[AUTHOR’s NOTE ON THE PHOTO: I’ll actually make it to this event by 4:30 p.m. on the fifth of September, but everything else is spot on.]
For those unfamiliar with my blog, I post my regular newsletter on the first and third Saturday of the month, a night of fiction or nonfiction writing/essays/writing advice on the second Saturday (Prose Night at the Writing Life), and original poetry on the fourth Saturday (Poetry Night at the Writing Life).
On the rare months I have a fifth Saturday in a month, I have typically posted some sort of bonus article, fiction, or other piece. However, since:
It’s Labor Day weekend and I didn’t want to think too hard about a post, and
I’ve got a couple things to promote,
I thus decided to make this a low key promotional post. If you have no interest in such things, feel free to take a pass this week. However, if you’re interested in attending one of the few events I have coming up this fall, you’ll find information here. And if you wanted to read a journalistic thriller championing the true free press, or a soccer drama featuring a budding American superstar (the first in a series), then I’ve got a couple books you might be interested in reading. Shall we?
Upcoming Appearances
From 4:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday, 5 September, I’ll be out at Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St, Burlington, Iowa. I’ll have some copies of my books The Yank Striker and The Holy Fool available for purchase and/or signing as part of the farmer’s market event there. (Keep reading for more information about those books.) It’ll be my first appearance here and I’m really looking forward to it.
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.
Finally, 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.
Hope to see you around.
What Books Have I Written and What are They About?
I consider myself to be a writer of fiction about subcultures, subcultures contained around unique professions I have an interest in, such as journalism, soccer, and (recently) pro wrestling. It would be cool if I could market myself as the newest voice in dark academia fiction or Civil War era romance fiction, but alas, my interests are varied and not easily classifiable. While I might not find massive fame and fortune with my writing, I’ve determined if I’m going to spend night after night writing stories, they might as well be stories that entertain me, because what’s the point otherwise?
After years of working in print journalism and thinking about what a story about a declining big city newspaper and one journalist’s efforts to save his paper alongside his colleagues, The Holy Fool came into being. I go into great detail about its creation, what the book’s all about, and where you can buy 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.
A couple years later, my decades-long obsession with the sport of soccer and its culture got me thinking what a story about an aspiring American soccer star might be like. This produced the book The Yank Striker. I go into great detail about its creation, what the book’s all about, and where you can buy it, here.
You can hear the interview John Buzbee, host of The Culture Buzz radio show in Des Moines, did with me regarding The Yank Striker here.
Also…
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, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if anyone has a suggestion.
That’s it for the promotions for now. I’ll be back with the newsletter next Saturday and I’ll lay off the promos then. 🙂
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.
Hello, and happy Veterans Day AKA Remembrance Day AKA Armistice Day.
Normally, this is the part where I say “Let’s talk about writing.” Today, I want to talk about… blogging, newsletters, whatever you want to call it. This place.
I have to admit, I had not really much of an idea on how this place was going to work. I certainly didn’t know all of the ins and outs of the platform, and I spent a long summer staring at the Substack FAQ and help pages trying to game out every possible scenario and the best way to publish what I’ve been doing on Substack. Eventually, however, I realized I could just wait forever for perfection or jump right in to the rough draft. So, I decided on the latter course of action.
In a later post, I decided to lay out my mission statement, as modest as it was for this blog, as so:
I have begged and pleaded for the students I have taught for the past several years to consider when it comes to writing, there is no such thing as “getting it right the first time.” This is something slightly traumatic for these students, considering getting it right the first time is the goal of pretty much most every other form of academic activity they have to accomplish. However, the first draft of anything you write is never going to be anything than the least you can accomplish, because it is always in the rewriting and editing process where you as a writer truly craft your work. Most kids want to get the words on the paper or electronic page and call it good1. This, however, doesn’t lead to effective writing.
I’ve had to come to the conclusion being a blogger is something akin to publishing the rough draft of your work and then revising and editing it in front of a live audience, especially since nobody knows how to do this when they get started. That’s a bit unnerving for me when it comes down to it, because I’d like to think I’ve got my ego in check enough to be willing to listen to criticism over what I do and react to it, I usually don’t have to revise and edit my work for a live audience. In a sense, however, this is what happens when you are an online blogger.
So, I’ve decided it is time for a bit of revising, in the open, so to speak.
For the past several months, I’ve been posting a weekly newsletter entitled A Week in the Writing Life. I’ve used this weekly post to update readers on what I have been working on, upcoming projects, writing problems I’ve struggled with, as well as some writing advice, some shout-outs, and other odds and ends. It’s been fun, and I’ve enjoyed putting them together.
However, I’ve noticed these posts becoming a bit… repetitive, I think. Even though I want to post weekly, I have the feeling just doing the newletter every week is too much. On the other hand, I still want to be posting regularly, even on a weekly basis, and I want to do it on a consistent schedule as well.
Consider this to be the second draft of The Writing Life With Jason Liegois.
This will be my schedule for the forseeable future, which I will begin next week. It might take a bit to get used to, but I’m going to try and lay it out here.
The Schedule for the Blog:
On the first and third weekend of the month2, I will be doing the “regular” newsletter – that is, the newsletter I’ve entitled A Week in the Writing Life, which I just broadly described above. To reflect its now bi-monthly appearance, I will titles those posts simply The Writing Life, [Instert date here]. These will be more or less similar to the newsletter I’ve been producing for the past several months. My hope is with it coming on a bi-monthly rather than a weekly basis, I’ll be able to take more time on it and have more material when the time comes to publish it.
On the second weekend of the month, I’ll be publishing what I’m tentatively going to call my Writing Grab Bag3. It might be pretty much anything I decide – maybe some rough draft excerpts from some fiction works-in progress, maybe a special essay or two on a particular writing topic. Heck, maybe I decide to restart this series entitled A Writer’s Biography, where I take a look back at my life from childhood to nowadays to see how my life experiences shaped me as a person an as a writer. It’ll be interesting to see what I can put together on a regular basis.
