Tag: Kayfabe Stories

The Writing Life, 1 March 2025: The Yank Striker 2 revisions and a quick format change

Good to welcome you all to my neck of the Internet. It was a bit warmer, but I am not exactly wishing for June temperatures even though I’m starting to think of my summer break increasingly.

Let’s get into some talk about what’s going on with me and with writing. Turns out there’s a bit going on.

What I’ve Been Writing

  1. The Yank Striker 2: the sequel to my book The Yank Striker: A Footballer’s Beginning. The Yank Striker series follows the exploits of a prospective American soccer player who leaves his family behind to try his fortune with an English Premier League team in the East End of London. Book two focuses on what my main character, Daniel John “DJ” Ryan has to face now he is trying to establish himself as a footballer in England, both as an American in a strange land and someone whose sexual orientation brings extra scrutiny.

I’ve now finished the second draft (2.0 or 2.1 depending on how you define it). This is my schedule for the rest of the process.

  1. Beta reads – – Now beginning at the start of March and completed by the end of March.
  2. Two more rounds of revisions in April.
  3. Final editing and proofreading in May and concluding by the end of May.

Speaking of Those Beta Readers…

Even though I will be reaching out to friends and family, I am sincerely looking for beta readers for The Yank Striker 2. If anyone out there on the Internets or on Substack is interested in becoming beta readers for this project and completing your work in a timely fashion, I would be willing to reward you for your hard work.

Anyone interested in serving as beta readers for the project will get a complimentary paid subscription for this site lasting at least one year. I will sort it out for you. Depending on your services, I might also throw in another freebee or two.

If you are interested, chirp back to me in the comments of this post or in DMs. Thank you for your service ahead of time.

Now, on with the other projects.

  1. The Untitled Pro Wrestling Fiction Project: I’ve been making more progress on this. Over the past year and a half, this story about a family of pro wrestlers from Texas and a young man’s determination to understand what it all means has been at the head of my creative interests for a while, with the exception of The Yank Striker 2. Currently, I’m at 32,000-plus words on the project and have continued to make progress on it.
  2. Poetry: Just entered the Lyrical Iowa 2025 Contest at the last minute. I’ll be interested to see if anything comes of it. I’m glad I’m starting to do things like this and the poetry slam contest the Iowa Poetry Association sponsored.
  3. The Heart Project: This is the name of the… let’s call it speculative/fantasy/soft sci-fi story I have in mind informed by our troubled times. I’m just starting some initial notes on the project.
    I’m going to keep this very vague right now, but it involves four one-time friends, a high school reunion, and a microcosm of a larger sense of chaos.
    I think it’s going to take me a while to pull this story together in my head, so I’m going to be coy about the whole thing in the meantime. I might start letting some rough excerpts escape into a Prose Night post one of these nights.
  4. Oh, and I’m trying to participate in this year’s Iron Pen Contest sponsored by the Midwest Writing Center. Trying to get a short story and poem sorted out in 24 hours or less, heh heh. I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.

A Slight Change in Programming (A Revamp of my Posts)

I want to make sure I am trying to provide some value to my readers, both old and new. For the first several months of this format, I was doing a newsletter every week, and it wound up getting pretty repetitive. For those not aware, I went to producing the newsletter (The Writing Life) every first and third weekend of the month rather than every week. That’s why you are seeing this now, on the first Saturday of March.

Now, I’m beginning to think that might be a bit too much. So, I am going to change gears and try and provide some more value for your read. This is going to be my publishing schedule going forward. There’s not a massive amount of change from my previous schedule, but I will point it out as I lay it out here.

  • First weekend1 of the month: The newsletter (The Writing Life). This is where I keep everyone updated on what I’ve been writing, what is upcoming for me, just to say hello.
  • Second weekend of the month: Prose Night. I produce an original piece of prose writing for reading here. Sometimes it will be an excerpt of a larger work in progress. Sometimes it will be an original essay, usually tied in some fashion to writing or myself. For example, I’ve been writing these posts off and on throughout the years entitled A Writer’s Biography, where I look back on my life through a writer’s lens to see how my passion influenced my interests, my path in life, and how it made me into who I am right now. I might even do an occasional short story here, perhaps. It’ll be brand new stuff.
  • Third weekend of the month: [LOOK OUT, HERE IS WHERE THE PROGRAMMING CHANGE IS.] The Writing Lab. These posts might be slightly shorter than the first two types; we will have to see. I’ve been inconsistent with providing advice and insight into writing for readers. I want to address that with The Writing Lab.
    Sometimes the post will be a straight piece of writing advice. (I’m going to make an effort to keep track of all these topics to make sure I’m not repeating myself too often.) Often, I’ll take you into my prime writing spot, my writing nook, as I review or reflect on writing difficulties I have faced or am facing, and how I try to deal with them.
The main writing nook. It’s a bit more crowded now. 🙂
  • In addition, in conjunction with this new feature, I am going to make more use of the Substack Chat feature. Every weekend I post The Writing Lab, I will post an open chat which will be Ask Me Anything About Writing (AMAAW). The times and exact dates of these chats might vary, but I will post on Substack Notes when I have them set. Any questions you have on writing and fiction, or any feedback you want on your own writing, I will be open for business. I would love to see this take off and be successful.
    I’m scheduling the first of these Writing Labs for March 15. Looking forward to it.
  • Fourth weekend of the month: Poetry Night. You get a couple of fresh new poems from me on Poetry Night, as well as some nonsense exposition as to why I might have written them. Ever since I started this, I have to say I’ve been much more productive with poetry than I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve written six poems this year so far, which is an unheard pace for me, who never really concentrated on putting out a large amount of poems. I may be talking too soon, but I think the quality of what I’ve been producing has grown. At least, I think it’s become easier for me.
  • If there is a fifth weekend in the month, I either plan to take that weekend off or we do a Hodgepodge Night. That’s means it could be anything – fiction, non-fiction, poetry – shoot, maybe even a video or podcast if I get crazy. We’ll just have to see, won’t we?


Anyway, that’s my schedule for now. Hope it might shake things up a bit.

What I’m Doing Having to do With Writing

This week, I attended my first meeting of a new writer’s group here in Fort Madison sponsored by the Fort Madison Area Art Association. I was really happy to go to a writer’s group meeting locally. While I do have a couple of groups I attend on a regular basis, those are virtual and/or out of town, so it’s nice to have an in-town option. Looking forward to getting and receiving some good feedback on my work.

The Dude in Purple. A bit of a reference to a personage in my hometown. Read up on it if you want.

