I usually don’t post short blog posts here, but I have an event coming up March 31. Here’s some information on it – I’ll likely make another post or two about it later.
www.facebook.com/groups/437230303100788/permalink/2211938268963307/
The official blog of author and writer Jason Liegois.
I usually don’t post short blog posts here, but I have an event coming up March 31. Here’s some information on it – I’ll likely make another post or two about it later.
www.facebook.com/groups/437230303100788/permalink/2211938268963307/
I was going to try and do a review of one of the publishing/writing/designing tools that I’ve been doing research on for the past few weeks. I still might do that later. However, I decided I wanted to talk about what happened with me this week.
In case you didn’t know, my current efforts to get published are by no means the first. I once managed to secure the services of an agent for a now long-forgotten young adult book. $120 and a year later, if I recall correctly, I told her thanks for her efforts, whatever those might be, and we parted ways.
Then there has been the recent publication of my book, The Holy Fool. I have nothing but thanks to them for giving me a chance to get published, and even if I’m not the biggest bestseller, at least I got farther than I have before.
During my recent research into self-publishing and related systems, I came across the radar of a company that provides services to self-publishing authors. I will not name this company here. Suffice it to say that through my research and investigation of the company, I was convinced that they were a legitimate company that truly believed that they could provide resources that that could turn me into a better-known author that could make a living at writing.
It was because of that I found myself on the phone last Friday evening with a representative of this company to discuss the plans I had for a possible series based on a project I have already written.
The discussion was quite amicable, informative, and to the point. During our conversation, it was clear that he had researched my book and its success as far as being widely known was, to be honest, extremely modest. I established that I knew little of book cover design and also little of search engine optimization and keyword usage. He gave me a couple pieces of advice and some complimentary research materials.
Eventually, it came down to cost. It always does underneath these circumstances, when a company approaches a person rather than the other way around. In this case, $6,000 for full services, or perhaps three payments of $2,400 every three months. After a few pleasantries and sincere thanks, we ended the call.
What sort of price do you put on a dream? How do you justify spending that amount of money on something when, until very recently, being able to scrape together just $1,000 on short notice without resorting to a loan was not a guarantee.
“There’s got to be a less expensive way to do all that,” was the thought of my wife Laura after the meeting. I’ve stayed married for 25-plus years because I tend more often than not to listen to my wife.
And that wasn’t even the biggest amount I would have paid to a publishing company. Another company that will not be named seriously quoted me a number of $20,000 for a full service package. Again, however, how do I justify investing that much into my art when I have a life and family to maintain?
That’s not even touching on how this conversation made me think about the difference between writing as a business and writing for writing’s sake. If my experience with fan fiction has taught me anything, it’s that I can find artistic validation and satisfaction totally absent a profit motive. (That question might be worth its own entry.)
So, anyway, I’m back to where I was, investigating future possibilities. Might my path be perfect and lead to fortune and fame? It might not. However, it will likely be something that I can manage to afford, and I am hoping it will be totally mine.
Not too much to talk about, so I’ll keep it quick. Well, this turned out to be not exactly what I expected. Let’s carry on, however.
As I sit here at the beginning of November, I’m wondering if I have enough time to pull together a decent writing year with two months of 2021 left to go. I think there is a chance that I might be able to finish strong this year, but whether I finish comparable to 2019 or 2020 is up in the air. Like I analyzed back in January, I wrote more words in 2020 than 2019 and a lot more than 2018, but the percentage of times that I met my writing goals during the year fell from 78 percent in 2019 to 62 percent in 2018.
In the end… it’s a little difficult to exactly pinpoint the reason for the drop-off last year and this year as opposed to 2019. I’ve tried to think about it more than a few times.
There was the move to south central Iowa that disrupted my routines and stalled out any momentum that I’ve tried to build with The Holy Fool coming out in 2019. My connections to my little writing community I had been starting to develop in eastern Iowa and Muscatine over the course of many years got severed, and the COVID-19 outbreak also put a lot of potential public events out of reach for at least a year. It has only been recently that I have been trying to rebuild my writing community out in the Des Moines area because that is the biggest community within driving distance for me to find fellow authors. I think this is leading me to more gradual (and I hope permanent) changes that I am starting to make aimed at growing myself as a writer and as a brand. It would be nice for there to be a good writing community where I am currently living (Lucas County, Iowa), but due to the population out here, I don’t think I can count on that. In addition, I think I am at a different place than I was when I first became involved in writing communities. Before, I was concerned about finding people I could bounce ideas off of, get writing advice, and show me how I could become a better writer. I still want that, but I also really want to try and push myself forward, becoming someone who could turn my writing into something that could at least become a nice little side gig, if not a full-time calling at the moment. The people I have met in Des Moines have been published multiple times. I don’t think I’m going to have that level of experience in little Chariton of Lucas County, as compared to Des Moines.