I’m really leaning toward making the fourth weekend of the month be my monthly Poetry Night in the Writing Life. That’s where I put out some of my older or newer poetry for your interest. As I want to put together a collection of my poetry in the near future and perhaps submit them for publication, I’m hoping this might kick my butt into gear and produce more of it. I’m interested in experimenting with the art form.
And if there happens to be a fifth weekend of the month, well… maybe I put together a third newsletter for the week. Maybe you’ll read another sneak peak at some fiction excerpts or poetry I’m working on. Or maybe I decide to take the entire weekend off. Don’t worry though – if that happens, I’ll give you fair warning on Substack Notes or whatever.
As for the rest of the blog on Substack, I recently set all of my stories to go into the archives after about six months. I’m not sure whether that might tempt a few more people to pay subscribe to me, but we’ll see. If I do stick with this plan, I’m more likely to release the vast majority of my posts for free at first. I’ll take a look and see if I see any changes. So for now, you might want to catch a few examples of my original fiction before they get archived in the next couple of months. I think they’re good reads.
So once again, the writing process continues here at The Writing Life With Jason Liegois. It may take me more than a few drafts to get this right, but I’m cool with it. I can be patient when it comes to revisions.
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While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.
We’re deep into October, or as I like to call it, one of only two months out of the year Iowa has near perfect weather. How about we talk writing and other stuff?
What I’ve Been Writing
I’m very deep into putting together The Yank Striker 2 (working title), and that’s been pretty much all I’ve been writing this week other than this site. I feel like I’ve been making good progress on the big section I’ve been on and I’m in the process of finalizing what the bare bones structure of the book should be.
I’ve probably mentioned it before in this space, but my way of planning out the plot of my books is to string together what I call essential scenes. These are the scenes I absolutely have to have in the book to tell the story I want. Usually, I take a look at these scenes or notes on these scenes throughout the writing process and ask myself “are all of these scenes absolutely necessary?” As I am often writing these scenes not in chronological order, but in order of importance, this doesn’t result necessarily in me cutting scenes after I write them1.
It also helps streamline the revision process, for sure. I still remember having to cut down my first 150,000-word rough draft of The Holy Fool down to under 100,000, and it was a tough lift. When I used this process for The Yank Striker, it really cut down on the extraneous scenes and material in my work.
One of the paradoxes I’m running into, however, is this: the more I concentrate on the project, the slower the writing is coming for me. I continue to write on a daily basis, but my word count is not as high as it has been in previous days when I was writing more than just a couple projects.
In discussing the situation with my Des Moines writing group (the Iowa Writers’ Corner), they brought up the idea I have to spend time putting greater thought into how the story is going to go and proceed. Just because the words are not filling the paper or electronic page doesn’t mean I’m not participating in the writing process.
I would have to agree with this, now I’ve had a chance to consider this idea. It’s like I know all of the battles that are to come in a military campaign, but I haven’t exactly worked out how those battles are going to be fought. I’ve always worked on improving my word count to ensure I remain a productive writer and not just sitting around and claiming to be a writer. However, I need to keep in mind word count is not the only measure of productivity.
What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing
I’m in the middle of reading projects for at least three people currently. Two of these I’m planning on doing book reviews for, and the other will be beta reader feedback.
Even being a fast reader like myself, this can be a long process even not taking the time of writing the reviews into account. However, I don’t want to let these projects sit on the back burners for too long.
As for the book reviews, I’m planning on posting those on Goodreads. My profile page is here for those curious, but I will also post those reviews here for you to read as well. I’m looking forward to you hearing about those projects, so stay tuned in a week or so.
Writing Advice for the Week
This week, it’s time to talk about the fifth of George Orwell’s six rules of writing. Orwell, the author of 1984 and Animal Farm, is a longtime idol for me. During the past several weeks, I’ve been reviewing this well-known set of rules he laid down in an essay called “Politics and the English Language.” The entire essay is worth a read.
So, number five on the list is:
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Orwell did title his essay “Politics and the English Language,” but this can obviously be applied to whatever language you happen to be writing in2. Since you have to assume in most circumstances you are writing for a general audience, why use words you have to take time to explain to them? Especially if using such a term isn’t necessary for the task at hand, whether fiction or nonfiction.
As always, there are exceptions to this rule. One example I recently faced in a short story I posted to the site was when I used the term “kayfabe.” Unless you happen to be a professional wrestling fan, you are likely not familiar with this term. However, I used it in the story because I wanted to take time to explain the concept to the audience through a conversation my main character had. I wanted to do this so the audience understood the term and had an appreciation for how important the concept was in pro wrestling. As with Orwell’s and all writing rules, there are always exceptions.
Writing Quote(s) of the Week
Unlike George R.R. Martin, I’d have to say I’m more of an architect. In my opinion, the best writing techniques are whatever ones get results.
I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they’re going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there’s going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don’t know how many branches it’s going to have, they find out as it grows. And I’m much more a gardener than an architect.
George R.R. Martin
Where I’ll Be and Where You Can Find my Books
Currently, I have one book event on my calendar. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, I will be at the Elwell Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds as part of the 8th Annual Indie Author Book Expo. If something else comes up, I’ll let you know.
I’ve got links to my books in paperback and ebook format in the sidebar here, but you can get them in person at these fine Iowa bookstores:
Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave # S1, Des Moines
Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella
The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.
All three are great independent bookstores who deserve your support.
Final Thoughts
Well, I’m spending the rest of the day with my wife watching the Iowa Hawkeyes play football. Hope the week to come goes well for you all.
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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.
Finally, there’s some proper fall weather around southern central Iowa. I attended the homecoming game for my school district and ended up needing not only a coat but knit hat and gloves as well by the end of things. Wearing my full winter parka might have not been a poor decision either. And this weekend is sweatshirt and shorts weather. I’m hoping this past week will be the last time we see 80 degree weather in Iowa for the remainder of 2023.
Not much else is going on for me, but my son Jacob is in the final steps of earning his heating and air conditioning (HVAC) journeyman certification, and my daughter Madeline, currently in her senior year of Chemical Engineering study at University of Iowa, has begun interviewing for jobs for after graduation. I’m looking forward to their further adventures.
