Tag: The Writing Life

The Writing Life, 21 September 2024: Hoping for fall

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

The Home Front

Not much here in recent weeks.

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

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

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

What I’m Writing

Time for an update on what I’m writing.

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

[MINOR SPOILER ALERT:3]

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

[END OF SPOILERS]

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

What I’m Doing Having to Do With Writing

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

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

Here are my current events4:

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

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

Writing Quote of the Week:

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

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

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

A Few Links About My Books and Where to Find Them

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

-30-

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

The Writing Life, 7 September 2024: Feeling optimistic despite the time crunch

The school year has well and truly started as the final third of 2024 is now underway. As we get into the final stretch, I’m finding myself becoming cautiously optimistic about writing and a couple of other things.

The Home Front

I’m now about two weeks or so into my stint at my new teaching position. As usual, I don’t get too much into this part of my life (due to privacy issues and my own personal preferences), but I will say it’s been a welcoming and positive environment, and I’m looking forward to continuing to settle in and be part of the learning community.

Pretty soon, my wife and I are hoping to move into a new house here in Fort Madison in the next couple months. Again, not to get into too many details, but my wife Laura is missing being able to have her own porch and some other conveniences we’ll have once again. (Once everything happens, I’ll at least show you what my new writing space looks like.)

My kids continue to keep building their own homes now they’re on their own in the work force. I’m definitely proud of both of them, even though they work in totally different industries and different personalities. I love them both to bits.

What I’m Writing

And what about my writing, then?

  • The Yank Striker 2, the sequel for The Yank Striker: I’ve made steady and consistent progress on this, maybe more consistent than I have been at any point in its creation. As the home stretch of the story is coming into more focus for me than any of the “side quests,” so to speak, I’m going to get the basics down on my document/electronic paper/etc. Whether I have a finished book ready for publication by the beginning of Summer 2025 is open for debate, but the idea I might have a really rough draft of the book finished by the end of 2024 seems slightly better than even odds for the first time in a while.
  • The Untitled Pro Wrestling Family Drama project: Not much progress recently on this project, but I am preparing to get into a new scene here whenever I get a moment. In case you are curious, this would involve the main character returning home and, in the words of those who believe in the Hero’s Journey, it becomes the time when he answers the call, so to speak. That’s one part of the story I’m looking forward to telling.
  • The Untitled Liegois Poetry Chapbook: This is coming along quicker than I expected. I think I have pretty much all of the poems I want to include in the collection, but I still would like to try and do some revisions on the ones I selected. When I first started experimenting with poetry, I think I wound up being too wordy, too much like prose, and I have too much of a tendency to add additional cluttering words to my prose, anyway. Imagine how it would work in a poetry situation! Most of the revisions have involved cutting words, and I feel quite confident I’ve not trimmed away any needed words in the process.

    In poetry, what I’ve learned from those who write it is every single word counts. Every word needs to hold it’s own weight, and what I really enjoy about the whole poetry process is how much more I have to learn, how much more I have to grow in this journey.

Not to get too bogged down into writing statistics, but I’m about 9,000 words ahead of my pace to get at least 200,000 words written this year. However, considering I knocked out about 215,000 words last year, I’m hoping to pick up the pace even though I won’t have as much free time as I did from May to the middle of August. I’m hoping I use my time more efficiently.

What I’m Doing Having to do With Writing

Last weekend I posted a big promo post (it was the Labor Day weekend and I didn’t have much else scheduled) about some of the events I had coming up, information about my current books, and where to find them.

One of the events I wrote about (the one in Burlington) already occurred this week, and I really enjoyed the experience. Burlington By The Book is one of the great independent bookstores in Iowa, and I’d absolutely recommend you head down there at 301 Jefferson Street in Burlington and pick out a book. And guess what, you can now find both my books there as well.

The other announcements and posts are up to date. If you’re interested, you can read the post here.

Writing Quote(s) for the Week

I’ve got two quotes for the week this week. This first one seems to fit my efforts to revise some of my past poetry (lol).

Poems are never finished – just abandoned.

  • Paul Valery

I like the optimism of this thought from an author of my generation who’s had better literary luck than I have, but I’m glad for his success nonetheless1.

With writing, we have second chances.

  • Jonathan Safran Foer

Final Thoughts

That’s all the words there is to write about me and writing for now. I might be tempted to share some rough draft scenes from one of my works in progress here on Prose Night, but I’ve also been reading an interesting nonfiction book that might be worth a review. We’ll see what gets finished first.