I have more than a few plans for book fair appearances in the coming months. Recently, I have managed to confirm these, so I will list them here.

  • From 1-2:30 p.m. Saturday, 22 March, I will be attending the DSM Book Festival at the Franklin Event Center, 4801 Franklin Ave, Des Moines. This will be the first year of this festival co-sponsored by one of my favorite independent bookstores in Des Moines, Beaverdale Books. Can’t wait to be part of this.
  • I will be at the the Badger Public Library book fair (Time TBD) on Saturday, 17 May, at the Badger Public Library, 211 1st Ave SE, Badger, Iowa. They were one of the first places ever to participate in a book fair and I absolutely enjoyed the experience.

If there are other events coming up, I’ll let you know. I’m hoping for some more events, especially to promote what I hope will be The Yank Striker 2 this summer. I’ll keep you in the loop.

Writing Quote(s) of the Week:

Charles Bukowski is one of those poets I just seemed to respond to.

the writing of some
men
is like a vast bridge
that carries you
over
the many things
that claw and tear.

The Wine of Forever


― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

The following is quite true this spring especially with The Yank Striker 2 in revisions. 🙂

A good book isn’t written, it’s rewritten.


― Phyllis A. Whitney, Guide to Fiction Writing

How to support me😊.

As always, go to the links on the side if you are reading this on a desktop/laptop or the links on my profile. There’s where you can find out about my first book, the journalism thriller The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt, as well as the first book in my The Yank Striker series, The Yank Striker: a Footballer’s Beginning.

If you go follow the links above, you will be able to buy both the paperback and ebook versions of my books on Amazon. If you just put “Jason Liegois” in Google you’ll probably find them on the first page of search results.

If you happen to visit these fine independent book stores in Iowa, you can find my books there:

  • Bent Oak Books, 619 7th St. Fort Madison.
  • Green Point Mercantile, 214 Chestnut St., Muscatine.
  • Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St, Burlington.
  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave. # S1, Des Moines.
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.

I’m always looking for some new places to place my books, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if you have a suggestion.

My poetry book The Flow and the Journey is available at Bent Oak, Green Point and Burlington By the Book, but it is also available online but not on Amazon. I’ve set up a new online store for copies of my chapbook on my WordPress site, Liegois Media. If you want to get a physical copy, go ahead and click on the link below.

The Flow and the Journey

The Flow and the Journey

The first collection of poetry from author Jason Liegois.

$6.00
Shop now

If you want to support me but can’t quite afford a full subscription, I am now on Venmo. You can just send whatever you can afford. Just click the button below; anything you can provide helps me keep things going.

Buy me a cup of coffee, if you could 😊

Final Thoughts

That’s where I’m at for now. As I often say, all you writers keep writing and everyone keep safe.

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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. This (and the other regular posts) will run on Saturdays at about 5 p.m. Central time unless circumstances out of (or in) my control dictate otherwise. ↩︎

The Writing Life, 15 February 2025: Getting going on The Yank Striker 2 revisions

To both regular readers and any random online wanderers coming upon this page, welcome.

It’s honestly wild that we are now in the middle of February. Time is moving fast and I’m all right with that for the moment. Many people I’m around in Iowa are getting tired of the cold (but not much snow), but I’m happy not dealing with 98 degree weather we had to deal with from July to almost October last year.

I’m not going to be happy with 1.5 Celsius temperature rise myself. At this point I might ask my wife if we could retire on the shores of Hudson Bay or Svalbard.

Been working on at least a couple projects in various stages of production. I’ll talk about those things and some updated information about where I’ll be during the next few months. I’ll either keep it interesting or to the point – whichever one works lol.

The Home Front

Since today is my mother’s birthday, I’ll take a moment to wish her happy birthday. We’re not in the same town, but we’re planning on getting together to celebrate sometime in the next couple weeks or so.

My son just passed his certification test to get his heating and air conditioning (HVAC) journeyman’s certification. It’s been a long road for him, especially after recovering from the head injury he got on the job about a year ago in Des Moines. But this is a big step in his career. I’m very proud of the progress he’s made.

And I’m looking forward to the long weekend this weekend. Happy President’s Day and all that.

What I’ve Been Writing

  1. The Yank Striker 2: the sequel to my book The Yank Striker: A Footballer’s Beginning. The Yank Striker series follows the exploits of a prospective American soccer player who leaves his family behind to try his fortune with an English Premier League team in the East End of London. Book two focuses on what my main character, Daniel John “DJ” Ryan has to face now he is trying to establish himself as a footballer in England, both as an American in a strange land and someone who identifies as bisexual and the scrutiny it brings.

As of this moment, this will be the schedule for The Yank Striker 2:

  1. Second draft – begun on 8 February and completed by the end of the month at the latest.
  2. Beta reads – these hopefully will begin at the start of March and completed by the end of March.
  3. Two more rounds of revisions in April.
  4. Final editing and proofreading in May and concluding by the end of May.

Speaking of Those Beta Readers…

Even though I will be reaching out to friends and family, I am sincerely looking for beta readers for The Yank Striker 2. If anyone out there on the Internets or on Substack is interested in becoming beta readers for this project and completing your work in a timely fashion, I would be willing to reward you for your hard work.

Anyone interested in serving as beta readers for the project will get a complimentary paid subscription for this site lasting at least one year. I will sort it out for you. Depending on your services, I might also throw in another freebee or two.

If you are interested, chirp back to me in the comments of this post or in DMs. Thank you for your service ahead of time.

Now, on with the other projects.

  1. The Untitled Pro Wrestling Fiction Project: While waiting for my plans on The Yank Striker 2, this has been dominating my thoughts more and more. Over the past year and a half, this story about a family of pro wrestlers from Texas and a young man’s determination to understand what it all means has been at the head of my creative interests for a while, with the exception of The Yank Striker 2.
    I’ve continued to make progress on the rough draft of this story. I’m within reach of 30,000 words so far, and I think I should add around 50,000 words to make it about right as far as size. I don’t think I’d want to go further than this, because the project will be part of an eventual trilogy I have in mind. The trilogy also has different timelines to deal with, with a “modern” timeline of fall 2017 to spring 2019, and a flashback timeline spanning from 1953 to roughly 2009, I think.
  2. Poetry: I managed to self-publish my own chapbook of poetry at the end of 2024. A second one is not a massive priority now, but I’d 100 percent be open to doing another one in the near future. I am continuing to produce more poetry, some of which shows up here on the fourth weekend (usually Saturday) of every month. Now, I want to try and save some poems up, in the event I want to submit them to places that insist they want to have the right of first publication. Apparently, if I publish them in Substack that means they’re published. Good to know.
  3. Then there’s this third idea I have for a book. It’s one slightly based on the current situation in America but I’m going to play with the setting slightly.
    I’m also a bit nervous about releasing a title for the book when it is this early in the writing process. At this point there’s just been notes and speculation in my head, nothing more. To be slightly close to the spirit of the novel I want to create and yet be a bit obscure and non-spoilerish, I’m going to call it the Heart project at the moment.
    For now, I want to sketch out a better idea of the story I want to write. I have persons and concepts and angles now, not necessarily on paper, but I need to get names and plot lines moving as well. I’ll mention this again in more detail when I have more detail to give.

