Category: Blogging

A Quick Programming Note/Explanation

person using laptop

Hello, readers and new arrivals to this page.

For those who are not aware of the situation, I am blogging primarily these days on Substack. I have continued to use this page to publish my content, because I appear to have developed a group of subscribers here who continue to read and interact with my work. To all of you who have done so, thank you so much. It means more to me than you can know.

To prevent overwhelming my social media feeds with repeat postings over a short period of time, and to increase SEO attention, I am choosing to post writings I cross-post on Substack in slightly different formatting and revisions and at different times. For example, one post I plan to post on Substack today will appear here on Liegois Media under a different title, artwork, formatting and slightly different content.

But keep in mind, I will continue to post here regularly, as well as some content, such as my writing journals, which are exclusive here to Liegois Media. I hope you are getting some value and enjoyment out of it all.

Thanks.

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Support me on Venmo if you can. 🙂

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. Just click the button below.

Subscribe to my Substack here.

About Substack: I’m slightly wary of the platform at the moment.

After about one year on Substack, I was beginning to get comfortable with it and seeing some growth in membership. Then this happened. Essentially, there are some white supremacists who are making money by operating their own pages on Substack.

Many people, including some prominent writers on Substack, publicly questioned whether this was a good idea. Substack’s co-founder, Hamish McKenzie, responded to these concerns with a statement. It read in part:

I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse.

People can believe whatever they want, but I’m not a fan of people using Substack to profit off hate speech. And I think giving bigots cash for their behavior definitely doesn’t help to make the problem go away. Frankly, anything to be done to suppress bigoted behavior I’m in favor of.

There are many writers I respect who are wondering what this means.

Laura Jedeed, one of the premier writers on the subject of the far right in this country, and who makes a lot more money off this site than I ever have, is thinking about leaving the site.

Margaret Atwood, a great Canadian writer who knows a thing or two about bigotry and oppressive regimes, is hoping Substack comes to its senses because it’s not making sense:

No, Substack: You can’t have both the dystopian nightmare and “Flopsy Bunny’s Very Busy Day.” You can’t have both the terms of service you have spelled out and a bunch of individial publishers who violate those terms of service. One or the other has got to go, and hiding under the sofa and pretending it isn’t happening will not make your dilemma go away. Nor will some laudable rhetoric about free speech – not when you yourselves have clearly stated that not everything is allowable, including threats of “violence” and “physical harm” to “protected classes.”

So, one or the other, dear Substack. Tell us which. I am sure you mean well, but you are young and inexperienced, and did not think this through. It’s not too late! You aren’t doomed to the dystopian nightmare! You can still have “Flopsy Bunny’s Very Busy Day,” if you close your eyes tight and wish very hard.

I will say, however, I’m not truly sure how widespread the issue really is on Substack. I have yet to encounter any overt white supremacist material in my own feeds or recommendations. This article by Ian Nolen critically analyzes the Atlantic article and finds a good portion of its assertions lacking factual support1:

The vital question, though: does Substack, indeed, have a Nazi problem? And if so, do these putative Nazis generate revenue for Substack? And if so, do they do so through direct appeals to Nazi content? As I demonstrate below, Katz’s research is sloppy at best, and negligent at worst, and much of what he uses as sources could readily be interpreted as a means to wedge in an anticonservative agenda under the auspices of the overtly-laudable task of fighting Nazis, which appears to be an underhanded bait-and-switch founded on deception, intentional or otherwise.

With all this in mind, I think I’m somewhere in the middle. On one hand, I don’t want to do anything to support white supremacists and bigots. This platform, by its own admission, is open to allowing such people to do business on Substack. I’m not a fan of giving them anything except contempt. As I mentioned a year and a month ago on this very platform:

Although there are many things that are worthy of debate, human rights and equality is not among them. Bigots of all kinds have no valid contribution to make to society and their “opinions” on what type of people are worthier than others have no value. The proper way to deal with such people is not to coddle or understand them, and certainly not to debate them. They must be shunned and opposed under any and all circumstances.

Of course, I also made the point I wasn’t getting a lot of engagement on Twitter anyway, so it really wasn’t too much of a loss for me, all things considered. Laura’s very seriously considering leaving Substack when she made $7,000 bucks last year from it. And that’s with her living in New York – I’ll admit it, $7,000 would be a lot of money in Iowa.

