Tag: Puroresu

The Writing Life, 16 December 2023: Thinking ahead

It’s that time again. Let’s talk about writing and some other stuff.

The Home Front

Well, it’s been a bit of a whirlwind week for me and my wife. If we’re counting the buildup to this decision, it’s actually been a whirlwind couple of months for us, to be honest.

Now that the big decision’s been made and the word is out, there’s plenty to get done in the months ahead. Laura’s plan is to move out to Fort Madison to begin her work. By then, we’re hoping to already have an apartment there; we’re actually apartment-hunting this weekend in Fort Madison.

We are hoping to get our Chariton house sold as soon as possible, but we might end up asking for whoever buys it to take possession of it in late May, perhaps. I am planning on finishing out the school year at my current district, so I will continue to work in the area at least until mid-May.

For now, we’ve been donating or getting rid of some items we know we’re not going to have use of anymore with considerable success. We may also include some items we’re not going to have immediate use of because we’re likely to be renting in Fort Madison for at least a year while we consider what’s out there.

Anyone interested in a cool little house in Chariton, Iowa, can email me at jasonliegois@liegois.media. Serious inquiries only, of course.

Although our son in Des Moines will be a little less than three hours away, most everyone in my immediate family will now be within about an hour drive, which will be a good thing. I’m looking forward to being part of a new community.

What I’m Writing

I’ve been writing more than I have been during the past month, but whether I have been writing things I should be writing is another issue lol.

Work on The Yank Striker 2 paused for a bit due to the general lull in my writing, but I honestly had some other things going on. I have restarted the project, but I have also been toying with an idea I’ve had since this year about a family of professional wrestlers and its history. As many writers will note, all of the shiny new ideas sometimes distract from the old ideas. George R.R. Martin is Exhibit A of this phenomenon.

I’ve started to piece together certain… scenes that could be part of a larger story, perhaps the genesis of what would be the first novel in this series I have in mind. I’ve also begun more research on the project to try and put together a story set in 20th century professional wrestling looking back at from the vantage of the 21st century.

I want to thank Deb West of the University of Iowa’s Program in Creative Writing, better known as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The main character in my prospective project is a member of the workshop, so I had questions about the program and how it works. I had the opportunity to speak with her for a time this week, and she was absolutely generous with her time and knowledge. I never had an opportunity to attend the program, but I am very proud the school I attended has such a fine program for developing writers.

I’ve been doing some thinking about how I’m going to be scheduling my regular posts here on Substack and WordPress, so I think I’ll talk about it below.

When I’m Writing

I think I’ve pretty much settled on the new schedule with which I’ll be publishing on Substack and my companion site on WordPress. So, I wanted to just let you know how it’s going to work.

Unless otherwise noted, I will be publishing my regular posts at 5 p.m. Central time on Saturdays. There may be some times when I have to delay or reschedule those, but I believe I can more or less stick to this schedule. It also doesn’t preclude me from making additional posts over the weekend or at other times if I get particularly productive or if I have something special to say.

The monthly schedule, thus, will look like this:

  • First Saturday of the month: The Writing Life newsletter.
  • Second Saturday of the month: Prose Night at the Writing Life. This will be original short fiction, essays, or excerpts from works in progress. I’ll try to surprise you. 🙂
  • Third Saturday of the month: The Writing Life newsletter1.
  • Fourth Saturday of the month: Poetry Night at the Writing Life. For these posts, I’ll be posting my original poetry past and present. Normally, I’ve been able to manage two poems a post, but some might be a single poem per week. I’ll try and keep toward more rather than less poems. I like a challenge.
  • In the event of a Fifth Saturday of the month: I might take the week off. Or not.

What I’m Doing Having to do With Writing

With this move, I’m likely going to have to have a change in who I hang out with writing-wise.

I will be three hours away from Des Moines, so attending some of the writing groups I have been meeting with for the past couple of years might not be as easy. At least some of them have online Zoom capabilities, so I do plan to join in that way.

Some of the other places where writers meet, like Iowa City and the Quad Cities, are “only” about two hours away. I might consider reconnecting with some of the groups I was attending when living in Muscatine, but I also know there might be some groups meeting perhaps in Burlington, as well.