What I’m Doing Having to do With Writing

The Dude in Purple. A bit of a reference to a personage in my hometown. Read up on it if you want.

I have more than a few plans for book fair appearances in the coming months. Recently, I have managed to confirm these, so I will list them here.

  • I will be appearing from 1-4 p.m. Next Saturday, 22 February at the Johnstown Public Library, 6700 Merle Hay Rd, Johnston, IA. I had a great time at this event two years ago and I am honored to be returning there.
  • From 1-2:30 p.m. Saturday, 22 March, I will be attending the DSM Book Festival at the Franklin Event Center, 4801 Franklin Ave, Des Moines. This will be the first year of this festival co-sponsored by one of my favorite independent bookstores in Des Moines, Beaverdale Books. Can’t wait to be part of this.
  • Finally, I will be at the the Badger Public Library book fair (Time TBD) on Saturday, 17 May, at the Badger Public Library, 211 1st Ave SE, Badger, Iowa. They were one of the first places ever to participate in a book fair and I absolutely enjoyed the experience.

If there are other events coming up, I’ll let you know. I’m hoping for some more events, especially to promote what I hope will be The Yank Striker 2 this summer. I’ll keep you in the loop.

Writing Quote(s) of the Week:

This is quite relevant as I start revising The Yank Striker 2.

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

  • Sir Terry Pratchett

Never heard of Robin Hobb before running across this quote. The quote makes me curious about the speculative fiction she writes, because this is some good advice.

The second thing you have to do to be a writer is to keep on writing. Don’t listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won’t be one of them. Don’t listen to your friend who says you are better that Tolkien and don’t have to try any more. Keep writing, keep faith in the idea that you have unique stories to tell, and tell them. I meet far too many people who are going to be writers ‘someday.’ When they are out of high school, when they’ve finished college, after the wedding, when the kids are older, after I retire . . . That is such a trap You will never have any more free time than you do right now. So, whether you are 12 or 70, you should sit down today and start being a writer if that is what you want to do. You might have to write on a notebook while your kids are playing on the swings or write in your car on your coffee break. That’s okay. I think we’ve all ‘been there, done that.’ It all starts with the writing.

  • Robin Hobb

How to support me😊.

As always, go to the links on the side if you are reading this on a desktop/laptop or the links on my profile. There’s where you can find out about my first book, the journalism thriller The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt, as well as the first book in my The Yank Striker series, The Yank Striker: a Footballer’s Beginning.

If you go follow the links above, you will be able to buy both the paperback and ebook versions of my books on Amazon. If you just put “Jason Liegois” in Google you’ll probably find them on the first page of search results.

If you happen to visit these fine independent book stores in Iowa, you can find my books there:

  • Bent Oak Books, 619 7th St. Fort Madison.
  • Green Point Mercantile, 214 Chestnut St., Muscatine.
  • Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St, Burlington.
  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave. # S1, Des Moines.
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.

I’m always looking for some new places to place my books, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if you have a suggestion.

My poetry book The Flow and the Journey is available at Bent Oak, Green Point and Burlington By the Book, but it is also available online but not on Amazon. I’ve set up a new online store for copies of my chapbook on my WordPress site, Liegois Media. If you want to get a physical copy, go ahead and click on the link below.

The Flow and the Journey

The Flow and the Journey

The first collection of poetry from author Jason Liegois.

$6.00
Shop now

On the subject of Substack, it’s fantastic if you are signed up for my free subscription, but I would love it if you signed up for a paid one. The monthly rate is the lowest I can put it ($5 per month) but my yearly rate of $35 is a steal at less than three/fifths the monthly rate.

If you want to support me but can’t quite afford a full subscription, I am now on Venmo. You can just send whatever you can afford. Just click the button below; anything you can provide helps me keep things going.

Buy me a cup of coffee, if you could 😊

Final Thoughts

That’s where I’m at for now. As I often say, all you writers keep writing and everyone keep safe.

-30-

Advertisements

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.

The Writing Life, 2 November 2024: Finally settling in to a new home

The last two months of 2024 are now upon Iowa. I’m looking forward to seeing what they bring.

The Home Front

As you can see from the cover photo, so to speak, my wife Laura and myself have finally set up shop in our new home in Fort Madison. It’s a two-story structure dating from the mid-20th century and has more than a few updated features. I think we’ll be happy here for a while to come.

There have been a few hiccups along the way with some quick renovations and a couple of calls to the repairman for the odd thing, but for the most part things are going well and there is plenty to work on and develop on the property for some time to come.

As for me, I seem to have found a fine writing location you can see above, tucked into a corner of the basement and a desk that was just sitting here, left behind. It might be the best quality desk I’ve yet owned. Whether I could ever transport it out of the basement is another issue, but no matter what, I’ll enjoy if for however long I have it. Regardless, this basement even has a door I can close, space for my books, plenty of lighting, a TV, bathroom with shower, work bench, and all the storage I could ask for. Hopefully I start getting productive and not just fuss around down here.

If I get bored I might do a blog specifically about my new writing space, so I’ll leave it there.

I think summer has finally, irrevocably left Iowa for 2024, so that’s nice.

What I’m Writing

My current progress on my ongoing projects:

  • The Yank Striker 2, the sequel for The Yank Striker: I’m proud to have rushed past the 59,000-word mark for the rough draft. I now have a clear idea of where I’m heading with the book and where it will wrap up, and I have a pretty good twist in mind for what is to come. Then I remind myself not to get to carried away with loving my own work, because this is, once again, a rough draft. Having a completed 75,000 word rough draft by 1 January 2025 seems to be increasingly viable.
  • The Untitled Pro Wrestling Family Drama project: I’ve just made some small progress with the rough draft, to be honest. Then again, this is the project I want to work on when I let The Yank Striker 2 rough draft sit for a while, so I want to have something to work on. I’m still past 24,000 words, which is not bad progress for something I’m not focusing my entire attention on.
    I might get into where the main character is starting the research into his own life. It’s going to be interesting to try and balance his existence as a writer with his dive into his family’s life of professional wrestling. I have a feeling the wrestling and the family drama is going to outweigh watching my main character in writer’s workshops and writing at home. 🙂
  • The Untitled Liegois Poetry Chapbook: So far, little recent progress on this. I think I want to get some feedback from my poetry friends about the layout of this chapbook and whether it makes sense to include all of these photos. We’ll see what they have to say.