The other issue to consider is Substack is one of the best writing platforms I’ve yet to encounter from an ease of use viewpoint and the various features it provides (building an email list, Substack Notes, etc.). I’m not really sure what platforms out there would give me that, and I’m a bit wary of having to start over again.

Sure, there are other platforms. I’m still on Liegois Media, though I’m not sure I’d want to just rely on it.

For now, I’m going to stay on Substack. How I’m running things for now will be that all my posts will be open to everyone, but I will be paywalling all my posts three months after they are published. I’ll still accept paid subscriptions, and it turns out I’ve made it pretty cheap for you to join.

But if I change my mind, if I think this platform isn’t going to turn around, you’ll be the first to know about it. One of the advantages of the Substack platform is it’s easy to export your email lists. It’s convenient like that. Anyway as always, keep tuned to this space.

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. Just click the button below.

Subscribe to my Substack here.
  1. I do think he brushes off the issue of how exposure to white supremacist or bigoted messages can influence people’s beliefs. ↩︎

An Announcement Rather Than a Newsletter This Week: A slight change in programming

Hello, and happy Veterans Day AKA Remembrance Day AKA Armistice Day.

Normally, this is the part where I say “Let’s talk about writing.” Today, I want to talk about… blogging, newsletters, whatever you want to call it. This place.

t’s been a little over a year since I first decided to step onto Substack, after a few years of puttering around on this site, Liegois Media. I now consider this place to be the birthplace and the companion blog of my Substack, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois.

I have to admit, I had not really much of an idea on how this place was going to work. I certainly didn’t know all of the ins and outs of the platform, and I spent a long summer staring at the Substack FAQ and help pages trying to game out every possible scenario and the best way to publish what I’ve been doing on Substack. Eventually, however, I realized I could just wait forever for perfection or jump right in to the rough draft. So, I decided on the latter course of action.

In a later post, I decided to lay out my mission statement, as modest as it was for this blog, as so:

I have begged and pleaded for the students I have taught for the past several years to consider when it comes to writing, there is no such thing as “getting it right the first time.” This is something slightly traumatic for these students, considering getting it right the first time is the goal of pretty much most every other form of academic activity they have to accomplish. However, the first draft of anything you write is never going to be anything than the least you can accomplish, because it is always in the rewriting and editing process where you as a writer truly craft your work. Most kids want to get the words on the paper or electronic page and call it good1. This, however, doesn’t lead to effective writing.

I’ve had to come to the conclusion being a blogger is something akin to publishing the rough draft of your work and then revising and editing it in front of a live audience, especially since nobody knows how to do this when they get started. That’s a bit unnerving for me when it comes down to it, because I’d like to think I’ve got my ego in check enough to be willing to listen to criticism over what I do and react to it, I usually don’t have to revise and edit my work for a live audience. In a sense, however, this is what happens when you are an online blogger.

So, I’ve decided it is time for a bit of revising, in the open, so to speak.

For the past several months, I’ve been posting a weekly newsletter entitled A Week in the Writing Life. I’ve used this weekly post to update readers on what I have been working on, upcoming projects, writing problems I’ve struggled with, as well as some writing advice, some shout-outs, and other odds and ends. It’s been fun, and I’ve enjoyed putting them together.

However, I’ve noticed these posts becoming a bit… repetitive, I think. Even though I want to post weekly, I have the feeling just doing the newletter every week is too much. On the other hand, I still want to be posting regularly, even on a weekly basis, and I want to do it on a consistent schedule as well.

Consider this to be the second draft of The Writing Life With Jason Liegois.

This will be my schedule for the forseeable future, which I will begin next week. It might take a bit to get used to, but I’m going to try and lay it out here.