What I’ve Been Writing
The situation on the writing front is much the same as it was last week. I have been dabbling with a little fanfiction, but not to the extent I am not working on other items.
In fact, although I haven’t done much of a review of my writing numbers for the past year, I do get the feeling I have been dedicating my writing time more to my fully original projects like The Yank Striker 2 and this page rather than fan fiction. I do think fanfiction, as I have mentioned previously here, is a valid form of artistic expression, but I want to concentrate on getting the sequel done as soon as possible. I am doing well on the writing goals I set for myself this year, but I’ll wait until 2023 is done before talking about totals here.
This may seem counterintuitive, but next year I might consider not even setting a word count goal for the year. In some ways, I want to make sure I’m writing so much and that I’m being productive I worry I’m not dedicating enough time to getting TYS2 project done. Sometimes that doesn’t happen without thought, planning, and pondering, and it is not always a word-intensive process. In considering the situation, it’s very likely I’ll be spending a good portion of 2024, if I am serious about trying for a June 2024 release as I’ve toyed with, in revising mode.
What I’ve Been Writing
The situation on the writing front is much the same as it was last week. I have been dabbling with a little fanfiction, but not to the extent I am not working on other items.
In fact, although I haven’t done much of a review of my writing numbers for the past year, I do get the feeling I have been dedicating my writing time more to my fully original projects like The Yank Striker 2 and this page rather than fan fiction. I do think fanfiction, as I have mentioned previously here, is a valid form of artistic expression, but I want to concentrate on getting the sequel done as soon as possible. I am doing well on the writing goals I set for myself this year, but I’ll wait until 2023 is done before talking about totals here.
This may seem counterintuitive, but next year I might consider not even setting a word count goal for the year. In some ways, I want to make sure I’m writing so much and that I’m being productive I worry I’m not dedicating enough time to getting TYS2 project done. Sometimes that doesn’t happen without thought, planning, and pondering, and it is not always a word-intensive process. In considering the situation, it’s very likely I’ll be spending a good portion of 2024, if I am serious about trying for a June 2024 release as I’ve toyed with, in revising mode.
Writing Quote(s) of the Week
I’ll go with two this week that seem to speak to me.
Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.
Ray Bradbury
So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Where I’ll Be and Where You Can Find my Books
Now that we’re deep into fall, we are getting into what I understand to be the last phases of the book fair season before it slows down in winter.
So, here we go:
From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 14, at MERGE, 136 Dubuque St., Iowa City, as part of the Iowa City Book Festival that week, a week-long festival throughout Iowa City from Oct. 8-15. I’ve always been proud of my former school, the University of Iowa, cultivating a worldwide reputation as a supporter of literature, and the community of Iowa City also plays its part.
And from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, I will be at the Elwell Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds as part of the 8th Annual Indie Author Book Expo. It will be the first time I’ve spent any time at the Iowa State Fairgrounds after more than 40 years of living in Iowa.
I’ve got links to my books in paperback and ebook format in the sidebar here, but you can get them in person at these fine Iowa bookstores:
Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave # S1, Des Moines
Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella
The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.
All three are great independent bookstores who deserve your support.
Final Thoughts
As time goes on, I’m hoping this newsletter doesn’t become too repetitive. Please feel free to email me or talk to me in the comments about what’s working and what’s not.
Since I have something of a long weekend this weekend, I’m somewhat hopeful I might be able to get started on some new paid subscriber exclusive posts. Right now, I’m leaning toward some possible excerpts from TYS2. We’ll have to see.
Take care, everyone.
– 30 –
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.
[PHOTO NOTE: Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1999. Photo courtesy of FEMA.]
Had to get this newsletter finished early this week since I’m going to be occupied on Friday and on the road for most of Saturday going back and forth from Cedar Rapids. You might have heard about it, although if this is the first time, you’ll probably be too late to get there. I highly doubt the place will be as flooded as you see here, given the recent weather.
Anyway, let’s talk writing and a few other things.
Home Front Stuff
Not much going on at home at the moment. My wife had a bumper crop of vegetables this year, especially squash, which I think received some help from the considerable sunlight and heat we got this summer. Hope the lack of water and the abundance of heat didn’t damage the big crops around here. At least we in Lucas County, Iowa, got a brief splash of rain on Tuesday which was more than overdue, and the temperatures are down at least ten degrees under what they were last weekend, which I’m grateful for.
I seem to write a little better when it gets cooler. It’s always a bit more comfortable to write when you’re huddled up in sweatshirts and a warm drink rather than sweating to death. Maybe that’s just all a result of my Scandinavian and Wisconsinite heritage rather than anything else. My current home of Chariton is just above the 41° North Latitude, and I have no desire to live anywhere south of 40°1.
What I’ve Been Writing
The longer I do this, I continue to learn more about the writing process. I have the sneaking suspicion the moment that I start to really know something a lot about the craft is the time I start reaching the end of my life. Well, I’ll worry about it later.
I’m starting to not only adjust to writing at a faster pace, but now I’m starting to consider exactly what I write on what days. I’ve recently run into difficulties during the past few weeks with promising to get newsletters done by midday Saturday and ending up getting them out Sunday night.
It occurred to me I have to prioritize what I have to write according to their deadlines. For example, yes I would like to get some writing done on my rough draft for The Yank Striker 2, but that is not as time sensitive as my writing for, say, the newsletter. This is especially the case if I want it to run at noon on Saturday and I want to make sure it is actually on time for once. It’s especially the case if I know I’ll be busy on Friday evening and I’ll be on the road for the vast majority of Saturday, and that I’ll only up for a quick write up by the end of the day. So, I get a good portion of the newsletter done earlier and serve it up on the scheduler for Saturday.
One of the disadvantages of this technique might be that you find yourself staring at a piece you know you want to write but there is something holding you back. Maybe you’re blocked, or maybe you’d rather write the “fun” stuff rather than the “work” stuff. I had a long discussion about the concept several months back, if you’d be interested in taking a look.