What I’m Doing Having to Do With Writing

(AKA personal appearances)

I (also sometimes known as The Dude In Purple) have some events coming up this fall and some others I’m tentatively adding to the schedule. All these events will be me appearing live and with my books, The Holy Fool and The Yank Striker.

Here are my current events12:

  • I will also attend the Fort Madison Area Art Association’s Meet the Author Book Signing event from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, November 30, at the FMAAA’s center at 825 Avenue G, Fort Madison. This would be my first author’s event in my new home of Fort Madison, and I am overjoyed to be part of this gathering.
  • I’m hoping to be part of the DSM Book Festival at the at Franklin Junior High Event Center, 4801 Franklin Ave., Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, 22 March 2025. This is being sponsored by one of my favorite independent book stores in Des Moines, Beaverdale Books. I’ll provide more information, hopefully, as the event approaches.

I’ll be looking to add some more dates on the appearance calendar as time goes on. Hope to see you at one of those places.

Writing Quote of the Week:

Words of wisdom from Tim O’Brien, one of the authors I’ve really admired.

The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.

  • Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

A Few Links About My Books and Where to Find Them

(Feel free to ignore this bit if you’ve read it before)

Currently, I have the mighty total of TWO novels which make up my official backlist4.

My first book is a journalism thriller set in Chicago during the turbulent days of the 2008 election and the start of the Great Recession. Check out more about it here.

You can get the paperback version of this book on Amazon here and the ebook version of it here.

A fellow Iowa writer and organizer of the Windsor Heights Book Fair, Tyler Granger, recently did a review of my book: you can find it here3.

My second book, the first in the The Yank Striker series, is a soccer drama telling the story of the beginning of a young American’s career as a player. There’s more about it here.

The paperback version of this book can be found on Amazon and the site of my publisher, Biblio Publishing. It is also available in ebook format on Amazon here.

John Buzbee of The Culture Buzz radio show in Des Moines (KFMG FM) interviewed me about the Yank Striker. You can catch it here.

For full links to these and other helpful places having to do with me and my writing, you can go to this page on my WordPress site, Liegois Media.

You can also get my books in person at these fine Iowa bookstores:

  • Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St, Burlington.
  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave. # S1, Des Moines
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
  • The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

I’m always looking for some new places to place my books, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if you have a suggestion.

Another Way to Support Me (No Pressure… 😊)

If you are interested in supporting me but can’t quite afford a full subscription (although my paid subscription is just five dollars a month or an even better steal at thirty-five dollars a year), I have a new option for you4.

I am now on Venmo. If you are interested in a donation of whatever you can provide, you can just send whatever you can afford to there. You can choose to buy me a cup of coffee or whatever you can afford. Just click the button below or scan the QR code below to help out. Anything you can provide helps me keep things going.

Buy me a cup of coffee

Final Thoughts

Anyway, that’s pretty much how things have been for me regarding writing and a few other things. Hope you writers out there are being productive and creative and everyone out there is keeping safe.

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  1. Promotional image courtesy of the sponsoring organization. ↩︎
  2. Thanks to the Iowa City Book Festival for sponsoring me at their local author’s fair two weeks previously. It was a fantastic and well-planned event and I’m looking forward to coming back next year. ↩︎
  3. If anyone does any reviews of my work, I’d love to post some links to them. Send it to me in the DM’s or comments. ↩︎
  4. Unfortunately, I don’t think WordPress has a per-story payment plan. Shame, it would be useful if it did. ↩︎

The Writing Life, 5 October 2024: Still hoping for fall

We are officially into the start of autumn since the equinox happened, but despite a cruel tease of such weather, we here in eastern Iowa have not been getting consistent fall weather. I am going to insist on decorating my blogs with autumn imagery until it actually looks and feels like these pictures in the outside. That’s just the way it has to be for a while, folks.

But we’ve got writing and new events to talk about, so let’s get into it.

The Home Front

The transition between old residence and new residence for Laura (my wife) and myself continues.

Painting in our home had been completed, and the removal of our carpet is all but done. We also did some trimming up on the tree in our front yard that was a bit overdue. Now will come the process of treating the hardwood floors, moving all the items now in storage into the storage of our new house, installing new lighting and ceiling fans, and carting away some of the resulting detritus. Soon enough, our modest apartment will have to be packed up and ready for shipping, either by us or the movers.

Thankfully, unlike our last move, this is a move within our current city and will not need to be finished immediately. I am somewhat selfishly looking forward to my new writing space and how I will eventually get it set up.

Of course, not even this move will be the end of moving and changes for us. My son is moving closer to buying his own home, and we will be happy to provide any assistance for his own move in Des Moines. Thankfully, he does not have as much possessions as we do and his is also a move within a city.

What I’m Writing

I’ve been quite busy this week and last with my ongoing projects.

  • The Yank Striker 2, the sequel for The Yank Striker: I am now at 52,000 words for the first draft of the book. I am currently shooting for 75,000 words as a new target for the end of the year. If I average about 250 words on it for the remainder of the year, I should be able to get to 75,000 by 31 December 2024.
    At this point, I think it is doable. I will concentrate on this for my short-term goal, and then work toward getting it publication-ready for summer 2025.
  • The Untitled Pro Wrestling Family Drama project: Made a big jump in progress on this project. As of this writing, I’m beginning to wrap up the critical scene where my main character makes the fateful decision to look into his family’s history of professional wrestling although he has been at least on a surface level avoiding this world for all his life. I’m going to write just what I consider to be the essential scenes until I get to something approaching a full rough draft. This will be interesting because the story will eventually bounce between the late 2010’s and 1954-1974. It’s the first time I’ve dealt with different time periods in one of my stories, and I’m looking forward to the challenge.
  • The Untitled Liegois Poetry Chapbook: I have actually made more progress on this project this week. I’ve finished revisions on the poems, and finished arranging them in order in the chapbook. Again, I think my revisions have significantly tightened up those poems and given them more impact.I am not sure when I will have this ready for sale when I’m out and about, so to speak. I have to add in some author’s notes and acknowledgements, consider whether some more photos might be called for, and some other design issues. Plus, I have to start figuring out how to print the thing. However, I’m inching closer to being a self-published poet.