The Schedule for the Blog:

  • On the first and third weekend of the month2, I will be doing the “regular” newsletter – that is, the newsletter I’ve entitled A Week in the Writing Life, which I just broadly described above. To reflect its now bi-monthly appearance, I will titles those posts simply The Writing Life, [Instert date here]. These will be more or less similar to the newsletter I’ve been producing for the past several months. My hope is with it coming on a bi-monthly rather than a weekly basis, I’ll be able to take more time on it and have more material when the time comes to publish it.
  • On the second weekend of the month, I’ll be publishing what I’m tentatively going to call my Writing Grab Bag3. It might be pretty much anything I decide – maybe some rough draft excerpts from some fiction works-in progress, maybe a special essay or two on a particular writing topic. Heck, maybe I decide to restart this series entitled A Writer’s Biography, where I take a look back at my life from childhood to nowadays to see how my life experiences shaped me as a person an as a writer. It’ll be interesting to see what I can put together on a regular basis.
  • I’m really leaning toward making the fourth weekend of the month be my monthly Poetry Night in the Writing Life. That’s where I put out some of my older or newer poetry for your interest. As I want to put together a collection of my poetry in the near future and perhaps submit them for publication, I’m hoping this might kick my butt into gear and produce more of it. I’m interested in experimenting with the art form.
  • And if there happens to be a fifth weekend of the month, well… maybe I put together a third newsletter for the week. Maybe you’ll read another sneak peak at some fiction excerpts or poetry I’m working on. Or maybe I decide to take the entire weekend off. Don’t worry though – if that happens, I’ll give you fair warning on Substack Notes or whatever.

As for the rest of the blog on Substack, I recently set all of my stories to go into the archives after about six months. I’m not sure whether that might tempt a few more people to pay subscribe to me, but we’ll see. If I do stick with this plan, I’m more likely to release the vast majority of my posts for free at first. I’ll take a look and see if I see any changes. So for now, you might want to catch a few examples of my original fiction before they get archived in the next couple of months. I think they’re good reads.

So once again, the writing process continues here at The Writing Life With Jason Liegois. It may take me more than a few drafts to get this right, but I’m cool with it. I can be patient when it comes to revisions.

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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. Just click the button below.

Subscribe to my Substack here.
  1. Understandably, especially if they don’t like to do it for fun as I do (lol). ↩︎
  2. I have to say I’m not sure I can 100 percent guarantee I can deliver an article an a particular day rather than two different days. ↩︎
  3. Of course, this second weekend of the month will be dedicated to this piece. ↩︎

New Picture: A slight change in look.

I’ve been screwing around with a few photo and art apps to try and come up with a profile pic that doesn’t look monumentally stupid. The one I’ve been using since I came here dates back from 2016 and honestly, I’m all right with not using a Warholorized profile pic for a while.

Maddie (my daughter) gave this the seal of approval today, so I’m going with it. Think I’ll keep it for a while since it doesn’t suck.

Hope the weekend’s going well.

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. Just click the button below.

Subscribe to my Substack here.

Substack Notes: A quick take

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Excuse My Mess, or, The Subscriptions are On

As of this post, I have turned on my paid subscriptions to Liegois Media and The Writing Life with Jason Liegois.

Can you still read quite a bit of my work online without paying me? Absolutely, yes.

Will this process be perfect? Absolutely not?

Will this process be completed by 8 p.m., when I said that the subscriptions would go live? I think the construction picture at the start of this post would imply differently.

However, I want to hear from you. I want to be a writing resource for people, and not just a place where I flog my latest project (but you have to admit that I’m not doing that all the time). Please, if there is something that I can do for you to be a better writing resource for you, or help you along on your own path to be a writer, I want to be that for you. Please let me know how I can best help you on that journey in the comments or by email. Trust me, I will keep an eye out for it.

Well, that’s it for now. You’ll hear from me later.

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. Just click the button below.

Subscribe to my Substack here.

I’ve Decided to Celebrate my Birthday in a Unique Fashion: an Announcement

It’s been five and a half years since I started blogging on WordPress back in the summer of 2017. When I got started, I was just wanting to share my passion for writing and my experiences with the art of writing. It was always a struggle for me to stick with anything creative for a long period of time, especially when I was younger, so the fact that I’ve stuck with this blog for this long is a triumph in itself.

My online writing presence has evolved quite a bit over the past decade. I had a Facebook and Twitter account that I opened during my brief emergence from journalistic retirement in the early 2010s so that I could engage with readers and potential sources while not using my personal accounts. When that ended, I decided to repurpose those pages as writing pages.

The Facebook page is still there and reposting everything I have here on Liegois Media, as well as any pictures, memes, or articles about writing that snag my interest. (For a few different reasons, I decided to shut down both my writing and personal accounts on Twitter in November 2022. You can read the whole story here.)