The one thing I know for sure is that I don’t want to be without a writers’ group, whether I attend in person or virtually. I think I am very safe to say if I did not have the support of these groups during the past several years, I would not have published my first two books and may never have taken the step toward writing online. I think being in these groups gave me the networking and resources to hone my writing to a greater level than I have ever been in the past.

Writing Quote of the Week

My man Orwell with the basics.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

Where You Can Find My Books

For direct links to purchase my books in paperback and ebook form, including The Yank Striker: A Footballer’s Beginning and The Holy Fool, click on the links in the Substack sidebar or the links on my Substack author page. Or, you can go to this page on my WordPress site, Liegois Media.

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

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

All three are great independent bookstores who deserve your support. However, I’m always looking for some new places to place my books, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if anyone has a suggestion.

Final Thoughts

That’s about it for now. I’m hoping I can be more productive during the next few weeks of 2023. It’ll be poetry night next weekend, and I’m planning on cooking up some original work. See you then.

-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.

Subscribe to my Substack here.
  1. This might wind up being shorter than the newsletter on the first Saturday of the month since only two weeks will lapse between them rather than maybe three weeks. Or maybe not. At this point, your guess is as good as mine. ↩︎

A Week in the Writing Life, 28 October 2023: A short one this week lol

The feature photo is from Red Haw State Park outside Chariton, Iowa, taken this week. Here’s a few other pics from there:

Red Haw State Park, 21 October 2023

Finally, it’s starting to feel and look like a proper fall season around here. And I was thinking I’d have to go through another weekend in the 70’s. Definitely not.

Anyway, this edition of the newsletter is going to be short because A., I had parent-teacher conferences three nights in a row this week, B., I was working on another book review to be featured here on this site (and others), and C., I realized around Friday night or so I hadn’t even started working on it until then. So, you’ll get what you get this weekend.

What I’ve Been Writing

Last week, I mentioned I was working on a couple of book reviews. The first one of these I am planning on releasing Sunday. The book review will be about Iowa author Tyler Granger and his debut book, Iowa Trouble. I’ve just gotten to know Tyler recently as we’ve run into each other at multiple book fair events around Iowa, and his debut intrigued me as I got to know more about it. I’m looking forward to sharing it with you, as well. Since book reviews are pretty common on the Internet, I’ll make that review available to everyone.

In case you are curious, my Goodreads profile page is here. Go ahead and visit it whenever you can.

Not too much progress on The Yank Striker 2 this week for all the aforementioned reasons, but I am hoping to get some more progress on it this weekend. I’ve also been doing some additional planning and sketching out for that project and the pro wrestling thing I’ve been toying around with. I’m considering doing some short stories connected to (and perhaps becoming part of) the larger series, and quite a few of those might be free posts as well. I’d like everyone to see what’s coming up and what they might want to try to read when it comes out.

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

I’ve been considering getting a new logo/profile pic for the site. I’ve settled on a couple of pics I ran through some art processing apps that don’t suck. I was considering putting up a poll to see what you guys thought, but I’m leaning toward showing them to my daughter Maddie and see what she says. She’s usually got good judgement on those things and might be brighter than me when it comes down to it.

Writing Advice for the Week

This week, it’s time to talk about the last of George Orwell’s six rules of writing, which have been a fun activity for me over the past month or so.

Orwell is a literary hero of mine, who laid down this set of rules in an essay called “Politics and the English Language.” The entire essay is worth a read.

So, number six and the last on the list is:

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

A few months ago, I decided rather than trying to come up with my own bits of advice (which can be hard to do on a regular basis), I decided to take a look at other bits of writing advice on the Internet and elsewhere and comment on whether they made sense or not, which was an easier lift for me. The point I’ve been trying to make with these commentaries is other than some basic ideas like capitalizing the start of sentences and adding punctuation at the end of them, most writing “rules” should be considered guidelines, things considered but not always followed under every circumstance.

I’d long thought Orwell was of a similar mind as me, and this “rule,” in my opinion, proves it. This is his way of saying do what works and what is right in a given writing situation, and not be bound to do something because a style guide insists you do it in every circumstance. Consider the situation, consider the reader, and then make the best choice for the given moment.

Writing Quote(s) of the Week

It is nice to be creative without someone looking over my shoulder.

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

Roald Dahl

Not sure how having a Lego collection when I was a kid fits into this, but all right:

A writer – and, I believe, generally all persons – must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

Jorge Luis Borges, Twenty-Four Conversations with Borges: Interviews by Roberto Alifano 1981-1983

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

Hope everyone has a great weekend, and keep an eye out for the book review I talked about up top. 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.