What I’m Doing Having to Do With Writing

(AKA personal appearances)

I (also sometimes known as The Dude In Purple) still have a few events coming up for this fall and some others I’m tentatively adding to the schedule. All these events will be me appearing live and with my books, The Holy Fool and The Yank Striker.

Here are my current events1:

  • I’m headed back to the Des Moines area from 12-6 p.m. Sunday, 6 October [THAT’S TOMORROW], for the Windsor Heights Book Fair. This will take place at the Agora Events Center, 7692 Hickman Road, Des Moines. This will be the second year I’ll have participated in this event, and I’m eager to return.
  • I’ll be participating in the Local Writers’ Book Fair, which will be part of the 2024 Iowa City Book Festival. It will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20, at MERGE, 136 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City. This is again my second year of participating, and I am looking forward to being back in Iowa City.
  • I’m planning to attend the Fort Madison Area Art Association’s Meet the Author Book Signing event from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, November 30, at the FMAAA’s center at 825 Avenue G, Fort Madison. This would be my first author’s event in my new home of Fort Madison, and I am overjoyed to be part of this gathering.
  • I’m hoping to be part of the DSM Book Festival at the at Franklin Junior High Event Center, 4801 Franklin Ave., Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, 22 March 2025. This is being sponsored by one of my favorite independent book stores in Des Moines, Beaverdale Books. I’ll provide more information, hopefully, as the event approaches.

    I’ll be looking to add some more dates on the appearance calendar as time goes on. Hope to see you at one of those places.

Writing Quote of the Week:

I agree with Eudora’s words here, although I’m more certain of the sentiments.

Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.

  • Eudora Welty, On Writing

A Few Links About My Books and Where to Find Them

(Feel free to ignore this bit if you’ve read it before)

Currently, I have the mighty total of TWO novels which make up my official backlist2.

My first book is a journalism thriller set in Chicago during the turbulent days of the 2008 election and the start of the Great Recession. Check out more about it here.

You can get the paperback version of this book on Amazon here and the ebook version of it here.

A fellow Iowa writer and organizer of the Windsor Heights Book Fair, Tyler Granger, recently did a review of my book: you can find it here3.

My second book, the first in the The Yank Striker series, is a soccer drama telling the story of the beginning of a young American’s career as a player. There’s more about it here.

The paperback version of this book can be found on Amazon and the site of my publisher, Biblio Publishing. It is also available in ebook format on Amazon here.

John Buzbee of The Culture Buzz radio show in Des Moines (KFMG FM) interviewed me about the Yank Striker: You can catch it here.

For full links to these and other helpful places having to do with me and my writing, you can go to this page on my WordPress site, Liegois Media.

You can also get my books in person at these fine Iowa bookstores:

  • NEW: Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St, Burlington.
  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave. # S1, Des Moines
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
  • The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

I’m always looking for some new places to place my books, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if you have a suggestion.

Final Thoughts

All the writers keep writing and everyone keep safe, especially those who are continuing to deal with the effects of Hurricane Helene passing through the southeastern US over the past week. Best wishes.

-30-

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  1. All promotional images courtesy of their respective organizations. ↩︎
  2. Don’t worry, I won’t include this bit in the next regular newsletter in two weeks to give you a break, lol 👍🏻. ↩︎
  3. If anyone does any reviews of my work, I’d love to post some links to them. Send it to me in the DM’s or comments. ↩︎

The Writing Life, 21 September 2024: Hoping for fall

We are getting deeper into fall in Iowa, but sadly not yet not deep into proper autumn weather. It is more like the weather at the beginning of a school year where you walk to school wearing a proper fall coat in the morning and yet it gets so hot by mid-afternoon you’re forced to walk home with the coat tied around your waist. Such is life in Iowa, but at least it’s not Kansas, which is flatter, doesn’t have as many good rivers as Iowa, and is at least ten degrees hotter1.

The Home Front

Not much here in recent weeks.

It’s part of a slow process, but we are starting to get things sorted out with our new home in Fort Madison. Most of it involves removing carpet, which both my wife and I always thought seemed strange to put over perfectly good hardwood floors, and cleaning things up.

Once the move gets done, we’ll be hopeful not to move again anytime soon. Seems like the past few years has been a constant move for both my wife and I and now our kids, who are in their own apartments or in the process of hunting for their own homes. Besides, Fort Madison is a nice little river town to get settled in.

I am hoping beyond hope this Friday will be the very last 80-degree-plus day in the state of Iowa for 2024. The stinking heat we have to deal with every afternoon after I get out of work can’t go away soon enough. Bring on actual fall weather and even winter at this point.

What I’m Writing

Time for an update on what I’m writing.

  • The Yank Striker 22, the sequel for The Yank Striker: I am now at the 50,000-word mark for the first draft of the book, which is a bit amazing thinking back to how blocked I was on the project in late spring and early summer of this year. I’ve got around nine chapters I’m thinking about adding onto the story, but not all of those are going to be of any considerable length. There’s at least 5,000 of the words in my first draft I know are going onto the discard pile whenever I start revisions. 80,000 words is going to be my absolute limit on the word count for the first draft, and I would prefer to have a final draft of somewhere around 70,000 words, especially since this will be a series and I’ve got a lot more story to tell down the road.
    With the regular progress I’ve been making on the first draft over the course of last month, I’m now feeling quietly confident I might have the first draft wrapped up by the end of the year. That’s going to require considerable focus on my part. From some back of the envelope calculations I just made this week, if I manage to get maybe 300 words on the project written every day, I should have my first draft done and ready to revise by the end of 2024.
    I would love to try and produce a book every year if possible. Getting a book done in two years (as The Yank Striker 2 looks to be at this point) is still the fastest I’ve ever written anything up to this point. If I’m writing this much, I want to be producing books and releasing them. The larger backlist I have, the better in my opinion, and I want to have whatever time I have left to write and produce as much as I can. Also since I am actively working on one series (and have a second in mind), I don’t have the feeling I am going to run out of things to write anytime soon.
  • The Untitled Pro Wrestling Family Drama project: I’ve had some time to work on this project last week, not so much this week. I’m getting close to the point in a typical story, if you are using a Hero’s Journey or a Steal the Cat-type outline, where the main character gets a challenge to go on a quest or a challenge.

[MINOR SPOILER ALERT:3]

I decided the impetus for such a call to action was a mini-family reunion in the scenic location of northeastern Minnesota, and it involves a glance into a family past my main character has avoided for years. But when he gets a glimpse of his past from an entirely unexpected source, that past comes rushing back, prompting him to find out the truth about it.
Pro wrestling is also involved.

