All I can say regarding what had to be the best week of writing I’ve had in 2024 is it was a mix of events this week. The fact I’m more or less stuck in a hotel room for a good portion of the next few months has something of an influence on my productivity. With not too much to distract me, I’ve managed to get a variety of writing done. It reminds me of how a publisher locked one of my literary idols Douglas Adams in a hotel room to force him to write the next book in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. (Whenever something gets published in one forum or another, I’ll let you, my audience, know.)
Here’s the stats:
Writing statistics for the week ending 24 February 2024: 7,567 words written. Days writing: 7 of 7. Days revising/planning: 1 of 7 for 90 total minutes. Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 7 of 7 days.
One good week does not a year make. I need to string more than a few of those together before I can even begin to hint 2024 is a success to me.
The turnaround continues. 😊 See you next week.
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.
Last week was the end of my moving from Chariton and the beginning of a few months on the road, so to speak.
Laura and I closed on the house Friday and had all of our belongings out of the old place by the morning. Thank goodness we had some great movers or we would have been unable to move any of our limbs by midday. But, everything went as expected and we’re able to move forward.
However, now the move’s gone through and I’m hoping I’ll be able to devote some more time to writing now. I have my own little study set up at our apartment, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how well the setup is working1. Also, I’ll be on my own in hotels during the week, so I’ll be interested in seeing how this more isolated existence helps or hurts (I think it will help) my productivity. Goodness knows I need it2.
Here’s the stats:
Writing statistics for the week ending 10 February 2024: 2,138 words written. Days writing: 3 of 7. Days revising/planning: 2 of 7 for 90 total minutes. Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 4 of 7 days.
The fact I made it over 2,000 words for the week is a bit of a minor miracle. I know I’m going to write more this coming week.
The turnaround is starting for me, I can feel it. See you next week.
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.
Laura (my wife) said I have a lot of personal space in the apartment, but it also has the advantage of keeping me out of her hair when she wants to relax in the living room or get things done in other places. ↩︎
If not this weekend, I think by next weekend I’ll have a feel for how hotel life is affecting my writing and report back on that. Since the next newsletter is coming out this weekend, it might end up becoming its own post. ↩︎
This might be the last blog post I write in my home for the past four years, Chariton, Iowa. Within the next few days, we will be moved out of our home and (more or less) fully into our new home of Fort Madison, Iowa, right next to the river that seems to be a focus of my life.
Naturally, writing has been on the back-burner for me. To be honest, I barely was able to concentrate on it this past week. I am hoping it will be the worst week from a writing productivity standpoint for me for the rest of this year.
I’ve previously tried to describe the experience of teaching (even in a good learning environment) and how it affects you mentally. The best description I can come up with currently is attempting to complete a triathlon with your brain. It’s an all consuming effort when you are in the midst of the experience, and when you mix in trying to get everything packed up from your home, it is frankly a lot to take in. I might be able to think a bit about the stories I’m interested in telling, do some planning and outlining of those stories, but actually telling them is something else entirely.
I’m not necessarily hopeful I will see a turnaround this week. However, when next week comes around and I will be alternating between Fort Madison and “in the wind, so to speak,” in the words of the fantastic character Omar Little in The Wire. It may be a bit simpler for me to write in some anonymous hotel room where I don’t have to worry about what to pack up for storage and what to take care of in my home. My father did a considerable amount of traveling as a consultant engineer for about 40 years before his retirement, both around and outside the United States. I might have to get some tips from him about properly handling hotel living.
Enough stalling; here’s the stats.
Writing statistics for the week ending 3 February 2024: 862 words written. Days writing: 2 of 7. Days revising/planning: 5 of 7 for 270 total minutes. Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.
Writing statistics for January 2024: Words: 10,769 Revise/Plan: 1,440 minutes Daily Writing Goals Met: 86%
Honestly, I’m surprised I exceeded 10,000 words for this month. I need to be closer to 16,667 per month to make it to at least 200,000 for the year. At least I have some decent numbers for planning and revising, and at least am meeting my daily goals that way.
However, that’s not enough for me. I want to get back to where I was. I might not get on that pace in the next couple of months, but I can get there. I have the stats and the numbers to prove it. And I’ve got a lot to write about.
Better luck next week.
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.
I know I promised you some original writing, maybe even fiction, this weekend. Let me assure you it is coming – at 5 p.m. Central Time today. However, I wanted to take a moment now and let everyone know about some personal news.
It turns out I’m soon to be on the move, and both my wife and I will be returning to more familiar territory and a very familiar river.
My wife Laura has just accepted a new job as a city manager for Fort Madison, Iowa. It’s two hours away from where I’m living in Chariton, Iowa, right in south central Iowa. It will be much closer to our hometown of Muscatine, Iowa, where my parents, her mother, and eventually my daughter will be living. It’s a great opportunity for her, and I couldn’t be prouder.
As for me, I’ll be joining her after the school year’s over and seeing what opportunities present themselves. I will miss my school district, as it was a good one (Twin Cedars) and I have been having a good year working with a great group of colleagues. However, Laura’s been my home for 25-plus years, so I go where she does.