Writers keep writing and everyone keep safe.

-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. Then again, when Joyce Carol Oates is your freshman creative writing teacher and she gets wowed by your prowess, you’ve got some luck on your side as well as the talent and willingness to develop it. ↩︎

The Writing Life, 17 August 2024: School year incoming

Back to work next week, and that’s just one of the transitions to look forward to as the month of August winds down. We’ll talk about that as well as what I’ve been writing.

The Home Front

This was my last week of summer break, although I did go into the new school for two days for new teacher orientation. It was great to learn more about the new place (Central Lee High School).

As before, I’m going to not get into too much detail about my teaching work, but I am looking forward to getting started. This will be the sixth school district I’ll have worked in during my career, which has mainly to do with budget cuts and moving for my wife’s work. You never know what will happen with a job, but it would be nice to settle into a district for a while.

I’m going to not get too much into all the stuff I write with my students, but it will be interesting to see if they find out about my blogging and writing all on their own. I remember hearing from some seventh-grade students at my last school district who had found my work online on their own. (My name tends to be Google-friendly as long as it’s spelled properly.)

Within the next few months, my wife and I will be working through closing on a new house and moving there. However, since the move’s only crosstown and I’ll be closer to my school district than I have with my past jobs, I’m feeling good about the time to come. (Once we get the place and I settle in to my new writing space, I’ll give you a look at the place.)

What I’m Writing

Now, onto the writing.

  • The Yank Striker 2, the sequel for The Yank Striker:
    I’m nearly finished with a scene that was giving me trouble. There have been too many times that I’m wanting to get a story done so nice and together and then I remember it’s just the first draft and I’m an idiot for even thinking it should be close to being good.
    I’d currently consider my plan to have a first draft of the book done by the end of the year are probably even odds (50 percent) at the current time. Good can’t become the enemy of completed
  • The Untitled Pro Wrestling Family Drama project:
    Previously, I’ve been writing scenes as they came up and not in a coherent order. I’ve now put together a first draft of a single document and starting to add in the pieces of the story. Not all of them are going into the first draft, especially as I refine the storyline of the book.
    My writing groups have been quite helpful to me as I continue to do the draft. Hopefully I continue to get good feedback.
  • The Untitled Liegois Poetry Chapbook:I’ve actually worked out a rough draft of this, although I’ve not totally formalized my formatting yet. The chances I get this done within the next fortnight are even at best, I think.

Of course, with school coming around, there will be less time for me to waste time and just write. Then again, maybe I do better with a deadline. It’s an old journalism thing.

Only time will tell if my writing productivity is affected by the new job and the move. I usually find time to write quite a bit, so I’m not worried.

What I’m Doing Having to do With Writing

After a relatively quiet couple of months, I will be making some in-person appearances in September and October. I’ll go ahead and list them here.

  • 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. 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.

Writing Quote for the Week

Once again, the King gets to the heart of the matter.

So okay― there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You’ve blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want.

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

Final Thoughts

That’s it for now. Should have a new poem the next time I post here. For you poetry fans.

Writers keep writing and everyone keep safe.

-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.

The Writing Life, 3 August 2024: Quiet week

The Home Front

Like I mentioned last time, I’m now entering the last phase of my summer vacation, where the break time can be measured in weeks rather than months. I won’t regurgitate the phases here, but you can go back and see them if you’re really curious.

I’ve had my first outing with some of my new work colleagues during a recent workshop, and it was great experience. Of course, I would not say I am totally prepared for the school year to come and how to organize for it, but I have faith it will go forward just fine in the end. It always does one way or the other.

Also, it looks like we’ll be finding a new permanent residence here in Fort Madison. Apartment life has been interesting, but my wife Laura has missed having a back yard and back patio, and we are in the process of securing a new house. It will be a couple of months before we close on the place and a bit longer before we fully move in, but it has begun.

What I’m Writing

Progress report time!