[END OF SPOILERS]

The Untitled Liegois Poetry Chapbook: Not much work on this one this week. I think I’ve sorted out which poems I want in the book and have taken a shot at revising them. I’m quite satisfied with the results of the revisions, making what I’ve created more compact, more impactful.
Whether I get them done or not in time for some of my more recent outings is a totally different story, but it still seems closer to being done than it was when I was just talking about the idea a year or so ago.

What I’m Doing Having to Do With Writing

(AKA where I might be appearing soon, among other things)

I (also sometimes known as The Dude In Purple) still have a few events coming up for this fall and some others I’m tentatively adding to the schedule. All these events will be me appearing live and with my books, The Holy Fool and The Yank Striker.

Here are my current events4:

  • I’m headed back to the Des Moines area from 12-6 p.m. Sunday, 6 October, for the Windsor Heights Book Fair. This will take place at the Agora Events Center, 7692 Hickman Road, Des Moines. This will be the second year I’ll have participated in this event, and I’m eager to return.
  • I’ll be participating in the Local Writers’ Book Fair, which will be part of the 2024 Iowa City Book Festival. It will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20, at MERGE, 136 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City. This is again my second year of participating, and I am looking forward to being back in Iowa City.
  • I’m tentatively planning to attend the Fort Madison Area Art Association’s Meet the Author Book Signing event from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, November 30, at the FMAAA’s center at 825 Avenue G, Fort Madison. This would be my first author’s event in my new home of Fort Madison, and I am overjoyed to be part of this gathering.
  • I’m hoping to be part of the DSM Book Festival at the at Franklin Junior High Event Center, 4801 Franklin Ave., Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, 22 March 2025. This is being sponsored by one of my favorite independent book stores in Des Moines, Beaverdale Books. I’ll provide more information, hopefully, as the event approaches.

    I’ll be looking to add some more dates on the appearance calendar as time goes on. Hope to see you at one of those places.

Writing Quote of the Week:

Good words from the King about one important requirement for a writer.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

  • Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

A Few Links About My Books and Where to Find Them

(Feel free to ignore this bit if you’ve read it before)

Currently, I have the mighty total of TWO novels which make up my official backlist.

My first book is a journalism thriller set in Chicago during the turbulent days of the 2008 election and the start of the Great Recession. Check out more about it here.

You can get the paperback version of this book on Amazon here and the ebook version of it here.

A fellow Iowa writer and organizer of the Windsor Heights Book Fair, Tyler Granger, recently did a review of my book: you can find it here5.

My second book, the first in the The Yank Striker series, is a soccer drama telling the story of the beginning of a young American’s career as a player. There’s more about it here.

The paperback version of this book can be found on Amazon and the site of my publisher, Biblio Publishing. It is also available in ebook format on Amazon here.

John Buzbee of The Culture Buzz radio show in Des Moines (KFMG FM) interviewed me about the Yank Striker: You can catch it here.

For full links to these and other helpful places having to do with me and my writing, you can go to this page on my WordPress site, Liegois Media.

You can also get my books in person at these fine Iowa bookstores:

  • NEW: Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St, Burlington.
  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave. # S1, Des Moines
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
  • The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

I’m always looking for some new places to place my books, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if you have a suggestion.

Final Thoughts

That’s about it for now. All the writers keep writing and everyone keep safe.

-30-

  1. I do not mean to insult any Kansas residents or those who like living there. It’s just my taste to live somewhere near a big river and have it be relatively cool for most of the year if I can help it. ↩︎
  2. All of the following titles are working titles. I’m going to wait to release what I think should be the real titles when these projects are closer to publication. ↩︎
  3. Then again, isn’t this the point of this whole newsletter in part, to let you know what I’m working on? ↩︎
  4. All promotional images courtesy of their respective organizations. ↩︎
  5. If anyone does any reviews of my work, I’d love to post some links to them. Send it to me in the DM’s or comments. ↩︎

The Writing Life, 6 July 2024: Feeling good about writing productivity

The Rock Island, Ill. riverfront near Centennial Bridge, 29 June 2024. I was in town for a writing convention.

Hey, everyone.

I’m still hyped from last week’s writing convention (mentioned above). A lot of what I get out of those events is inspiration and motivation rather than knowledge (although I got a lot of good ideas and knowledge from the event as well). I feel like I’m on a bit of a roll during the past few weeks.

The Home Front

I’ll keep this brief.

I helped my daughter move into her new apartment in Muscatine, so now she’ll have her own place in the town she works at, which is always convenient. And we went up to Muscatine for a bit to celebrate the Fourth of July.

However, it was a bummer the US Men’s National Team (USMNT) crashed out of the Copa America. If you are curious, I was not a Gregg Berhalter1 must go guy, but I am after this tournament. We need to represent well when the World Cup comes to the USA in two years. We need to be be making more progress. When the women’s team crashed out of the last World Cup, they cleaned house and got what was considered the best women’s soccer coach available. Hopefully, they’ll show the same amount of guts to deal with the men’s team2.

Anyway, back to the writing.

What I’m Writing

There’s been a mix of items I’ve been working on this week. Some of the advice I’ve recently received is when you finish with the first draft of a story, let it sit for a while before tackling revisions. You might find it useful to be working on another writing project rather than pondering the last one. In recent times, it appears I always have more than one project in different states of development. It has certainly helped me to keep productive and putting words on the page on a consistent basis.

Some of those projects include:

  • The Yank Striker 2 (totally unoriginal working title), the sequel for The Yank Striker (look below for more information on the first book in the series). I am now 40,000 words at least into the first draft, although several thousand of those words could very well barely make it past the first draft. Considering the time period the book covers is concise, I don’t want to have it go much longer than 80,000 words. I’m not sure this means I’m halfway done with the first draft, but I’m a lot further along than I was at the beginning of this year. I’m feeling better about it at least.
  • Then there happens to be the Untitled Pro Wrestling Family Drama project I first got the idea for more than a year ago. I’ve likely written at least 12,000 words on this project without barely trying. A lot of these words will likely not even make it into the first draft, or perhaps it will make it into what I used to call the “odds and ends.” These are all old scenes, ideas, etc., I wrote but had to be removed from the main text due to various reasons. I heard another, better word for it recently – “The Boneyard.” I always think it’s a good idea to hang on to these ideas and put them in a safe place away from the main text for a couple of three reasons3. First, you could always change your mind and decide you need to put the text back where it came from or perhaps someplace else it would be useful. Or, maybe you decide it could end up being its own story or something totally different. You never know. Anyway, it’s coming along.
  • I’m continuing to produce poetry, as well. I’m going plenty of new work, although I want to continue to produce more and publish it in a chapbook or two. I’ll talk more about it when I get closer to getting something done.