I do plan to keep in touch with those I’ve made friends and acquaintances with in Chariton and the area, especially some of my work colleagues and area writers I’ve had a chance to meet here during the past three years. However, I’m hoping to reconnect with some of my old friends and writing enthusiasts from the Muscatine/Quad Cities area, as well as any new ones from around the Fort Madison/Burlington area.
My current home.
Chariton will always be a part of my life, I believe. It will be the place where I finished my second book, started a few other projects, and started writing on Substack. It is likely going to be the last home me, Laura, and our two children ever live in again after a brief period when my son came to stay with us and work in Chariton and my daughter was attending the University of Iowa from her laptop.
Downtown Chariton, Iowa
However, I’m going to be closer to more of my family, and closer to the Mississippi River, where I’ve lived next to more than forty years. The older I’ve gotten, the more I have been fascinated by rivers in general and the Mississippi in particular, and visitors to this page might have seen a poem or two inspired by river life. When I had the chance to tour Fort Madison recently and watched the sun dancing off the surface of the waters, the sight felt so much like home to me I could barely shake it.
The Fort Madison, Iowa riverfront.
I can’t wait to get started on the new adventure. I’ll probably tell you a bit about it here, too.
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.
I’ve had more than a little bit going on the past couple of weeks and all that plus the holidays has been a considerable time drain. When you factor in my traveling halfway across the state of Iowa and back again today, as well as the rest, this newsletter might actually might be one of the shortest I’ve done rather than a substantial recap of how productive I’ve been over the past two weeks, which would be a massive exaggeration1.
So let’s talk, even though there’s been only a little bit of writing going on.
The Home Front
There’s been more than a few things going at home, and some of it I prefer to keep to myself. One of the things I will share is the passing of my father-in-law this week. Larry had been in ill health for several years, but his condition had gotten worse over the past several weeks until he entered hospice care at his home on the Iowa River in Louisa County.
He and my wife Laura had not always had a good relationship, but it had improved during the last decade-plus of his life, which I was happy to see. He was also able to get to know my kids then as well, which I was very grateful for.
Even though we knew this day was coming sooner rather than later, it was still a rough situation when it arrived. All I’m glad for is he’s at peace and Laura was able to properly wish him goodbye, because that’s not something everyone gets.
What I’ve Been Writing
I haven’t been writing a massive amount, but I did whip up two new poems last week during the Thanksgiving break, if you hadn’t noticed.
Unlike some of my previous poetry posts, this was actually brand-new material and not some poems I had lying around from past years. I was happy I was able to put them together, and I’m finding myself challenged by the prospect of putting together verse with more vivid descriptions and word choice than I typically use in my prose.
There’s an interesting story connecting the two poems I can’t quite get into at the moment. I’ll get to it eventually, however.
I’ve been lagging on some of the other projects, however, including The Yank Striker 2 and some of the others. However, I’ve been counting up my word totals and even without adding in whatever pitiful words I wrote this past week and beyond, I’m already ahead of the 200,000-word total I had hoped to meet at the beginning of this year. If I can get a little more consistency with my writing productivity, I’d be happier, but it’s a good milestone to have.
What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing
Very little, although I am planning today to meet with some of my writing group friends in Des Moines for a holiday get-together today. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Really haven’t been able to make many other related plans. I’ll let you know if any come up.
Writing Quote(s) of the Week
Two quotes of wisdom today. The first one by fantasy novelist, fellow Midwesterner and fellow Gen X writer Patrick Rothfuss:
If you want to write a fantasy story with Norse gods, sentient robots, and telepathic dinosaurs, you can do just that. Want to throw in a vampire and a lesbian unicorn while you’re at it2? Go ahead. Nothing’s off limits. But the endless possibility of the genre is a trap. It’s easy to get distracted by the glittering props available to you and forget what you’re supposed to be doing: telling a good story. Don’t get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That’s a story. Handled properly, it’s more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.
Patrick Rothfuss
I never related to all of these writing quotes about how difficult it was to write and how much psychological torture writers must put themselves through. On the other hand, this quote was much more relatable to my experiences toward writing and its importance in my life.
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
Graham Greene, Ways of Escape
Where You Can Find my Books
I’ve got links to my books in paperback and ebook format in the sidebar here, but you can get them in person at these fine Iowa bookstores:
Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave # S1, Des Moines
Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.
All three are great independent bookstores who deserve your support. However, I’m always looking for some new places to place my books, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if anyone has a suggestion.
Final Thoughts
That’s it for right now. It was a bit tough to get out this week’s newsletter, but sometimes you take pride in the couple hundred words you squeeze out of your brain over a long night rather than the few hundred flowing out of it on other days.
Next week I owe everyone (and myself) some new fiction. Right now I’m leaning toward an except from The Yank Striker 2 or this pro wrestling project bubbling in the creativity cauldron off to the side. You’ll see it next week, though.
So, this month:
December 9: new short fiction/excerpt.
December 16: The Writing Life newsletter.
December 23: Poetry Night at the Writing Life.
December 29: Not sure – might take the holiday off. We’ll see. 🙂
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Then again, I originally thought I was going to have three weeks between official newsletters rather than just two of them. I’m the sort of person who has to triple-check each event on my calendar and even then check it one more time. ↩︎
Don’t give me ideas. (Insert grinning emoji here.) ↩︎
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.
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.