  • The Yank Striker 2, the sequel for The Yank Striker. Progress on this is still slow. I’m hoping actually to get some more work done on a new scene coming up.
    Since I’ve had a chance to sketch out a revised outline for the book, I’m thinking if I am not at the halfway point of the book, I’m getting close to it. I’m still hoping to wrap up a first draft of the book by the end of the year, but it’s a tough slog. I think I’ll use something I saw today as my writing quote for the week which might fit this well (see below).
  • The Untitled Pro Wrestling Family Drama project I first got the idea for more than a year ago. I’ve finished a scene where I’m portraying a writer’s workshop and I’m hoping to present it to my writer’s group to see if it make sense. It’s a very meta situation. At least some of them have gone through MFA programs so I might have some expert advice on hand.
  • I’m planning this month to put together my first book of poems, even if it’s a tiny chapbook and I do the whole thing myself. If I want to claim to be a poet, I think I have to have a physical copy of my work on hand, even if it is a chapbook. I’ll let you know how that goes, heh-heh.

Of course, with school coming around, there will be less time for me to waste time and just write. Then again, maybe I do better with a deadline. It’s an old journalism thing.

Writing Quote for the Week

One of my more recent favorite authors is a pioneer of what might be classified as urban fantasy, Laurell K. Hamilton. Her recent description of one of her works in progress hit close to home for me. (Hint: it’s the bit about trench warfare.)

Some books flow like the muses are showering you with rose petals. Other books seem to fight you every step of the way like trench warfare. This book is unfortunately the latter, not the former. I am thinking longingly of when I can be back to a sane world & type, The End.

  • Laurell K. Hamilton

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

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

For those of you coming here for the first time, you might find what’s below useful.

By the way, I will only be posting the following information from here on out on my first newsletter of the month, and not both of them. I want to make sure I’m not being too repetitive with these posts.

A Few Links About My Books and Where to Find Them

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

Like I said, short and sweet. Either I’ll try and come up with some new stuff in a fortnight or the newsletter then will be really short, lol.

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.

The Writing Life, 20 July 2024: July keeps rolling along

There’s a lot of great independent Iowa bookstores out there, and they’re sponsoring a big Iowa Indie Bookshop Tour from this month through September. Check out the link in the pic for more information.

Oh, hey, everyone, it’s just me trying to give the rub to some great independent book stores in Iowa1. I’ll talk about what’s been going on with me, but frankly it’s been a slow couple weeks.

The Home Front

There are approximately three stages to a summer vacation to a teacher. These can vary, of course, depending on the different calendars some might have for individual school districts. Generally, however, I’ve noticed such vacations proceed like so:

  1. Phase One, Late May-Early July: Basically bugging out time, taking a massive breather from the mental marathon of the school year and doing whatever fits your interests, even if it means zoning out to watch Copa America and the European soccer championships like I did.
  2. Phase Two, Early July-Late July: Still in vacation mode, but there is at least a small sense it will end at some point.
  3. Phase Three, Late July-Mid August: Actively preparing for the school year to come while “technically” on vacation.

If you are paying attention to the calendar and to what I just wrote, I’m now nearing the end of Phase Two. There’s still some vacation to go.

For those who remember my US Men’s National Team (USMNT) rant of two weeks ago, it turned out the US Soccer Federation did fire Gregg Berhalter2 from his position, but we are now waiting for them to hire a proper coach for the World Cup in two years3. Hoping for the best.

The Olympics will be on for the next couple weeks, so some more soccer and basketball along with the gymnastics and swimming.

If you want to hear about other current events like the political stuff, this isn’t the place for it, my friend. But I wouldn’t bother with most of it because most political reporting nowadays, sad to say, is just brain-rotting nonsense.

What I’m Writing

One thing connected to that last bit, however; I have never understood writers who have claimed to be in an optimal writing mood when they are in a depressed or negative state. For example, some believe a good break-up might help to spark some creativity. I am of a completely different mindset, myself, so I’ve had to shield myself a bit to get any writing done, and I’ve not done as good of a job as I wanted.

However, there has some work done on the following projects:

  • The Yank Striker 2 (totally unoriginal working title), the sequel for The Yank Striker (look below for more information on the first book in the series). I started a new scene on this a few days ago. Hopefully I get back at it in a day or two.
    One of these writing advice columnists I’ve subscribed to over the years mentioned something about if you write something life 200-210 words per day for one particular project, you will wind up with a full manuscript bu the end of the year. (200 words times 365 days equals 73,000 words, which is a pretty good sized manuscript.) Maybe I need to apply this standard to whatever project I’m working to complete a project? Seems sensible.
  • The Untitled Pro Wrestling Family Drama project I first got the idea for more than a year ago. I’m working on a scene where I’m portraying a writer’s workshop and I’m about to present it to my writer’s group to see if it make sense. It’s a very meta situation.