However, there should be a way around it. For example, there is something I wanted to include in the newsletter, but I realized it might do better as a standalone piece. If you have a new topic to work on that is timely, it can have the same sort of effect as just a fun writing piece.
We’ll have to see whether this works, but I think I’m going to give it a shot this week. The proof of whether it works will be whether this shows up on time at midday on Saturday. The other piece I’ll produce will be available for everyone, but I’ll work to put together a paid subscriber exclusive for next week.
Also, let’s consider this section doing double duty this week as your writing advice for the week. Welcome to my TED talk.
What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations
I’ve finally been getting online to check out all of these writers and trying to give them shout-outs, because there’s so much good writing. Don’t consider this a case of sucking up, but Hanne Winarsky, the head of writer A&D at Substack, put together this interesting analysis of podcasts having a different feel on this platform rather than on others.
I have to say I’m slightly intimidated by trying to start a podcast on Substack itself. I’ve been experimenting a bit on Anchor but it can take a lot of effort to put together a professional sounding podcast episode. I also find it a bit awkward Substack doesn’t have audio-editing capabilities on its platform like Spotify does. I’ll have to consider it, but I’m more busy writing online than talking online.
Where I’ll Be and Where You Can Find my Books
Here’s my upcoming appearances:
From 12-6 p.m. Oct 1, I’ll be at the Windsor Heights Book Fair, 1141 69th St., Windsor Heights.
From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 14, at MERGE, 136 Dubuque St., Iowa City, as part of the Iowa City Book Festival that week.
And from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, I will be at the Elwell Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds as part of the 8th Annual Indie Author Book Expo.
The Holy Fool and The Yank Striker are available in paperback and ebook formats. The links for those books are on the sidebar here and in my author’s profile.
They’re also available at these 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 highly recommend all three places.
Writing Quote of the Week
I’m not sure my readers need to know too much about me. 🙂
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
Final Thoughts
I always love hearing from people in the comments or by email, so say hi or let me know what made you push the subscribe button or what might tempt you to do so.
– 30 –
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.
[PHOTO NOTE: What I got when I searched Pexels for “Labor Day”.]
Let’s talk about writing and a few other odds and ends.
Home Front Stuff
Well, it was pretty decent weather we had this week, comparatively, but it’s going to get into the nineties today and won’t cool down until next weekend, at least. And I think we’re not going to be getting any rain for the foreseeable future. You wonder about how all this wild weather is going to eventually have an effect on the crops in Iowa.
Labor Day weekend in Iowa has seen my wife and I watching the Iowa Hawkeyes starting their season at home, but we were happy to watch it on the television. We don’t want to sweat to death when the weather will be in the nineties, and those benches at Kinnick Stadium are actually pretty narrow.
Getting on with the writing portion of our program, however, I decided to tackle something I haven’t really touched on as of yet.
What I’ve Been Writing
Not to talk numbers here, but I think I’ve seen something of an improvement over this past week. I usually try to meet a quota of 500 words per day of fiction or nonfiction written totally out of the context of my working life1.
I feel confident I have been at least a little more active on The Yank Striker 2, especially beginning to fill out a scene that happens to be [SLIGHT SPOILER TO The Yank Striker] young DJ Ryan’s debut match with Donford FC. Once I actually properly revise that scene, I think it’s going to be a funny highlight of the book, once I actually give it a good revising.
I’m hopeful I can put together a rough draft of The Yank Striker 2 by the end of this year or the early part of next year. With some sufficient revising and editing, and keeping ambitious for deadlines, I would love for a release date on this project sometime just before June 2024.
This would be the most ambitious completion timeline for any of my novels to date. I was probably writing out the first notes for The Holy Fool back in 2010, but it did not head out for publication until 2019. And I was seriously thinking about how I would put together a fiction book based in the worlds of American college football and English soccer a good decade before The Yank Striker was published this year. So, completing a book in a signle year is a bit ambitious. However, I do know my productivity as a writer has increased considerably since the days when I first started writing those books. In addition, since this is the second book in a series, much of the leg work for the book already has been completed.
I also think I need to review my outline notes to the book. I want to make sure I just add the essential scenes to the story and leave out pretty much everything else. I get the feeling if I do this, I might wind up with a shorter book than what I anticipated. However, that’s not the worst thing. I have the feeling a book set during the course of a soccer season might get repetitive if I showed everything I could show.
Also, I’ve been reading The Barcelona Complex, a 2021 book by Simon Kuper. It’s a study of the history and culture of FC Barcelona, the former club of Lionel Messi and many others. I’m glad I’ve had the chance to read it as part of the continuing research I’m doingh for the The Yank Striker series. You will see a full book review of the book tomorrow here on Substack and on Liegois Media.
Where I’ll Be and Where You Can Find my Books
Here’s my upcoming appearances:
From 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 9, I’ll be at the Groundswell Cafe, 201 3rd Ave. SW, Cedar Rapids, for an Indie Author Book Expo.
From 12-6 p.m. Oct 1, I’ll be at the Windsor Heights Book Fair, 1141 69th St., Windsor Heights. It’ll be my first time at this event, so I’m looking forward to it.
From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 14, at MERGE, 136 Dubuque St., Iowa City, I’ll be participating in the book fair as part of the Iowa City Book Festival that week.
And from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, I will be at the Elwell Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds as part of the 8th Annual Indie Author Book Expo.
The Holy Fool and The Yank Striker are available in paperback and ebook formats. The links for those books are on the sidebar here and in my author’s profile.
If you want to go into a bookstore in Iowa and pick up one of my novels, you can go to:
Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave # S1, Des Moines
Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella
The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.
All of the above are fantastic locations for an afternoon of book hunting.
Writing Advice for the Week
For this week, maybe just check out the section on What I’m Writing, especially the bit about how I’m concentrating on just a few essential scenes in the story for the rough draft. This prevents you from having a bloated rough draft, helps propel your story forward, and if you need to add some additional scenes, you can always include these during the revising process. I’m going to be honest, though, a lot of those scenes really aren’t necessary.
What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations
I might make some further recommendations during Labor Day on Substack Notes if I can think of it heh heh.
