This especially seems to make sense to me, given this will be part of a series and I believe that I will need a solidly secure world-build and background for it. I’m well-ahead on that score, but I still feel like I need to do more, and I need to relax and get that planning done while not being so paranoid about my word count. I can be productive even if I’m not putting a massive amount of words on paper.

One thing I sorted out that will feature in the next book is this: I’ve managed to come up with a club anthem for my fictional East End of London club. I took an old East End pub tune, worked around the lyrics, and voila, a new club anthem. Many different clubs have their anthems, like “You’ll Never Walk Alone” for Liverpool and “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” for West Ham United, and I thought it would be appropriate for my fictional team to have its own song. I had initially thought of some reworkings of rock tunes[2], but to absolutely make sure to avoid any copyright issues, I decided on a public domain tune with roots in the East End. I might give some of my paid subscribers a look at that tune sometime soon, or another type of paid subscriber post, but due to my traveling this week, that might be not quite in the cards. We’ll have to see.

Again, I am trying to avoid a slump in about three weeks when I go on summer vacation. I have suffered through some similar slumps during the past two years, but I think that with my awareness of this tendency, I have a better chance of fighting against it. I’m not going to post the numbers here on Substack, but I’ll probably mention in the weekly newsletter if I beat the slump. If you are desperate to find out my weekly word-count numbers, check out this section of my Worpress blog Liegois Media.

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

Not much changing here. I’m trying to make a note to try and look through more Substacks during the weekend and midweek, and make some more Substack Notes. I think they are good for short notes, announcements, and shouting out other authors.

Earlier this week, for example, I announced that all my subscribers had been entered into a giveaway for my first book, The Holy Fool, as part of my anticipatory celebrations for the next book coming out. I’ll announce the winner of the contest next week on Substack Notes, but I’ll reach out to the winner beforehand. Said winner will receive an autographed hardcopy of the book from me. Good luck, everyone.

What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations

This was a good review of a writing and planning tool called Obsidian by the author of Occam’s Lab . Check it out.

This was Parker Molloy ‘s great look at the closing of Buzzfeed news and its consequences.

Writing Quote(s) of the Week

This is the real reason why you need to follow Stephen King’s admonition that to be a good writer, you need to read a lot as well as write a lot.

Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.

William Faulkner

Final Thoughts

I’ve praised the band Fairport Convention recently, and I’m a big fan of their English folk and rock blend; essentially, it’s the English equivalent to the Byrds of the 1960’s (and around the same era, too). I start thinking of some good fantasy adventures like Lord of the Rings when I hear it.

Here’s another one of their better songs to wrap this up. Take care.

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Footnotes:

1. So, if you are wondering why this particular newsletter might be a bit shorter than some of my others, that’s the reason.
2. “C’mon Feel the Noize” seemed to be one of the higher ones on my list, or a similar sing-along from the 1970’s glam rock era.

While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. I will eventually be opening some special contests, offers, and first looks at original fiction, poems, and other items. Just click the button below.

[Photo Note: An old picture of my hometown of Muscatine sometime around the turn of the 20th Century. It just looked cool; there was no other reason to include it.]

It’s been another week for me. Let’s talk about it.

Home Front Stuff

The weather in southern Iowa has continued to keep weird. It was in the 30’s and actually snowing on Sunday, up into the low 70’s by Wednesday, and then 50’s and rainy by the end of the week. But sure, there’s no such thing as climate change that brings with it unpredictable swings of weather[1].

I managed to meet my son in person when I was up in Des Moines for last Saturday and we had a good time[2]. He had fun telling me some stories about his work at the Iowa Events Center, where he works part time in maintenance when he is not doing his regular heating and air conditioning work. I realize how few times I will continue to see my kids in person now that they are in their twenties and trying to make their own way in the world.

Speaking of kids, my daughter got to go to the University of Missouri in Columbia last weekend with some of her fellow University of Iowa chemical engineering students. It’s great to see her growing and learning new stuff.

What I’ve Been Writing

I have to admit that work on The Yank Striker 2 has not gone as far as I wanted. I feel like I was just waiting for the last little round of revisions for the first book in the series to happen soon, but I’m still waiting on the next step. And now that I’ve gotten the new proof, that can begin. My hope is that I don’t find anything and I tell my publishers that all is good. I can dream, anyway.