Writing Quote for the Week

“Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth,” once said by the author Tim O’Brian, might be my all-time favorite quote about fiction I’ve ever heard. It also gets into the difference between factual truth and deeper Truth, something that became a major theme of his fiction throughout his career4. Here’s another quote from him along those same lines.

The goal, I suppose, any fiction writer has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and the tear ducts and the nape of the neck and to make a person feel something about what the characters are going through and to experience the moral paradoxes and struggles of being human.

  • Tim O’Brian

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

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

For those of you coming here for the first time, you might find what’s below useful.

A Few Links About My Books and Where to Find Them

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

It was a quick newsletter this week. Hopefully I might have more to discuss in a couple of weeks.

Writers keep writing and everyone keep safe.

-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. Look, the longer you’re here, the more professional wrestling terminology you’re going to have to deal with. I like stealing cool phrases, and wrestling terminology is chock full of them. ↩︎
  2. The USMNT head coach, in his second stint in the role. ↩︎
  3. We don’t have to qualify for the tourney since we are hosting, but we don’t want to be an embarrassment, either. ↩︎
  4. It also happens to be a key aspect of the concept of kayfabe, as well. ↩︎

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

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

Hey, everyone.

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

The Home Front

I’ll keep this brief.

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

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

Anyway, back to the writing.

What I’m Writing

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

Some of those projects include:

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

Writing Progress at the Halfway Point of 2024

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

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

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

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

Writing Quote(s) for the Week

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

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

  • Jackie Collins

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

  • William Faulkner

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

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

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

A Few Links About My Books and Where to Find Them

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About This Page

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

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

The Home Front

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

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

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

What I’m Writing

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

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

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

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

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

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

What I’m Doing Having to do With Writing

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

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

Writing Quote(s) for the Week

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

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

  • Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

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

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

  • Lord George Gordon Byron

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

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

  • John Kennedy O’Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

Writing Advice

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

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

– Rose Tremain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

The Writing Life, 1 June 2024: Transition, traveling, and terrible writing productivity

Back home in Fort Madison, Iowa, at the Turnwater Bar and Grill, a new eating establishment located at the Fort Madison Marina. One of the more scenic eating experiences in the area.

For those who have been following this space, the past five months have been a mix of transition, travel, and terrible writing productivity. We’ll go over it for a bit.

The Home Front

To be honest, things have been a bit weird for me ever since December when I found out we were going to be moving from our home in Chariton to someplace a bit closer to our roots.

Things were merely unsettled from then until February, when I dealt with our old house being sold and starting my new life as a traveling teacher while dealing with our son Jake being in first hospital then rehab after a fall at his work (he’s now returned back to work and taking care of himself well). What has followed was three and a half months of driving across Iowa, between Bussey, Pella, Des Moines, Iowa City, Fort Madison, and spaces in between, living in at least three different spaces, trying to help out both my kids as well as my wife, finding a new job while wrapping up my old one, and somehow trying to find time to write during all the time I’m not driving somewhere, working, eating, or trying to get other stuff done.

What I’m Writing

As I suggested in the previous segment, there hasn’t been a massive amount of words produced over the past couple weeks (or the past few months). However, I have been working on some writings.

Work on The Yank Striker 2 has continued. I finally just finished a party sequence and chapter I’ve been mucking around with for forever, and you have no idea how thankful I am I managed to finally wrap it up.

Now I need to follow through on the planning I’ve worked on for the remainder of the book. Since this is going to be a series, I don’t want this second book to be a massive tome. The first book, which covered about a year’s worth of time, topped out at just above 83,000 words. I don’t want this next novel in the series to be more than 70,000-75,000 in length, especially since, because this is a series, I can subdivide these books in the series to be as small as I want them to be.

I’ve also been keeping up with poetry. I finally finished a poem I’ve been thinking about for at least a month connected with some of the places I’ve been traveling for the past few months. It took me a month’s worth of thoughts and about 15 minutes worth of writing, which might be a preview of how this poetry will work for me moving forward.

With some of the things going on this next few days, I estimate I’ll have about 10 solid weeks to catch up and get back on pace to writing at least 200,000 words this year. It will be a bit of a push, and I don’t know if it will work. But, I’m not planning on giving up yet. I did it the past two years in a row, it’s possible for me to do it again.

What I’m Doing Having to do With Writing

There’s not much I wanted to mention in this space, but I will mention one thing coming up in the next month or so.

