Tag: Now Will be Known as Just The Writing Life

The Writing Life, 18 November 2023: A slightly retooled newsletter

[PHOTO NOTE: More shots of the Mississippi River from me because I’m in a river mood. By the way, all photo credits on these posts are from me unless I say differently.]

As I am once again on the road this weekend, this time for some family travel, I decided to put this together ahead of time. I mentioned recently I’ll be doing the official newsletters on the first and third Wednesdays of the month and have “alternative” programming on at least the second and fourth (and occasionally the fifth) weekends of the month. Here’s the full update on it if you want to see the full explanation.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s talk writing.

What I’ve Been Writing

I got back to work on The Yank Striker 2, and work is slow but steady on this. I’m getting close to finishing up a good scene in the book (one I mentioned during my last newsletter), and I’ll be scouting out my notebooks and virtual storyboards for what other scenes I absolutely need to have in the story and leave the rest out unless I’m really desperate to include them.

Right now I would be happy with just 60,000 words. Since this is going to be a series, I have the advantage of not having to worry about having to tell the entire story I want to get out in a single book1.

Also, next week I committed to doing another Poetry Night entry for the blog. I feel like I could really put together some interesting poetry, but one of my longstanding fears is I’m going to have to do a lot of thinking to produce not that many words. Well, I need to get over my prose mindset and see I can be just as productive, but in a different way2.

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

Foremost in my mind at the moment are the artwork and proofreading work for The Yank Striker 2. I have no idea at the moment how long those processes might take from first contact with a contractor, etc., to the final product3.

I do know that we are creeping up onto the holiday season starting next week.

If I know anything for sure, trying to get anything done during said season is an iffy thing. For example, if I contact someone next week, I am all but expecting there to be no serious movement on it until the beginning of the new year.

However, I get the feeling this will be something I will need to get started as early as next week, even if all it involves is doing some initial inquiries. I can’t assume anything on time tables.

Writing Advice for the Week

Again, rather than try and come up with cool pithy advice every time I do this, I’ll often comment on other writer’s advice. This week I learned of a British writer named Hilary Mantel, who won the Booker Prize twice and whom I never heard of beforehand. However, I was overjoyed to hear this bit of advice credited to her in The Guardian:

Write a book you’d like to read. If you wouldn’t read it, why would anybody else? Don’t write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book’s ready.

Hilary Mantel

My goodness, it seemed like this advice was aimed right between my eyes. I’ve gone on more than a few times about how it’s hard to classify me as an author because I haven’t gone on and made myself into a historical romance author or a dark fantasy author (and I’m interested in writing fantasy at some point. “It’s hard to define who I am as an author,” I mutter and fret.

But why waste my time over weeks and months writing something for the sake of putting out “product?” I wanted to write The Holy Fool because I wanted a story about a journalist who finally fought back for his profession, to make it better. I wanted to write The Yank Striker because I wanted a story about a great, larger than life American soccer star, and how he rose to become a star. I wanted to read those stories, so I wrote them. The more I think about it, the more I realize I want to write stories that matter to me. It’s all the motivation I need to keep going.

Writing Quote of the Week

And for this week, a quote making me hope for more words becoming visible on my pages.

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.

Vladimir Nabokov

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. Pella Books is celebrating its 24th anniversary this month, and they’ve got more than a few events to celebrate. Go ahead and check them out.
  • The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

All three are great independent bookstores who deserve your support.

Final Thoughts

That’s it for right now. We’ll have some poetry for sure next weekend, and maybe one or two other surprises as well, likely not in the same post. Anyway, take care, everyone.

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While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

Subscribe to my Substack here.
  1. I have the feeling this section of the newsletter will usually be bigger on the first weekend of the month rather than the third just because it will cover a longer period of time. Well, we’ll just have to see. ↩︎
  2. Man, I get the feeling this is going to be really short. Well, the next one will be longer next month, I promise. ↩︎
  3. If anyone has a good idea of those timelines, feel free to leave a comment or email me about it. And if you happen to do cover art for books or proofreading, definitely hit me up in the comments or by email. ↩︎

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Schedule for the Blog:

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

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

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

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While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

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