Writing Progress at the Halfway Point of 2024

I don’t usually talk hard numbers here on the newsletter, but since I’m at the midpoint of the year, I usually take a look at my productivity and goals for the year and see how well (or not) I’ve stuck to them. What were those goals, by the way?

Here are those goals, as well as a progress report on where I am on all of them.

  1. I want to write at least 200,000 words this year and meet my daily quota at least 75 percent of the time. So, these will be my quotas for this year (and I think for the subsequent years to come).
    • At the halfway point of the year, I’m on track to meet these goals. I have written 105,808 words for the year, and thus 5,808 above pace. I’m averaging 17,635 words per month, and I’m meeting my daily average quota (500 words per day or 30 minutes of working on revisions or planning/prewriting) 84 percent of the time. Out of curiosity, I’ve logged by my own estimate 3,690 minutes of revision or planning/prewriting work for the year so far. In all honesty, I tend to undercount this time.
      The word count happens to be the lowest since I started setting yearly goals of 200,000 words back in 2022. This is not a surprise to me, since I missed a lot of writing time, especially between March and May, on a lot of commuting back and forth between my job, my new home, and either a hotel or my son’s apartment in Des Moines.
      What I am pleasantly surprised about is how I am now back on track to write 200,000 words this year at least. I really wanted to push to get caught up during summer break and it looks like my efforts are paying off at least. Maybe I get a bit obsessive with writing data, but it’s resulted in me being more productive during the past eight years than I was during the entire rest of my life, so I figure there’s something to it.
  2. My preference would be to publish The Yank Striker 2 by this summer. However, if I manage to get the rough draft finished by the year’s end, I’ll consider it a win. I prefer to keep positive, however.
    • Yeah, about that.
      I have written more than 40,000 words for the first draft; of course, maybe 5,000 of those will be tossed out of hand as repeating or unnecessary. I was really hung up on this for a long time, but I’m finally starting to make progress. If I managed to get a rough draft completed by the end of the year, that would be amazing. Right now my chances are less than 50 percent, but it would be wild if I was able to release something by next year.
  3. I want to write more poetry this year. In fact, it would be great if I managed to get some of my poetry published in some journals, or perhaps in a chapbook format. Hopefully, my Poetry Nights will produce some more material for this project.
    • Writing more poetry this year – definitely on track with this.
    • Publishing poetry – other than this blog, not just yet. Still getting the handle on everything having to do with poetry.

So considering the craziness of the last few months, the fact I’m as on track with these goals as I am is something of an accomplishment.

Writing Quote(s) for the Week

Two quotes for this week by two writers who get straight to the point, in their own fashion.

If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!

  • Jackie Collins

If a story is in you, it has to come out.

  • William Faulkner

Author’s Note: The following material is some basic information about my sites and my books.

If you’re a returning reader and have already read about them, clicked on the links, or even subscribed to the site and maybe bought a book or two, feel free to skip until the end.

For those of you coming here for the first time, you might find the links useful to figure out what I’m about.

A Few Links About My Books and Where to Find Them

My first book is a journalism thriller set in Chicago during the turbulent days of the 2008 election and the start of the Great Recession. Check out more about it here.

You can get the paperback version of this book on Amazon here and the ebook version of it here.

A fellow Iowa writer and organizer of the Windsor Heights Book Fair, Tyler Granger, recently did a review of my book: you can find it here.

My second book, the first in the The Yank Striker series, is a soccer drama telling the story of the beginning of a young American’s career as a player. There’s more about it here.

The paperback version of this book can be found on Amazon and the site of my publisher, Biblio Publishing. It is also available in ebook format on Amazon here.

For full links to these and other helpful places having to do with me and my writing, you can go to this page on my WordPress site, Liegois Media.

You can also get my books 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.

I’m always looking for some new places to place my books (especially in eastern Iowa), so feel free to hit me up in the comments if anyone has a suggestion.

About This Page

I post here regularly on weekends, usually Saturdays, with the odd bonus posts happening as well. They run as follows:

  • First and third weekends of the month – my normal The Writing Life newsletter, which you are reading now.
  • Second weekend of the month – Prose Night at the Writing Life, where I run original essays, short fiction, fiction excerpts, or longer-form advice about writing.
  • Fourth weekend of the month – Poetry Night at the Writing Life, where I post original poetry and (usually) a bit of background about the poems.
  • In the event of a fifth weekend of the month, I’ll either take a break or post some sort of bonus writing-themed material.

This is where I briefly promote this page. I’ll keep it short.

With a free subscription, you always will have access to my newsletters on the first and third weekends of the month, as well as selected articles up to a month after they’ve been published. However, if you have a paid subscription with me (which is pretty inexpensive), you will have access to all of my articles here, all of my archives, and my eternal gratitude. Plus, some first-dibs on possible future offers.

Final Thoughts

That’s everything from this week. Next week for Prose Night, I’ll do a writing advice essay regarding revision and planning ideas from a course I took at the writing conference sponsored by the Midwest Writing Center in the Quad Cities. Hope to see you then.

-30-

  1. The USMNT head coach, in his second stint in the role. ↩︎
  2. Sorry, I’m too much of a fanatical USMNT fan not to mention it. There’s more than a few reasons I decided to start an entire book series about a soccer player. ↩︎
  3. This is not a grammar mistake, it is a juvenile Sopranos reference (actually, a quote from the character Phil Leotardo. ↩︎

The Writing Life, 15 June 2024: Settling into my new home

The Chicago River in Chicago, Ill., 1 June 2024. One last bit of travel for a while.

I’m glad I’m finally not writing this newsletter on the road or in the process of traveling somewhere for work, family, or otherwise. We’ll talk writing, home, and feeling like you have to accomplish something if you have ten or so weeks of official vacation. Let’s get into it.

The Home Front

I don’t mind traveling, but all of the commuting I’ve had to do for my past job and for my son while he was still trying to recover from his February accident. Now, he’s back at work and my daughter has graduated from University of Iowa and begun her new job with a top engineering firm in my hometown. As for me, I’m off work and without too much on my calendar until the end of this month (more on that in a second).

Now, I’m starting to feel more like a local resident in Fort Madison. I just voted in the primary, signed up for the YMCA, and trying to participate in some of the summer festivals and activities going on in the community.

There was one last bit of travel I undertook last weekend with my wife to Chicago which was the first experience I’ve had with the Amtrak train system. I enjoyed riding the rails, and would definitely recommend it to others.