After some time away from the organization due to my move to central Iowa, I have renewed ties with the Midwest Writing Center in the Quad Cities (with their headquarters in Rock Island, Ill.). This week I took an opportunity to drive through the wilds of western Illinois to attend the annual meeting for the MWC, which I believe is the first time I have done so.

It so happened I entered a drawing for prizes and I happened to win a full scholarship for the MWC’s annual David R. Collins Writers’ Conference from 27 to 29 June next month. I’ve attended this conference in the past and have really enjoyed it, and I was considering attending this year as well, now I’m closer to the site of the conference (Augustana College in Rock Island). So I’ve started to look over some of the events and workshops on offer this year and see what to attend. There’s some poetry events I’ve not ever attended during past conferences, but my growing interest in the form has gotten my attention. I’ll have to let you know how the whole thing goes afterward.

Writing Quote for the Week

There’s a lot of women this applies to over the years.

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

  • Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

Writing Advice

As usual, my standard operating procedure for this part of the newsletter is me taking a look at famous or popular writing advice and analyzing how effective or relevant it is. For this newsletter, the advice is this:

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

– Zadie Smith

I have to say this is a very sound principle to stick to. Smith is talking here about how other people and their issues can be a distraction to those who are in the writing process. Writing is something requiring a large amount of mental energy and focus. If you devote your energy to more than one thing at once, the level of energy and focus you have is drained away, leaving you with either a diminished or wiped out writing capacity. What Smith leaves unsaid is there are plenty of equally capable distractions of a non-human nature (games, Internet, movies, and television, among many others).

This advice absolutely applies to me as well. I’m grateful my wife allows me plenty of time to write without distractions, although in all fairness I think it also has the advantage for her to decompress from her day and get rest without having to entertain me. As for non-human distractions, this has been a lifelong and ongoing battle I’ve had to deal with. I would say I’m better at eliminating or setting aside those distractions, though I am by no means perfect or consistent in doing so.

Final analysis – a solid piece of writing advice, two thumbs up.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

Well, I’m glad I have this newsletter in the books. Now, it’s back to family, fiction, and a bit of poetry as both the writing and life journey continues.

-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.

The Writing Life, 18 May 2024

My base of operations for the next week.

It’s nearly the beginning of summer and even though I don’t like really hot weather, at the moment it can’t come fast enough. Let’s talk about writing and life, not necessarily in that order.

The Home Front

I am still on the road in Pella, Iowa, this week for professional and personal reasons as I continue to wrap up my teaching contract in south central Iowa. It’s quite obvious to me the existence I have been living for the past three months has been affecting me mentally.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m in a lot better position from a personal, family, and professional viewpoint than I have been in a while. This place has been part of my history for the past four years. It’s where I wrapped up my second book, The Yank Striker. I saw my kids progress from just out of high school to young adulthood (even though they weren’t living with us most of the time) and my wife got her first opportunity to run a city.

And the past few months have been intriguing. I’ve had the chance to spend some time in the most Dutch city in America, I believe (Pella, Iowa). I’ve laid my head for a while in the middle of the biggest city in Iowa (Des Moines), and I honestly enjoyed the experience, walking to where I needed to go and living in the hustle and bustle of a town where I could find just about anything I needed.

However, this has been a long road, to be honest. For a while, due to personal circumstances, I wasn’t quite sure where I would be staying from week to week. All of this uncertainty, being away from my wife and others, started to wear on me. When our dog Winnie passed away last month and I wasn’t there, it pretty much symbolized everything for me. I do believe this uncertainty and the sheer amount of time driving from one place to another – especially at one point where I had a two-hour round trip commute to work – affected my motivation to, and eventually my productivity, when I wrote.

I’m now less than a week to saying good bye to south central Iowa, and I’m doubting I’ll ever return there other than to visit or to drive through. In the few number of days I’ve spent in Fort Madison since we first moved there, it’s started to feel a lot more like home. It reminds me of my hometown of Muscatine, my parents’ hometown of La Crosse, Wisconsin1,

, and Clinton, Iowa, where I spent 10 years of my life. And all of those places lay along the Mississippi River, which I no longer believe to be a coincidence.

Less than a week left. Then, it will be summer and time to rest, get caught up with writing, and getting more familiar with my new home. The crazy thing is, I won’t be quite done with traveling, yet. I’ve got book events on Memorial Day weekend and the second weekend of June (check out the link lower in the newsletter where it says “The 2024 Book Tour”), and then my wife is scheduling a visit to Chicago on the first weekend of June2. However, those trips will only involve a small amount of traveling and only a day or two of time in a hotel, so it won’t be that bad.