Once I moved out here last year to Chariton, my mental state was honestly not the best, not necessarily because of the move but because of the working environment I found myself in. By the end of my time at this particular school district, I was even questioning my dedication to continuing teaching, as so many of my colleagues both at that district and other places have done. However, my wife (Laura) encouraged me to keep my mind open to other teaching opportunities. As of this writing, I’m in the second quarter of the school year with my new school district. While it is by no means a perfect job, I find myself being in a far more positive mind set than I was at all during the last school year. Whether it is the smaller school district environment, positive and supporting administration and staff, or a combination of them and other factors, I am usually quite happy with my job. I never understood writers who said they couldn’t write in a depressive or down condition. I usually find writing when I am emotionally not in the best space to be a very taxing situation, much like weeding a lawn.
This fan fiction work that I’ve been doing during the past two years has been rewarding emotionally, and I think I’ve learned about my writing during that process. However, I think that the momentum of that work is starting to wind down. What was doing to be just two stories has now branched into an entire series that will run well over the 500,000 word mark when it is done, I believe. That has been great, but I think I also want to develop and support my OC writing material, with the fan fiction work continuing to be an occasional side hobby. However, for the sake of being complete and not able to let go of an idea, that work will continue while I try to get on with things.
Anyway, here’s the stats. Hope we have a good writing week to come.
Writing Statistics for the week ending 10.30.2021:
+2,536 words written.
Days writing: 5 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 0 of 7 for 0 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 3 of 7 days.
I’m at the Indie Author Book Expo at Valley View Mall in West Des Moines. This is my first opportunity to do one of these fairs and my first time that I have gotten to do an in-person event.
If you’re out in Des Moines, come out and see me and the other authors out there. I’m signing copies for sale, so get them while they last lol.
A while ago, pretty shortly after I started this blog, I let readers know some of the bare-bones basics regarding some of the projects that I wanted to work on and that I was working on. I thought now might be a good time to update that, just to keep myself, much less any readers, in the loop about what’s coming down the development pipeline.
I’ve mentioned these projects before in some of my writing journals, but to keep from being too repetitive, I decided to put them all in one place as a reference. I’m not going to mention working titles or big details about plots, etc. However, I think you will get an idea of what the gist of each of the projects are below.
I also think, looking at some of the items on this list, that you’ll see that I’ve been bouncing around with several different genres and subjects. I appreciate writers who want to stick to one thing, but I enjoyed too many different styles and genres of writing to stay in one wheelhouse. I want to create and I want to spread my work to others – that’s basically my life goals regarding writing.
Also, there are the following projects that might get letter designations as well, to help keep them straight.
As part of my greater efforts to keep myself publicly accountable for my writing successes and failures, I also want to list when I am planning to get these projects done. So, feel free to cheer me on or have a laugh at me, depending on my successes and failures. Putting my goals in print makes them more real for me.
- Project A, begin querying agents and publishers: Sometime in early-mid summer 2019.
- Project B, finish major redrafting of the rough draft (more of a second rough draft rather than a more focused revision): End of summer 2019.
- Project C, finishing creating rough draft poems: End of 2019.
- Project F: None at this time, but I would like planning for the project to be well underway by the end of 2019.
- Project S: Maybe posted by the end of the month (tentative)
- Project R: None at this time
- Project W: None at this time
Finally, don’t forget my first published project, The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt. That project was years in the making and getting it out this year was a major life accomplishment for me. Get to the My Work page on this blog for all of the links if you want to find out more about it and (possibly?) buy it. But, there’s other ways you can support it, too.
Anyway, that’s what I’m working on. If you’ve got any questions or comments, leave them here and I’ll be glad to answer them.
Hi, everyone. As I mentioned during the last journal entry, I have decided to add fiction planning time to my writing journal to reflect the work I am doing to plan and research for projects. I believe that is just as legitimate work as is putting the words to the paper (or hard drive) and revising what you have. So, it makes sense to add that to the journal, although when I changed the journal to the latest format, I wasn’t doing too much planning for projects, so the numbers shouldn’t be totally off.
So with that, here’s the numbers for last week.
+1,158 words written.
Days writing: 2 of 7.
Days planning/revising: 2 of 7 for 60 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of revisions): 4 of 7 days.
As anyone who has been watching media could guess, Game Of Thrones ended last Sunday, so that’s all over but the shouting, the memes, and the memories. It’s even inspired me to try some fantasy fiction myself.