Subscribe to my Substack here.

“Into the Cave”: A sneak peek at some original fiction and the possible start of a series.

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The Birth of a Wrestling Story: A quick look behind the curtain and into my creative (booking?) process

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A Week in the Writing Life, 15 July 2023: New stuff cooking

I’ve been writing a bit this past week, and a lot of it unexpected. We’ll get into it.

Home Front Stuff

Not too much at all to report here. I’ll be on the road with my wife to a wedding this weekend, so that’s a rare trip for us. She’s asked me to promise not to discuss soccer the entire trip up. Since the USMNT just lost to Panama this week, I think I can keep my pledge.

What I’ve Been Writing

With trying to keep up on the blog, getting things ready for the weekend (because I’ll be on the road for at least part of it), I haven’t had much time to get back to work on The Yank Striker 2. I have the feeling I will have to start not worrying about the boring scenes while writing the exciting ones, and that should help me get the story done faster than it has been.

Meanwhile, I’m cooking something else up, fiction-wise.

If you recall last week, I mentioned that while I have been trekking around different places in Iowa promoting my work, I got the idea for a possible book series centered around professional wrestling. Not only have I been sketching out some notes regarding this (yet to be officially named) series, but I’ve also started writing what could be a short prologue or short story set in the world this takes place in.

I started to get really in-depth with describing how this project came about and a few tiny hints about its plot for the newsletter today. However, the description began to get a bit oversized for just one subject.

So, since I wanted to talk up the project anyway, I decided to break off the whole discussion about it and the creative process I went through into a separate post. It’ll post here at noon tomorrow (Sunday) and will be a free read for everyone. I hope everyone enjoys it.

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

I just wanted to thank the Slowdown Coffee Co. for being my host last Sunday as part of the Northside Market festival there in the Highland Park district of Des Moines. It was a great experience, a great coffee shop, and I would absolutely love to go back sometime.

I’ll be at the monthly meeting of the Iowa Writers’ Corner today. If you’re a writer who’s interested in being part of a writing community and learning from other writers, definitely come on down. We meet every third Saturday of the month at Felix and Oscars (F&O’s) at 4050 Merle Hay Road in Des Moines starting at 9 a.m. You can check us out on Facebook.

Oh, and there’s a tiny event I’d love to see you at.

I’ll be having my first “Meet the Author” event at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 26, at Beaverdale Books, one of three Iowa bookstores where you can find The Yank Striker in stock. We’ll talk about the book and series, as well as writing in general.

Also, that same day I’ll be having my first ever radio interview with John Busbee and his show The Culture Buzz on KMFG 98.9. The interview should air the day of the event during his regular slot (11 a.m. – 1 p.m.). Heady stuff, for sure.

What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations

My inbox has been filling up with good stuff from Substack, but I’m going for a change of pace this week. I grew up with a guy at Muscatine High School named Juan Fourneau. While working in my hometown, he spent 20-plus years as a professional wrestler on the independent circuit. He’s written a memoir about those experiences and a whole mess of other subjects as well. I think he has a good eye for detail and description, among other things.

We were both recently featured in a new collection entitled Roads We’ve Taken: A Writer’s on the Avenue Anthology. He has a great essay in there about how watching the movie Rocky 4 inspired him as a kid, but you should also check out his web site (and his other writings) at https://www.latinthunder1.com/.

Writing Advice for This Week

In the piece I’m going to be running tomorrow about my new project, I talk about those who do a considerable amount of planning for their fiction projects and those who are “pantsers” (another word for flying by the seat of their pants). I come down more on the side of the former group than the latter, although I have seen the benefits of just writing whatever comes to mind and seeing where it takes you.

However, if you are writing anything bigger than, say a novella (which the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Association says should be around 17,500 and 40,000 words), I believe some amount of world-building is going to be required.

To elaborate, exactly what type of organization you choose to use for your project should be up to you. Whenever I’ve taught writing at the high school or junior college level, I’ve always considered this to be part of the prewriting portion of the writing process. I try to expose my students to a variety of prewriting techniques, but the choice of which ones they use to create material I leave in their hands. “Use whatever works for you,” is a frequent instruction of mine.