For now, check out this article from Jackie Dana, one of the first people I ran into when I got onto Substack, where she has a good suggestion for fighting writing burnout2.
Writing Quote of the Week
This rings true for me.
Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?
Cornelia Funke
Final Thoughts
Sorry I was late again. I’m going to start writing the next edition, like, tomorrow, on top of everything else.
I have a shout-out to Georgia from Substack tech support who helped me figure out exactly why my photos weren’t showing up on social media posts. It was a weird problem I had for about a month until the support people finally clued me in to what was happening, so thanks to her.
Hope you have a great Labor Day weekend. I always love hearing from people in the comments or by email, so say hi or let me know what made you push the subscribe button or what might tempt you to do so.
– 30 –
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.
Don’t know about you, but it’s felt like August just flew by, even though the weather is not even close to being fall-like.
I’ll warn you, today’s going to be a short one with my schedule this week1.
Home Front Stuff
I’ve now begun the school year in my district with more students than I’ve ever had on a special education roster. However, I’m pretty optimistic about this year and how it will go. I have to say the first three days with students went well.
My son Jacob in Des Moines is continuing with his studies toward his journeyman card for heating and air-conditioning (HVAC) when not working, and my daughter Madeline is now settled into her new apartment in Iowa City and starting her senior year of chemical engineering studies at the University of Iowa.
As busy as I have been with school, however, fall can’t come soon enough. I’m glad the Premier League and the other European soccer leagues have started and the day I see the back of 100 degree-plus and even 80 degree plus days in Iowa can’t come soon enough.
What I’ve Been Writing
As far as the amount of words I’ve been writing this week, I don’t think it’s been much more than last week, and I’m officially in a slight slump. However, I’ve finally resumed work and actual writing on The Yank Striker Part 2 and powering through a key scene in the story. So, I feel good I’ve seen progress.
Over the weekend, I picked up a copy of The Barcelona Complex, a 2021 book by Simon Kuper. He was one of the authors of Soccernomics, the soccer equivalent of Moneyball and a very useful breakdown regarding the world of soccer. The Barcelona Complex is a study of the history and culture of FC Barcelona, fomer club of Lionel Messi and many other soccer superstars. I’m considering it to be a continuing part of the research I’ve done into the sport for the past decade with the eventual intention of starting The Yank Striker series.
In my continuing efforts to put some interesting content on this site, I’ve decided to do a book review of The Barcelona Complex right here next weekend. And it will be a free story, as well2. Hope you enjoy it.
What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing
This section of the newsletter might come and go, given my ever-changing schedule. With that in mind, I’ve decided to move my little book promo stuff into its own section below.
I am going to take a look at some of my older items here that I imported from my Liegois Media site and see if some of it might be worth a repost, even in revised form. I’m not too worried about you seeing it again because frankly most of you on Substack probably haven’t seen it yet.
Where I’ll Be and Where You Can Find my Books
The Fall 2023 book tour continues:
From 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 9, I’ll be at the Groundswell Cafe, 201 3rd Ave. SW, Cedar Rapids, for an Indie Author Book Expo.
From 12-6 p.m. Oct 1, I’ll be at the Windsor Heights Book Fair, 1141 69th St., Windsor Heights. It’ll be my first time at this event, so I’m looking forward to it.
From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 14, at MERGE, 136 Dubuque St., Iowa City, I’ll be participating in the book fair as part of the Iowa City Book Festival that week.
And from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, I will be at the Elwell Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds as part of the 8th Annual Indie Author Book Expo.
Unfortunately, due to a change in my schedule, I won’t be able to attend the Badger Book Fair book fair at the town’s library in Badger, Iowa, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. September 16. I would urge anyone available that day to go on out there and meet some of the authors. Several of my writing friends from Iowa, including Darrel Day, Maggie Rivers, and Dennis Maulsby, will be there with their books. It was a great experience participating in the fair earlier this year, and I hope to be back there sometime soon.
Both of my books, The Holy Fool and The Yank Striker, are available in paperback and ebook formats. Check out the links for those books on the sidebar here and in my author’s profile. Any purchases (and reviews) are absolutely appreciated.
If you want to go into a bookstore in Iowa and pick up one of my novels, you can go to:
Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave # S1, Des Moines
Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella
The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.
All of the above are fantastic locations for an afternoon of book hunting.
Writing Advice for the Week
This week I decided to hold off on commenting on other writing advice to discuss something I’ve had to deal with a bit recently. In short, that advice is:
Don’t worry about the rough draft being any good.
This is coming from someone who even has a tendency to want to edit and proofread what I write on online forums. It’s good as a writer to be concerned about the quality of what you produce.
However, that drive for perfection can (and has for me) paralyze a writer. I’ve been in situations where I’m so worried about whether something I’ve written is good or makes sense it freezes me in place.
There are places for perfection and excellence. Rough drafts are not one of them. The purpose of rough drafts are to throw your ideas and words onto printed or electronic pages as fast as possible. All of this striving for excellence needs to be saved for revisions and editing. As Sylvester Stallone has said3, the revisions are the fun part. Just throw those ideas and words on the page, and quit worrying about whether or not they’re in the right order or if they make sense. I don’t care if you have to write a series of paragraphs repeating the sentence “I’ll figure out exactly what’s going on in this part of the story at a given moment4.” Just get it done.
What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations
I’ll likely have to post more suggestions on Notes later because I haven’t had time for it this weekend.
For now, I’d like to recognize one of the members of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, Mary Swander , who is celebrating her anniversary on Substack. She’s got a cool Substack where she writes about what life in rural Iowa is like.
Writing Quote of the Week
This is a good illustration of the saying “show, don’t tell.”
You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying in the road.
Richard Price
Final Thoughts
Sorry this was a little later than I expected. I’m going to really try and get this thing out on Saturday once again later this week.
Free subscriptions to my newsletter are welcome and paid subscriptions are triply so. Email me or let me know in the comments what made you push the subscribe button or what might tempt you to do so.
– 30 –
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.