Since August of 2022, I’ve also been blogging on Substack. Well, maybe actively on Substack would be the better choice of words, because I signed up for it for about a year before I finally worked up the courage to actually start posting there.

I’ve seen a lot of good writers here on Substack and plently of them are trying to make a living at their writing. Ever since I started writing here, I wondered whether I should try to see if anyone would be willing to pay for what I’m producing on a regular basis.

It’s a legitimate question. I’m an author who has at least one published book to my name and I’m planning on having another published this year. However, all that makes me is like thousands of people who have done the same thing, some famous, some obscure.

On the other hand, though, I’ve been working in the writing field, either as a journalist or a reporter, for more than 25 years now. There are many things that I have no knowledge about: for example, my son Jacob knows more about mechanical issues, especially heating and air conditioning systems, than I’m ever going to know. However, I think I know something about writing, and I think I have something to offer people who are interested in improving their writing craft.

March 30, 2023, is the day that I turn 50 years old. More often than not, as I get older (not old, as some might say), I ask myself the question, “If not now, when?” Sometimes I worry that I don’t do everything perfect as a blogger, and this was an example of that. But why not just jump into it?

So, I decided to have a very special 50th birthday celebration. On March 30, 8 p.m. Central Time, I will be going live with a paid subscription option for Substack. I’m not going to talk much about that here, but I am mentioning it because I’m going to be doing something similar to that here on Liegois Media.

For the price of just $ per month or $ per year, you will have access to all of the archives of this site, as well as access to exclusive material on Liegois Media that will be posted on a bi-weekly basis at least.

I want to reassure you that there is will always be many free posts that will still be on this blog. My weekly writing journal, where I’m keeping track of my writing productivity, and my new weekly writing newsletter, A Week in the Writing Life, which recently evolved from those writing journals, will always be free for anyone reading this blog. There will also be other posts available to all subscribers, no matter what you contribute.

However, I want to give something to those subscribers who have been willing to give me their emails and read what I have written over these past years. As a result, any person who is one of my free subscribers by March 29 will get a free 3-month paid subscription trial for Liegois Media.

Those subscribers will also be entered into a contest for a longer free trial and at least one writer’s workshop consult with me. This workshop will cover any basic writing advice, questions, or even reviewing your own work with me. Consider it a freewheeling consultation session that will fit whatever writing needs that you might have. I’ll reach out to you and figure out a time for those consultations that works for you.

In addition, I’m going to have some other special giveaways coming up later in the year for sure. The plan is to have my next book, The Yank Striker (learn more about it here), come out this year. So, there will be some contests with that release and the paid subscribers will be in a drawing for them. (I also will likely have opportunities for my free subscribers to have a chance at some of those giveaways as well).

There are going to be more books coming out later, as well. Watch this space, as I often say.

Finally, I want to thank everyone in advance for supporting me, whether it’s as a paid or a free subscriber. I appreciate everyone who has put their faith in me and want to follow what I have to say about the ins and outs of writing.

If you like what I’m writing, if you want to hear about something that I’m not discussing, in either case, I want to hear from you. I don’t want this just to be me talking; I want this to be an ongoing conversation between us about the art of writing where we educate each other.

There are also many other ways that you can support me even beyond a subscription. If you have any social media sites, feel free to post a link to my page.

If you happen to be a writer on Substack, I would love it if you recommended me on your page I’ll be very happy to return the favor.

Start writing today. Use the button below to create your Substack and connect your publication with The Writing Life With Jason Liegois

Also, I just found out that you can actually request Substack feature different blogs on their recommended list. Just click on the button below to do that.

And know this: whether you are a paid or free subscriber, I am always going to value you and appreciate you. And now that I’m actually going to ask you for financial support, if you can give it, I’m going to work hard to make sure that this is as good of a blog on the writing life as I can make it. It’s the least I can do to repay the faith you subscribers have given me before, now, and in the future.

That’s it for now. Thanks to you all, and I look forward to writing for you and hearing from you.

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. Just click the button below.

Subscribe to my Substack here.

On Feeling Like a Hypocrite Writing on Substack When I Procrastinate About Reading Other Writers on Substack

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Writing on the Holidays Can be Tough: A Christmas Post

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Saying Goodbye to Twitter

I didn’t want to use a Twitter logo for this post. So, here’s a cool photo of downtown Des Moines I took instead.