So, I feel like I need to review what I’ve already written for the second book before I can start writing more new material, and there’s a bit of a mental paralysis. There’s always fan fiction for some fast productivity, but I don’t want it to be a crutch for running in place when I want to do something productive. I ended up doing some anyway because I wanted to be writing something, at the very least[3].

I think this is just the rehashing of an old argument I’ve had with myself for the past year. I know that whenever I’m more productive, when the numbers are up, I feel psychologically better about myself. I’ve said this before, but I never understood writers who had to be in depressive or chaotic moods to be their most creative. I always do better when I’m in a good place psychologically.

That’s one of the reasons that I’m really attentive of a slump after I go on break next month from school. I have often found myself so exhausted mentally from the end of the experience that my mind basically wants to do nothing for at least four to five weeks.

Getting back to The Yank Striker itself, I get the feeling that I will eventually announce a release date sometime this summer. This would be convenient for me, as I would have more free time to get involved with things like release events, appearances, and the like. We’ll have to see, as I am still waiting on more details as to when this is coming.

With all of that on the horizon, I think, a revisit of my first book, The Holy Fool, and what I think it had to say about the state of journalism in America might be a good topic for a paid-subscriber exclusive item. However I do want to have a book contest giveaway involving The Holy Fool and some of my subscribers. Watch this space – I might do a special May Day giveaway.

I’ve posted a few Substack Notes during the previous week and this week as well. It’s been a great way for me to run into even more writers that have impressed me, so I ended up subscribing to a few of them. If I make that a habit, do I add those notes to my writing totals that I keep track of? The mind reels. As long as I use it in small doses, I think it will go all right.

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

I’m continuing to try and clean up the Substack with all of the older or outdated posts that got imported from Liegois Media. That’s still going to take a long time, longer than I had hoped. I wished there was a menu option where you were able to easily access a large number of your past posts to change their status or delete them. Unfortunately, no such feature exists in Substack, so that will take much longer than even I anticipated.

Updating some of the posts in Liegois Media, I expect, might take longer, and will not start until I finish on Substack. Again, it’s going to take a long time, but I have to frankly doubt there is a big demand for people to read all of my old posts without paying for some, or that I would be forgoing a ton of dollars if I didn’t get everything set up right away.

What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations

There have been so many people I have been running into on Substack, WordPress, and Facebook. There have been a lot of good stuff out there.

Reb Brown is an actor who was big in the ’70’s and 80’s. I saw him in films like Uncommon Valor, Space Mutiny, but I knew him best as my first encounter with Captain America. He seems like an honestly sweet dude. This is a pic of him as Cap.

The New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly has a page on Substack. It’s nice to see that not all publications are getting rid of their cartoonists like the Des Moines Register did to Brian Duffy. I like her work, especially this one.

Robert Leonard is a radio man from my neck of south central Iowa who also writes on Substack. He just published something in TIME recently; it’s worth a read.

Writing Quote(s) of the Week

I have to say I absolutely believe in this quote. It’s the same instinct that got me reading fiction as a kid and the same instinct that has me writing.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

Philip Pullman

And I have an extra quote from Louie to get myself motivated because I truly need that this week after the lull in writing that I’ve been facing.

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.

Louis L’Amour

Final Thoughts

I was doing some research on my new project and looking into English folk songs for a potential football club anthem (regarding The Yank Striker series) and wound up looking at a page of great American folk songs when I heard this one by the late great Blaze Foley. If there are more perfectly crafted songs, there are not many of them. Take care.

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Footnotes:

1. It’s nuts that I’m starting to talk about the weather all the time? I think it’s because my personal life gets pretty routine, especially with the ins and outs of a typical school year.
2. And yes, I know that technically makes it the week prior to this week, but we can color outside the lines sometimes, right?
3. Occasionally, I’ll write some things in these newsletters that are a bit contradictory. I should explain that I typically put this together over the course of several days and my mood (and the circumstances behind them) can change a bit. I have to get started on the process almost as soon as the last newsletter finishes or I wouldn’t ever have it done on time.

While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. I will eventually be opening some special contests, offers, and first looks at original fiction, poems, and other items. Just click the button below.