And a bit later in the day than I expected either. (Insert shrugging emoji.) ↩︎
It doesn’t make too much sense to fully monetize book reviews with all of them out there. ↩︎
I consider Stallone to be an underrated screenwriter. ↩︎
The last four words in this sentence were a favored saying of the Dutch soccer player and coach Johan Cruyff (1947-2016) back when he was coach of FC Barcelona in Spain. Cruyff would say the phrase in Spanish (en un momento dado) to stall when he wasn’t quite sure what to say in Spanish. ↩︎
I’m in the middle of in-service days for school, which means I am once again attempting to find time to write. Obviously, I don’t have as much time to write when I’m in school for several hours every day. Then again, there have been more than a few times I’ve seriously considered whether I write better on tight deadlines or with a small amount of time to work.
It’ll be interesting to see if I’m more productive during the next few weeks or not heheh, I got way too lackadaisical.
And on that note…
What I’ve Been Writing
Again, not much.
I have to keep this in perspective, however. In my younger years – that is, from my college years to about a decade and a half ago – I might go years without having written anything of value. Or, if I did, there wasn’t much size to the writing. It wasn’t until about the end of this period, when I first started developing what became The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt, did I start to try and mold myself into an actual writer rather than just simply claim to be a writer.
Since I’ve begun this learning process, and especially since I started blogging regularly on WordPress (Liegois Media) starting in 2017 and keeping consistent records of my writing productivity, I’ve not gone for more than a few days in a row without writing. In fact, 2022 was my most productive year ever writing from a word-count perspective, and this year might at least match or equal it, my current dry streak notwithstanding.
I think the point is, I’m very glad I take being a productive writer seriously. I’m glad I’m constantly attempting to better myself, and I devote more time to the craft than I do almost any other hobby I have (although my wife Laura might say watching soccer is right up there as far as the time I spend doing it).
However, I think there are times where you have to take a bit of a brain break, especially if you have something going on like getting ready for a brand new school year and hoping it goes well. Just don’t let it go on for a couple of years, trust me1.
One bit of good news is I managed to get more of a scene written on The Yank Striker 2. Now, if I actually finish that scene in the next week, I’ll be feeling really accomplished.
What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing
As the summer is ending, I’m setting aside a few weekends for appearances at local book fairs and other events, and I’m hoping the weather is much cooler than it is out today. So far, here’s the events I’ve got planned2.
From 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 9, I’ll be at the Groundswell Cafe, 201 3rd Ave. SW, Cedar Rapids, for an Indie Author Book Expo.
(JUST ADDED) From 12-6 p.m. Oct 1, I’ll be at the Windsor Heights Book Fair, 1141 69th St., Windsor Heights. It’ll be my first time at this event, so I’m looking forward to it.
From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 14, at MERGE, 136 Dubuque St., Iowa City, I’ll be participating in the book fair as part of the Iowa City Book Festival that week.
And from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, I will be at the Elwell Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds as part of the 8th Annual Indie Author Book Expo.
By the way, both of my books, The Holy Fool and The Yank Striker, are now available in paperback and ebook formats. Check out the links for those books on the sidebar here and in my author’s profile. Any purchases (and reviews) are absolutely appreciated.
If you actually want to go into a bookstore in Iowa and pick up one of my novels, there’s a few places to do so in Iowa. They include:
Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave # S1, Des Moines
Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella
The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.
All of the above are fantastic locations for an afternoon of book hunting.
What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations
If you got a text or email from me last week, I didn’t mean to clutter up your inboxes or DMs. I just found out there was a new way of spreading the word about my Substack, so I decided to take advantage of it.
Writing Quote of the Week
I talked a little bit about using commonly understood words, and here’s Uncle Steve with an interesting measurement regarding when a word is too obscure to use. (I say one exception to this idea is if the word in question can help tell a story in a way no other one can.)
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
Stephen King
Final Thoughts
That is all for now. I was going to have a bit more, but there’s one or two items I think I’m going to post separately tonight not to bog the newsletter down too much. Let’s see if I can surprise a couple people.
As always, a free subscription to my newsletter is helpful, but a paid subscription would be a big help, of course. If there’s something I could provide here in this writing newsletter to get you to hit the subscribe button, I’d love to know about it.
– 30 –
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.
Even though I held off on the writing advice section this week, I have to admit this section is sort of turning into writing advice lite in some ways. 🙂 ↩︎
Looking at all of this below reminds me I need to get all these dates in my Google Calendar. ↩︎
Hi, everyone. With the beginning of the Iowa State Fair and high school and college football practices, everyone in Iowa is sensing the end of the summer season is upon us. And I’ll be back to the hustle of another 180 or so days in school with students. And despite all that, I’m still planning on making time for writing.
A Quick Request (EDIT: Haha)
I want to make sure what I am writing here has relevance to all of you who have taken the chance on subscribing to me. I want to believe I’m providing value to all my readers, whether you are a free or a paid subscriber.
I am absolutely open to new ideas and ways to expand and improve this newsletter. I think I’m trying to make it unique and something reflecting my personality. However, I’m also wanting it to be useful to you, something that you can get something out of it.
My vision is to provide something to those who are interested in the craft of writing and who might be interested in someone from Iowa who is practicing the art of fiction. I want to share my fiction with you, as well as any nonfiction writing related to this. I would like to promote this work here, whether it involves my novels or original short fiction here, although I don’t just want to turn this into a tiresome promotional vehicle, either.
With my Substack and its older sister website on WordPress, I have been working to try and come up with a unique site people could get something from. On my first full-blown post on my WordPress blog Liegois Media several years ago, I declared I wanted my blog to be centered on “writing, my work, and the writing craft.” I think I simplified it later to “writing and the writing life.” Specifically, my writing life, because I wanted to share that journey here and also hope to use what I’ve experienced and learned during my time as a writer. Frankly, however, I’ve also used this site as my own tool to help process what I’ve done as a writer, what I’ve struggled with, to try and see how I can overcome it. If I tried to teach any visitors to this site something about writing, I hope my primary student has been myself.
All that said, I want to keep moving forward and refining this newsletter, and trying to give readers a better idea of what I mean by writing and the writing life. In all honesty, I have been reading many different writers, especially on Substack, and have been blown away by what they have produced.