For example, with this new project I’ll talk about tomorrow, I had an idea of using either a timeline (a list of events in chronological order) covering the events of the story or a family tree (which shows the relationships between a family’s members). In this case, I settled on the family tree, since the entire plot was centered around one particular family. I sketched out the family tree using Microsoft OneNote (which I think I need to review at some point on the blog) where I laid out the family members, their names, and nicknames. I also added the dates of their births and (if applicable) their deaths, and the dates of their marriages. I eventually ended up adding more than 20 characters to the list, so it was a prewriting activity that paid off for me.

There’s times when I feel awkward when I’m giving writing advice. I believe the reason is because when it comes to the craft of writing, there are more general, broad principles to how it works rather than a long checklist of rules1.

For example, it made sense for me to make a family tree for the new project because the main character had a sizable family which were the main participants in the story line. However, in another story where there is a smaller family or a main character’s family is not as sizable, such a tree might not make sense. In fact, if my story involves a large number of events, a number of events that coincide with real-life events (as in historical fiction), or a long time period, a timeline may be a better way of sketching out where your story is going.

Thanks for coming to the lecture, everyone. Let me know if there are other writing issues you’d like to discuss in the comments.

Writing Quote of the Week

Since I eventually want to write a fantasy series, I thought a Brandon Sanderson quote might be good for this week. I also find it applies to my own philosophy toward my work as well.

By now, it is probably very late at night, and you have stayed up to read this book when you should have gone to sleep. If this is the case, then I commend you for falling into my trap. It is a writer’s greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of his books. It goes back to authors being terrible people who delight in the suffering of others. Plus, we get a kickback from the caffeine industry…

Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Final Thoughts

And that’s another week in the books. Make sure to check out my Substack at noon Central time tomorrow for my extra post on my newest project – and it’ll be free, too.

As always, check the links in the sidebar and on my author page if you’re looking to buy one of my books. If you buy one, I’d absolutely love it if you could leave a review on Amazon or wherever you get it, because that would be very helpful.

– 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.

Subscribe to my Substack here.
Subscribe to my Substack here.

Footnotes:

  1. This idea of general writing principles might be worthy of its own post later on. I’ll keep it in mind. ↩︎

A Week in the Writing Life, 8 July 2023

Well, this might be a bit of a rush to get out my newsletter, but I have been very busy during the past week. And there has been plenty of new ideas popping into my head over the past couple of weeks.

[EDIT: And of course this takes a lot longer than I expected, so it’s coming out in the afternoon rather than right at noon. Not that this is a hard deadline, but I would like to have a consistent posting schedule. I will say I’ve been much better about consistently posting than I have been for years past.]

Home Front Stuff

There’s not too much to report on here. I’ve been basically chilling out at home most of the week and enjoying some much needed rain. Laura and I had a nice quiet Fourth of July at home, and I joined her in one of her favorite traditions – watching the Fourth of July celebrations in Washington, D.C. It was a good time for us.

I will say today we have the windows open in our house for the first time in several weeks. It finally got cool enough and a good enough breeze to make that tolerable, which is a rare occasion in Iowa during the summer months. We’ll likely have to close up the house by tomorrow, but I’ll enjoy things while I can.

What I’ve Been Writing

Well, for one thing, I’ve been writing a lot recently.

All kidding aside, I’ve also been doing a bit of creating as well. “Wait, isn’t any sort of writing creative?” Yes, this is true, but I’ve been creating some new stuff.

First, let’s get onto the (slightly) older stuff. The rough draft of The Yank Striker 2 remains under construction, and some of the workers were on the job site this week. On this subject, I have to say undertaking a side quest has had some benefits toward the project moving forward. A few weeks ago, I went slightly insane and decided to write a whole history of the English soccer club at the heart of The Yank Striker series.

It turned out all right as a piece of writing, but the short story (for lack of a better word) wound up being a valuable resource for putting together the new book. As I mentioned earlier, I now have a fuller understanding of the setting of my series even after writing a book set in that world. It made me aware of characters and situations I was not even aware of, and they added so much texture to the story. I’ve been busy this last week on adding new scenes or revising old scenes using some of the information and characters I discovered throughout creating the history. It’s been exciting.

Also, I’ve come up with a new idea for a series1.

I still have an idea for a fantasy series I’ve been toying with for at least the past couple of years, and it’s still something I want to do. However, over the weekend I was back around my hometown in Muscatine where I did a couple of quick appearances, including one at the book fair at the David R. Collins Writers’ Conference.