In the end, I have a lady to see in Fort Madison. I can’t wait.

What I’m Writing

I’ve been getting a bit of writing done regarding The Yank Striker 2 these past couple of weeks. I’m just about ready to complete this story sequence that’s been clogging up my mental capacity and… well, I wouldn’t say I was blocked, but I would say I wasn’t quite sure what order all the words should go down on the page, and what those words should even be.

However, I do think I am on the edge of getting it all down on paper, which is a good thing. Once that is done, I’m going to have to see what my notes look like and start planning for whatever scenes are remaining in the story and get those plans made. I feel like I know what I will want to, but I need to know where those notes are and what they all contain and I’ll be able to move forward.

Of course, it’s going to take a while to figure out where to start, but to make sure I keep up writing productivity, I am going to want to have some projects on tap. Luckily, I have a few I can keep busy on.

What I’m Doing Having to do With Writing

There’s more than a couple appearances I’m making in the next few weeks, but you can check out the link below (The 2024 Book Tour) to look up the details for those. First one will be a week from today in Des Moines.

With all of the road trips and etc., there’s not much to talk about regarding this subject this week. I’ll try to have something to report on for the next newsletter in two weeks.

Actually, there is one more thing. This was something I originally posted on my Instagram page.

I am one of the more useless writers when it comes to branding. People ask me what genre of writer I am, and I say, “well, with The Holy Fool, I wrote a journalism thriller, and with The Yank Striker (and The Yank Striker series) I wrote a soccer drama, and now I’m considering writing a pro wrestling family drama.” Not exactly an advertising-friendly description, is it?

However, I have had a realization about what all these books and/or ideas have have in common. I have considered writing a fantasy project, as I am a fan of the genre. I always have been fascinated with the creation of a new world, something removed from the real world and yet reflecting it. That’s what fantasy does, but isn’t that in a sense what I’ve done with my writings? In The Holy Fool I focused on the subculture of journalism, while in The Yank Striker I focused on the subculture of soccer and (to an extent) college football. Pro wrestling is so much its own subculture it has its own terminology and legends. Isn’t this the same thing in a sense as fantasy writing, minus magic, for example?

Even though my writings are set in a world that mirrors ours, the characters who inhabit them live lives much different than those of the vast majority of people. They are reflections of the real world, but in another sense it is an escape from them. If I had a catchy name to call this type of writing, I might be on to something. Feel free to pitch me some ideas in the comments.

Writing Quote for the Week

I’m glad my mother (and my father, for that matter) always taught me there was no real difference between what men are and what women are. I hope this informs my writing as well.

A man once asked me … how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. “Well,” said the man, “I shouldn’t have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing.” I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.

  • Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society

Writing Advice

My current philosophy regarding providing writing advice here is I’m just as interested in critiquing writing advice from others as I am providing my own writing advice. To be honest, it’s easier to do the former than the latter.

So, there was one little bit of writing advice coming from one of my favorite authors (the master of dialogue, Elmore Leonard) I found to be… somewhat vague. Let me share it here and I’ll attempt to analyze it.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

  • Elmore Leonard

For a single sentence with one verb and eight words in all, there’s a lot to unpack here.

Typically, I am a fan of rewriting and/or the revising process3.

If you take your writing seriously, you should be willing to put in through the revising and editing process at least a few times. Even Hollywood screenwriters making a dozen or more revisions to their scripts is not unheard of.

It’s the first phrase of the sentence which throws me off. What did Leonard mean by something that “sounds like writing?”

In trying to analyze this advice, I’m thinking of what he was known for as an author, what made Hollywood eager to adapt his books into films like Jackie Brown and television series like Justified. Whenever I have either a student or a member of a writing group asking me for advice regarding dialogue, I always suggest they take a look at how Leonard wrote dialogue. Not only was it often humorous and often entertaining, I am always struck by how natural his dialogue is. By this, I mean whenever I read his dialogue, I can see normal people having conversations that sound exactly like this. I can overhear such conversations in coffeehouses, taverns, sports matches, and other everyday situations.

What I can see is Leonard wanting to avoid anything artificial in his writing. He was never one for doing something unrealistically for the sake of some artistic goal. From all of his fiction I have read, he wanted to catch the interest of his readers by showing them not something that sounded like a person playing with words and the order in which they were said, but with authentic human interactions and behavior. I think this could explain why Leonard might advise prospective writers to avoid anything that “sounds like writing.”