I think what I plan on doing over at least the next few newsletters I’ll be trying to continue reexamining what the specific voice and purpose of the blog is. However, I also want to get feedback from you. What are you getting out of this newsletter? As someone interested in writing, what would you like to see more of here you are not seeing? What am I doing pretty well?
I’m going to drop the first two polls I’ve posted on here to see if I get any feedback on it. Go ahead and respond to it, or leave a comment below, or email me at jasonliegois@liegois.media. I do want to hear from you soon, however. Otherwise, I’m going to start emailing subscribers individually and get their feedback1.
Home Front Stuff
I had a relaxing couple of days back in my hometown of Muscatine, Iowa. I always appreciate the chance to spend time with my parents, especially since the school year is coming up.
Mississippi River near Muscatine, Iowa, 11 August 2023.
One of the things I have missed most about living in Chariton, Iowa, is not living next to the Mississippi River. I have lived alongside this river for forty-two years of my life and I have to say it is part of who I am. Some of the most peaceful times of my life have been on summers where I’d accompany some family out on a boat to some of the sandbars or islands in the river channel like you see above and spend a whole afternoon watching and feeling the waters ramble downstream2.
Muscatine, Iowa, 10 August 2023.
When I was a kid back in Muscatine, I lived in an area of the town where they had a number of steep, wooded ravines and little creeks emptying out in the Mississippi basin. When we first arrived in town back in the late 1970’s, the area wasn’t totally built up, but over the years more plots of land ended up with houses on them. However, those same neighborhoods were dotted with these ravines that couldn’t be developed and built onto. I always treasured having these areas near my home, these little patches of wild space preserved for the living things.
I might be able to get a few poems out of the subject of ravines.
What I’ve Been Writing
I’ve been getting some writing done on the site and in some of this fan fiction, but I have not been getting enough done with The Yank Striker 2, in all fairness.
Have you ever had a situation where you’ve gone back to a scene multiple times over the course of several weeks or longer, then look back on it after a certain point and realize you’ve spent way too long on a certain scene? By this, I don’t mean you have spent too much time writing the scene, but the scene has gone on for far too long.
The scene I’m writing happens to be a debut soccer match, so I have to include the scene in there. However, I’ve realized I’ve spent far too much time on some of the buildup to the game itself. I now know I’ll have to significantly cut and revise this scene when the time comes.
However, I can’t let perfection stand in the way of production. My plan now is to write an account of the game itself, as well as an after-party scene I have in mind. After this, I want to start putting together some other ideas of scenes I absolutely think are necessary to have in the story. Once I add in these scenes (leaving out the very last scene3), I might go back to that scene and start cutting.
I’m trying to be hopeful I will have made more progress on the rough draft by the time I post again next week. We’ll see.
Also, I promise I’ll also post at least another paid subscriber exclusive here next weekend as well. It’ll be either a sneak peek at some of the fiction I’m working on or some of my poetry.
What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing
This will be a bit short.
No get-togethers or in-person appearances planned for this month, although if that changes, you’ll hear about it here first.
I’ll post an updated list of appearances for the fall here next week.
I need to get back on here and update my site and do a few more recommended pages, etc. I also need to get to some more work as club secretary for the Iowa Writers Corner. It turns out writing is not the only thing I procrastinate about.
What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations
I’ve decided I’m going to set aside Sunday afternoons as the date I scan my Substack and WordPress feeds for examples of good writing I find out there. Especially considering I’ll be back at work by next week, it’s probably the most opportune time for me to take a few minutes out of my life to do this.
For today, however, I wanted to acknowledge
Joseph L. Murphy as a fellow Substack writer. During my years as a news reporter, I had the distinct pleasure of working with more than a few great photographers, but Joe was definitely among the top ones I ever saw in action. Since those years, he’s gone on to work in the communications world wearing various hats, but he’s still producing great images. This is a recent post of his about the Iowa State Fair, and his photography really does bring this event to life4.
Writing Advice for This Week
Once again, I’m taking a look at pieces of writing advice I find in various places on the Internet and discuss how much, if at all, I agree with them. If you remember from some of the previous weeks’ posts, I’m more of a fan of writing guidelines rather than writing rules. I’m going to briefly illustrate my point about these rules, and why guidelines seem to be a more sensible thing to believe in.
To be fair, there are some writing rules given in various articles and textbooks that seem to be ironclad; that is, they should be followed under all circumstances. For example, I ran across an article from 2020, “Writing Rules: How to Improve Your Writing,” on the website selfpublishing.com, written by author (and school librarian) Brenda Dehaan.
This article gives 13 different pieces of advice on the art of writing. Do not worry, I don’t plan to go over all 13 of them here, but I do want to review a few of those items. Some I would characterize as writing “rules,” while there’s a couple others I would classify as writing guidelines.
The first three rules mentioned in the list are: watch out for using words commonly confused with other similar sounding ones, keep the subjects and verbs of your sentences in agreement with each other, and don’t use “wishy-washy” words, or words that water down or clutter up your writing. Under almost all circumstances, I would say those are excellent guidelines to follow.
However, especially in the world of fiction, there are instances when we have to violate these rules. For example, people don’t always speak in grammatically correct ways. They often don’t write in grammatically correct ways. And there are many instances where we as authors wish to show this language to help learn about the characters using it and how they think.
There are even rarer instances, of course, where authors break the rules of grammar for artistic effect, or to communicate unique writing voices or moods. The careers of the American poet and novelist e.e. cummings and the Irish novelist and poet James Joyce are just the most obvious examples of this.
Buffalo Bill’s defunct who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat Jesus
he was a handsome man and what i want to know is how do you like your blueeyed boy Mister Death
– e.e. cummings, “Buffalo Bill” (1920)
So, there are writing “rules” to be observed in almost all situations, but not every instance.