You might have noticed that I don’t write too much about politics here. I’m not sure when or where I mentioned it before on here, but I’ve made a conscientious decision to focus this blog (and my Substack page) on, as I put it, writing and the writing life.

Occasionally I might mention items about politics on my own personal Facebook page, or perhaps other places. I don’t mention them here. It’s my belief that keeping a clear focus for this blog and not letting it be about whatever pops into my head. I had one blog where I wrote it anonymously and that was just about anything that came into my head. That blog wound up just lasting a couple months before I got bored with it. I kept this blog on the specific topic of writing, the writing life, and my writing life in particular. It’s now well into its fifth year of operation and going steady, although it’s not like I’ve been able to use it to make any money. Yet.

As part of this effort to express myself online, I also wound up getting on social media. My time on Facebook, and the page I dedicated to my writing, actually predates this blog. For a while, I also was on Twitter, first with a personal account, and also an account associated with this blog. I just thought it would be a good way to get the word out about what I was doing here.

Until now.

You might have heard that the son of a South African emerald mine owner has purchased Twitter for such an insanely inflated price that he spent the better part of this year trying to get out of the deal until a Delaware court all but forced him to go through with it. This is not the place for me to recount the whole story of what has happened to the service (many others are doing a better job of that online), but it is sufficient to say that to buy the company he wound up cashing in a lot of the stock he had in his existing company and securing far too much financing from the government of Saudi Arabia for comfort. Since then, he has apparently been busy slashing payroll and expenditures to the detriment of the platform’s services, driving away advertisers and users by ignoring proper content moderation, and allowing the site to become a haven for right-wing terrorists and bigots.

This is now the portion of this post where I will briefly become political. Don’t worry – it will only last for a couple of paragraphs.

I refuse to believe that anyone in this world can earn a billion dollars without either inheriting a large portion of that sum or exploiting other people. I fail to see how anyone with any hint of sanity would not see that having $999 million dollars would not be a sufficient fortune and feel compelled to grub for even more money.

Although there are many things that are worthy of debate, human rights and equality is not among them. Bigots of all kinds have no valid contribution to make to society and their “opinions” on what type of people are worthier than others have no value. The proper way to deal with such people is not to coddle or understand them, and certainly not to debate them. They must be shunned and opposed under any and all circumstances.

As a result of this, I don’t feel like I can support being on such a platform anymore. After carefully downloading a data record of both my accounts, I posted a final Twitter thread to them last night. This is the pinned Tweet on my Liegois Media Twitter page as of this moment:

Barring technical difficulties, I’ll be deleting this account in 48 hours (5 p.m. CDT 27 November 2022). Anyone after that trying to claim on Twitter that they’re Jason Allan Liegois who grew up in Muscatine, Iowa, for any reason, personal or otherwise, is fake and/or a bot.

As much of this is a supposedly principled stand that I am making, I also have to admit that there is a slightly mercenary aspect to this as well. I had long hoped that my presence on Twitter would result in some additional engagement with people who might want to read this blog. In all honesty, that hasn’t happened. For example, I decided to leave my Twitter threads up for about two days to give any followers of mine sufficient time to bookmark the links I left posted there. I will be highly surprised if anyone uses those links, much less that even a single Twitter user will respond to those posts. On Twitter it often seemed like I was yelping into the void, in all honesty.

I had toyed with simply deleting all of my tweets and leaving my account open as a zombie account, but it’s much easier to delete the whole thing, and I already have the data if I ever get morbidly curious about all of the items I posted over the years.

It was very therapeutic to unfollow everyone on my Twitter accounts and slowly see my Twitter feeds dwindle to a blank screen. It was even cooler to see how many of the writers I follow on Twitter have Substack pages, so I was taking the time to subscribe to those pages so I could continue to read their work. I would really like you, or anybody really reading this, to subscribe to my Substack page. I am using that to develop an email list of subscribers and an online community that I hope will be much more sustainable and personal than “social media” networks. Most everything on this site (with the exception of perhaps my writing journals) will be posted on the Substack site.

Go ahead and join me there. We’ll talk writing.

Sign up here to receive my Substack newsletter and subscribe.