What I’m Writing

With all of this traveling, I’ve fallen behind my goal of writing at least 200,000 words this year by at least a few thousand words off the pace. However, I’m hoping I spend the next several weeks of my vacation getting a boatload of writing done so by the time I start my new job in August.

So, what have I been writing? I’ve been planning out my next steps for The Yank Striker 2. As of right now, I have about 34,000 words for a rough draft, but I could easily trim 5,000 of those off the rough draft, because some of it on second glance will be honestly repetitive1. My plan is to end up with a rough draft of no more than 70-80,000 words, especially since the book will only cover less than a year of action and, if you couldn’t tell from the working title, is one in a series. The good thing about a series is, if you think a book is getting too long, you can always split it up into more than one books.

I’ve also been piecing together a rough draft of a fiction project I first came up with nearly a year ago now – a project having to do with a family of professional wrestlers. I even posted a short story which eventually became my initial stab at the project.

With our move early last year, I haven’t had much time to work on this project as I thought I had. However, with a bit of work, I’ve managed to put together more than 10,000 words for the project so far. As with The Yank Striker 2, since this will be the first book in a series (in this case, I’m thinking a trilogy), I don’t want it to be much longer than 80,000 words. I’m now at the point where I need to plot out the key scenes in this book to help better structure the rough draft2. I’ll let you know how it all is going further down the road.

Of course, I’ve been active here as well. I have (with only a couple of exceptions) posted regularly on weekends, usually Saturdays, with the odd bonus posts happening as well. They run as follows:

  • First and third weekends of the month – my normal The Writing Life newsletter, which you are reading now.
  • Second weekend of the month – Prose Night at the Writing Life, where I run original essays, short fiction, fiction excerpts, or (occasionally) longer-form advice about writing.
  • Fourth weekend of the month – Poetry Night at the Writing Life, where I post original poetry and (usually) a bit of background about the poems.
  • In the event of a fifth weekend of the month, I’ll either take a break or post some sort of bonus writing-themed material. For instance, since there is a fifth Saturday and Sunday this month, I might give a recap of how this writer’s conference I’m going to attend at the end of the month (read below about it).

What I’m Doing Having to do With Writing

Other than the typical blog maintenance stuff, I’ll be attending the Midwest Writing Center’s annual David R. Collins Writers’ Conference from 27 to 29 June next month. The MWC, based at the Rock Island (Ill.) Public Library, will be hosting the event at the campus of Augustana College in Rock Island. I’m looking forward to the fiction revision class and the poetry class for the event. This is especially true for the latter class, as I’ve not really had much of an opportunity to take any poetry workshops or classes up to this point. Until recent years, my focus has been almost entirely devoted to fiction.

As for anything else in this category, there’s not really much to report on upcoming, so I’ll hold off on talking about it for now.

Writing Quote(s) for the Week

For a change of pace, we’re going to include three writing quotes for the week. This one fits into why I’m so fascinated with building worlds in my fiction.

You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won’t really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we’ll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won’t wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.

  • Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

This next one fits in with how I feel compelled to write sometimes.

If I do not write to empty my mind, I go mad.

  • Lord George Gordon Byron

Finally… I used to have this book in my collection, but I doubt I still do. It was one of those books I felt an obligation to read rather than a desire to read and I reacted accordingly (I never finished the book, never getting into the main character or his motivations). However, this quote made me laugh and reminded me not to take myself as a writer too seriously.

I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.

  • John Kennedy O’Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

Writing Advice

For the first time in a while, I’ve run across some writing advice I don’t necessarily hold with, although I might have some qualified support for the idea. Here’s the advice:

In the planning stage of a book, don’t plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.

– Rose Tremain

I can see Tremain’s reasoning here, in that the ending has to be “earned” – which I interpret to be a logical and fitting ending based on the events leading to it. There has to be a cause to the effect.

However, I’m too much of a “plotter” not to have an idea of where the story will end up or resolve. I will not write out what the scene will look like until I am about to finish the rough draft, but I will know the basic beats of the scene well in advance.

“Idea” is the key word in the first sentence of the previous paragraph. Even though I may have an idea what the ending will look like, it could easily be tossed out or altered before I’m even done with the rough draft. It could very well be changed in the revising process. For me, however, just as a scientist needs to have a hypothesis before he can try his experiment which may or may not confirm said hypothesis, I think a writer should have an idea of an ending even if it is altered or discarded by the end of the writing process.

The one group of writers where I think this advice might fit are those “pantser” writers who start with a premise and a couple of characters and follow it wherever it might go. I talked about the differences between plotters and pantsers briefly in my last Prose Night post about my system of producing rough drafts.

TL;DR analysis – Not the best of advice for a writer like me, but it might suit others.

A Few Links About My Books and Where to Find Them, as Well as Something About This Site

My first book is a journalism thriller set in Chicago during the turbulent days of the 2008 election and the start of the Great Recession. Check out more about it here.

You can get the paperback version of this book on Amazon here and the ebook version of it here.

A fellow Iowa writer and organizer of the Windsor Heights Book Fair, Tyler Granger, recently did a review of my book: you can find it here.

My second book, the first in the The Yank Striker series, is a soccer drama telling the story of the beginning of a young American’s career as a player. There’s more about it here.

The paperback version of this book can be found on Amazon and the site of my publisher, Biblio Publishing. It is also available in ebook format on Amazon here.

For full links to these and other helpful places having to do with me and my writing, you can go to this page on my WordPress site, Liegois Media.

You can also get my books 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.

I’m always looking for some new places to place my books (especially in eastern Iowa), so feel free to hit me up in the comments if anyone has a suggestion.

Let’s talk briefly about how The Writing Life works.

With a free subscription, you always will have access to my newsletters on the first and third weekends of the month, as well as selected articles up to a month after they’ve been published. However, if you have a paid subscription with me (which is pretty inexpensive), you will have access to all of my articles here, all of my archives, and my eternal gratitude. Plus, some first-dibs on possible future offers.

Final Thoughts

That’s all the writing news for this week. All you writers keep writing and everyone keep safe.

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  1. Fellow fiction writers, have you ever been in a situation where you’ve tried to start a scene, struggled to finish it, and as a result wound up with three separate scenes stuffed into one? That’s what I’m running into. Feel free to chat about it in the comments or by direct message. ↩︎
  2. This is not to say I’ve not done any world-building for the project – far from it. I’ve already put together a rough timeline of events for the full trilogy, a family tree for the main character’s family and the family tree of their chief rivals, as well as information on the fictional wrestling companies involved in the story. ↩︎