However, Dehaan also clearly frames some of these rules as more like guidelines. Two good examples of this are the ninth and tenth rules on the list: The use of sentence fragments and using a variety of sentence structures. In the first instance, she points out while educators concentrate on ensuring their students use complete sentences, there are several instances where using sentence fragments are not only allowed, but sometimes advisable. Authors just need to make sure they can identify fragments and explain why they are used in a given circumstance. In the second instance, the author agrees using a variety of sentence structures “invites interest and keeps people reading,” but not before qualifying that statement with another noting the authors of children’s bedtime stories use a repetitive sentence structure to help lull kids to sleep.
As always, read up on the guidelines, but know when you have to travel outside them for the sake of the writing.
Writing Quote of the Week
I never considered writing to be as much of an ordeal as George Orwell claims here, but I do agree very much with one part of it – writing and creating has become a compulsion for me.
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
George Orwell
Final Thoughts
As I mentioned up above5, if you have any questions, concerns, advice, let me know in the comments or email me. Any feedback you have would be valued, especially all of you fellow writers on Substack.
And that’s a wrap. As always, check the sidebar and author page links for my work, and I’d love you to leave a review of my books as well wherever you get them. Thanks.
– 30 –
While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.
I’m taking a moment here to rage slightly about either the inability of Substack to accept HEIC photos or the fact I have way too many photos on my phone, forcing said phone to convert files to a format that is a pain in the rear to modify. Oh, well. ↩︎
As some readers might be aware of, I have in recent years begun to write rough drafts out of sequence and assembling them based on outlines I think up before I get started. This is intended to help reduce instances where I get hung up on some sections of the book because, for example, I might think I need to write the second section of a story before moving on to the first. However, I always make sure to write the final scene of my book as my last act of completing the rough draft. ↩︎
I’ve yet to attend the Iowa State Fair in person. And yes, I acknowledge this makes me not quite a proper Iowan. ↩︎
Hope everyone is doing well. From the photo, you can tell that we finally got some rain in Lucas County, Iowa, but we’ll need a bit more, I think. I’ll let you know how the week went, and we’ll likely get to some writing.
Home Front Stuff
We successfully moved our daughter Madeline out of her own apartment last weekend, so now we’ll take the stuff we moved out of there and put in storage and move it into the new place this weekend. The vagaries of leases in Iowa City meant we couldn’t complete this entire process in a single day, thus the storage locker. Both she and we are looking forward to getting the process completed, but one advantage is it gives us the opportunity for all of us to get together, which is rare since we all like in three separate cities. I’m looking forward to it.
School is again on my mind since my vacation can be measured in days rather than weeks, although no work was done this week and likely won’t be even started until next week. I’m not sure exactly what this will look like, since it will be the first time I’ll be doing all special education teaching through the year. We have many new teachers coming in after a number of departures, including our special education staff. One of the things I’ll need to remember to do is to make sure to welcome them and support them as I was when I first came to my district.
I stayed way too late up early Tuesday morning to watch the US Women’s National Team play the worst I’ve ever seen them in a match, 0-0 against Portugal. I’ve got a feeling the world is catching up to the American women, and I don’t think it’s guaranteed they win their third World Cup in a row (which no one, men or women, have done). Brazil, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Argentina also got knocked out, which is pretty wild.
What I’ve Been Writing
…a little more than last week.
I talked last week about my writing slumps, and some of the techniques I’ve used to break myself out of a slump. You can go back and look at those, but I actually ended up using a technique I didn’t mention here: try to write about something totally different, on a different project. I ended up doing some work on my fan fiction series and then wrote an entry for the story my writing group in Des Moines, the Iowa Writers’ Corner, is putting together this year. The latter was quite a challenge and I was happy with the result.
Of course, the main drawback of this particular technique is that it can delay you completing the work you set aside for the time being. However, sometimes it’s better to have a small delay on getting on with your project instead of just getting blocked on something for days, weeks, or months on end. Anyway, I’ll see how this works in the long term.
What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing
This section I’m going to keep short this week – I mentioned last week a few places I’ll be making appearances this fall, but I’ll try not to do all promotion all the time, especially since some of these events won’t be for another month or two.
I’m continuing to hunt for some more opportunities to promote me and my work, as always, so I’m reaching out to radio and podcast people. If anyone is interested in having me appear, say the word and I’ll be there. Also, I just realized it might be good policy to keep up the promotional work, because if all goes well I’m going to have a second book in the series to sell next year.
As I get more events up on my calendar, I’ll let you know about them.
What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations
I am way overdue for a Substack Notes series of recommendations for reading. I’m getting too distracted or just flaking out this deep into my summer vacation.
But for now, congratulations are in order for Fictionistas as they celebrate 2,000 subscribers. I love their work and I hope I manage to have that amount of success sometime soon.
Writing Advice for This Week
Last week, I decided to try and change around how I do this writing advice, taking a look at some commonly repeated bits of writing advice and see how valid they were in all situations.
I ran across this article on Grammerly, where the author, Brittney Ross, seems to have had the same idea as me. I won’t go over the entire article here, but she makes the point that writing rules should be seen more as guidelines rather than hard or fast rules. For example, it’s best not to rely on adverbs to describe a scene, but they can sometimes be the best way to describe it.
Another example she gives is the “rule” that a paragraph has to be at least three sentences1. Of course, not every paragraph is going to be this length. Look at fiction, for one thing. Tolkien needed a bit more than three paragraphs in a sentences to properly describe the scenery around his character. Also, how many dialogue paragraphs end after a single sentence, or even a fragment?
In short, I think I like the idea of writing guidelines rather than writing rules.
Writing Quote of the Week
Once again, my man King gets to the point and tells you one more thing you should know about writing.
Amateurs2 sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Final Thoughts
If you have any questions, concerns, advice, let me know in the comments or email me. Any feedback you have would be valued, especially all of you fellow writers on Substack.
And that’s a wrap. As always, check the sidebar and author page links for my work, and I’d love you to leave a review of my books as well wherever you get them. Thanks.
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The question of “how many sentences does a paragraph have to be?” is the most frequent writing question among reluctant (and even not so reluctant) middle-school writers. ↩︎
I hope I’m not putting words into King’s mouth here, but in this case he uses “amateur” to distinguish between people who just write for fun and those who take it seriously. ↩︎