It involves not exactly a sport, but something that could be considered an art form and a storytelling medium, involving physical activity and movement. That art form? Professional wrestling.

Photo by Patrick Case on Pexels.com

I want to discuss how this series came about in a separate post, but what I will say is the idea for this story, a multi-generational tale set in the world of professional wrestling, has grown faster than the xenomorphs in the Alien series, it appears. I’m already hearing full conversations in my head, ideas of greater themes and surprising connections to writing. And there’s an actual Iowa component to this series, which is a bit amazing considering I’m writing it2.

I had to chuckle a bit as I continued to consider this subject matter. I started paying attention to wrestling as a fan in the mid-1980’s, just as the WWE hosted its first Wrestlemania shows and the NWA was still active in some of the (slowly dying) territories. My parents were by no means fans of my fandom, and I remember several conversations with my father about the whole silliness of the situation and my obsession tough men and their psychodramas. I was pleasantly surprised when my father did not immediately discount my idea, but you need to realize this is a man willing to drive halfway across Iowa to meet with me at a book fair and have lunch one day, so I’ve always considered him to be a very supportive parent.

I’m not sure they will read this new series, but then again, my mother, bless her, is nervous about reading my fiction because she doesn’t want to be critical of it. On the other hand, my daughter Madeline is fearful of few things and certainly not of taking the piss out of her pops, so she might read some of it. My son Jacob, who also follows wrestling off and on, might give it a look, as well.

Don’t worry, there will be more on this soon.

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

I’ve got two events coming up, so I’ll just mention them quickly.

Tomorrow, the Highland Park Historic Business District in Des Moines is hosting the Northside Market from 12-6 p.m. There’s going to be a whole bunch of great local vendors out there and Sixth Street from Euclid to Douglas will be shut down for the event. I’ll be there at the Slowdown Coffee Co., 3613 Sixth Ave., Des Moines, with my books, including The Yank Striker. We can talk writing, soccer, or just about anything, to be honest. I’ll be there for most of the afternoon.

On the last week of this month, I’m truly honored to have my first “Meet the Author” event at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 26, at Beaverdale Books (which happens to be celebrating its 17th anniversary today). Beaverdale is also one of three Iowa bookstores where you can find The Yank Striker in stock. I’m really excited for the event and to talk about this book and the series.

If there is any chance you can come out here and join me at this event, I would absolutely appreciate it. Anyone who wants a copy of my books will be able to get them, autographed, at $10 each – about a 30 percent discount.

Also, that same day, it appears I’ll be having my first ever radio interview with John Busbee and his show The Culture Buzz on KMFG 98.9. If all goes according to plan, the interview should air the day of the event during his regular slot (11 a.m. – 1 p.m.). I’m truly looking forward to it.

What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations

I’ve been finding a lot of good articles on Substack Notes and “restacking” them, so to speak, so keep checking out my feed for some cool reads.

What I’ll briefly mention here is this great article by Write More with Simon K Jones covering different classifications of serialized fiction in the Western World from approximately the 19th century onward. It’s a great read. Made me think about which of these formats best meets my interests at the moment.

Writing Quote of the Week

This was actually one of the better analogies I’ve ever heard on the subject.

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.

Lorrie Moore

Final Thoughts

Okay, that’s it for now3. Hey, if you’re interested in purchasing any of my books, all you need to do is click on the links on the sidebar, or you’ll also find those links on my bio page as well. See you here next week.

– 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.

Subscribe to my Substack here.
Subscribe to my Substack here.

Footnotes

  1. This was the idea in last week’s newsletter I promised I would have a separate story on this idea. I still want to do one, but this might have to wait for a bit. I might be able to put something together later today or on Sunday, but as of right now, it is a work in progress, as is the idea for the series in question.
  2. I am probably one of the most hopeless Iowa writers out there because Iowa has not been a major setting in my books up to this point. My first book, The Holy Fool, was based almost entirely in Chicago. The only connection to Iowa was as the birthplace of my main character, Samuel “Sonny” Turner. The Yank Striker has no Iowa connection whatsoever. A good amount of the poetry I’ve written in recent years has been based in Iowa, especially along the Mississippi River.
  3. I figured out how to do linkable footnotes in WordPress this week! Very cool.