I am now officially in the summer vacation mode. After the long weekend, I’ve got two more days of in-service work to do, but honestly, working in-service days I can get done in my sleep. After that, I’ll be moving my wife into her new temporary digs and settling into the summer months running around kids and transitioning into a new thing.
Now that I have a long period of time where I will be doing little except running kids back and forth and trying to keep things ship-shape while the wife is away, I’m going to get back into the mix of writing and doing things to promote my work and this blog. Here’s a few things on the list.
Look, I have an event less than a week from now. Would you be willing to spread the word? [Obligatory plug, if you will (see below)]:
I’ll be hosting a book talk on my novel The Holy Fool at the Rock Island (Ill.) Public Library at 2 p.m. Saturday, June 1. I’m going to be there courtesy of the Midwest Writing Center, which is hosting the event.
One thing to keep in mind: My favorite English football team, Liverpool FC, is playing in the Champions’ League final at the exact same time this book talk is going to start. I may have to call off this talk early so we can all frack off to the nearest sports bar and see the results. We haven’t won the title in 14 years; I’m not going to miss that. Who knows any good sports bars on the Illinois side of the Quad Cities?
I have three writing projects I want to complete this summer (check things out here if you want more details on them.).
These are the projected deadlines for those projects:
- Project A, begin querying agents and publishers: Sometime in early-mid summer 2019.
- Project B, finish major redrafting of the rough draft (more of a second rough draft rather than a more focused revision): End of summer 2019.
- Project C, finishing creating rough draft poems: End of 2019.
I am psyched about this summer. There’s so many things to do, and so much to take care of, before I get back into the grind of school sometime in mid-August. I’m looking forward to many cool things before everything cools down.. 😀
Yeah, I basically have been taking the entire month off. It’s not quite like the old procrastination days, but it’s sort of like that.
+398 words written.
Days writing: 2 of 7.
Days revising: 2 of 7 for 60 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of revisions): 2 of 7 days.
There are occasions where I realize I’ve been working on a project for an extended period of time (in my case, three projects) and have gotten burned out trying to move them forward. It is not a permanent condition, but one where I want to take a mental break before getting back at it.
If you’ve been following me for the past few weeks, there’s been three issues that I have dealing with that I think have had a direct influence on my not writing. They are, in no particular order:
On an unrelated note, just a reminder that I’ll be hosting a book talk on my novel The Holy Fool at the Rock Island (Ill.) Public Library at 2 p.m. Saturday, June 1. I’m going to be there courtesy of the Midwest Writing Center, which is hosting the event.
In lieu of progress on my projects, since there was essentially none, I’ll just do a quick reminder of what they are.
- Project A, begin querying agents and publishers: Sometime in early-mid summer 2019.
- Project B, finish major redrafting of the rough draft (more of a second rough draft rather than a more focused revision): End of summer 2019.
- Project C, finishing creating rough draft poems: End of 2019.
I did get this written more or less on time, so there’s always that silver lining. 😀 I’ll write more later.
It appears that I have started something that might begin to approach a book tour for my book, The Holy Fool.
There’s going to be a few events that I will be hosting or at having to do with writing, and some of them having to do with my book. So, if you want to put them on your calendar and can actually go to or travel to the Eastern Iowa area, I’d love to see you there.
I’ll make sure to make an update post as time goes on and add any events that are coming up as well. I’m looking forward to all of them.
(You notice how I’ve been using photos of winter scenes? It’s snowing a lot.)
The numbers are not too much to write home about, but here they are:
+469 words written.
Days writing: 2 of 7.
Days revising: 4 of 7 for 180 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of revisions): 4 of 7 days.
Yeah, not really impressive given last few weeks. I have been making progress, but not as much as I want. Work has gotten in the way some (even with all the snow days, imagine that.) And the fact that there might be another snow day or two during this week will not help, either. Oh, well, I’ll be teaching in June anyway.
I’m just doing one post this weekend, so I’ll try to get in everything going on all at once.
(I went over all of these books here, just to get you caught up).
That’s about all I have for now. Keep reading me and everyone else, and if you are in the Midwest and getting as much snow as I am, stay safe.
Another short blog post to let people know that I have books.
Just got the delivery from my publisher this week. So, I do have physical copies of my book in paperback format. A couple are already spoken for, but some are not.
It may take a while for some of these to get out, given the polar vortex sitting over Iowa and a couple of other states, but it will happen. I’m also planning at least one giveaway through my Goodreads page.
I’ll have some word about at least one book signing coming up soon, and perhaps some other items coming up. I’ll keep you in the loop when plans are set.