Assessment:

Is this good advice? Yes, for the most part. However, if I was going to give guidance to beginning writers what to concentrate on and what to avoid, I would likely not mention this advice to them. If you have to spend five paragraphs or so trying to explain the context behind the advice, it might not be for those writers who are still trying to figure out how to develop and organize ideas, for instance.

TL;DR – good writing advice, but not for beginning writers.

A Few Links About My Books and Appearances

This is a link to my upcoming appearances, which just got updated.

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

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

Shameless Self-Plugs and Notices

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.

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

I wanted to add just a quick description of how The Writing Life works.

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

ALSO… I’m having an event in Des Moines soon. If you sign up for my paid subscription on Substack, you have the right to come to one of my events this year and pick up a FREE autographed copy of either The Holy Fool or The Yank Striker. I look forward to seeing you there.

Final Thoughts

The road, as it is, is getting near the end for this school year and me, and I am looking forward to spending a good portion of this summer catching up on my writing and rest.

See all of you down the road. Writers keep writing and everyone keep safe.

-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. Home of the biggest six pack in the world. Look it up on Wikipedia or whatever, kids. ↩︎
  2. This will be, after more than fifty years of existence, my first substantial train voyage. I’ve long been fascinated by trains. My grandfather worked for a railroad, and my new home is the site of an Amtrak station and a very active railroad freight yard. Even traveling in the coach seats due to only being four hours away from Chicago, it’s still going to be more comfortable than squeezing myself into some coach-class airplane seats. I’m never flying commercial airliners ever again if I can help it.
    Rant and rave over. ↩︎
  3. Some (like me) call it the revising and editing process, others will call it the rewriting process, even though I consider it to be part of the overall writing process. One of the things you will notice about writing is many people will have many different words for the same thing. It’s like martial arts where everyone has different names for the same punches, strikes, and/or holds. ↩︎

The Writing Life, 4 May 2024

The Des Moines River by downtown Des Moines, right next to the Interstate 235 bridge. This blog has given me the opportunity to do some great photography of my home state and the rivers that inspire me personally and artistically.

I am on the road in Pella, Iowa, this week for professional and personal reasons as I continue to wrap up my teaching contract in Central Iowa. However, the writing and writing activities still continue, in quality if not quantity. We’ll talk about all of it here.

The Home Front

A view of the Mississippi River and the Fort Madison Tool Bridge from the newly opened Turnwater Bar and Grill at the Fort Madison Marina.

As of the publication of this newsletter, I’ll have less than three weeks left at my current teaching job at Twin Cedars Community School District (CSD). As much as I’ve enjoyed my work there, I’m starting to feel antsy about moving on, as I spelled out a couple of weeks ago.

Pella seems a bit crowded this week as the city celebrates its well-known tulip festival, so there’s more than a bit of activity around. I have to say Pella has been an acceptable base camp for my on the road activities. And I even made a few appearances at Pella Books, one of the nicer independent bookstores in Iowa, as part of the festival. I’d highly recommend my readers stop there if they’re ever in Pella, or check them out online.

What I’m Writing

I had thought the previous week I would be writing an epic poem about the differences between the Mississippi River I grew up next to and the Des Moines River which I keep running across in my recent travels.

However, I ended up writing four shorter poems I was proud I managed to whip up in a week’s time. If you want to read them (for free for a little while before they go into the paid archives), you can check them out here.

I do plan to put out that epic poem during May’s Poetry Night. Stay tuned.

Regardless, I also feel quite successful this week because… I finally got more progress done regarding The Yank Striker 2. After weeks and weeks of no progress on the book, all of a sudden I manage to put together more than a thousand new words for the story. I spent so much time mucking around and making excuses for getting on with things, it’s so much of a relief to making progress.

As far as the timetable for when The Yank Striker 2 gets completed, I don’t have a solid date. I do believe I want to get the rough draft done this year and the final draft ready for publication during the first half of next year.

If I stick to this (I hope), it would still be the fastest turnaround for a project I’ve had yet, about two years. I want to try and speed things up to where I’m producing a novel-length project every year. What I will need to line up are some people I need to have in place to make sure I have a solid project. This includes beta readers, a proofreader at the end, and I need to have a cover artist. While I appreciate the work my publishers did on my first two books, I want to see what might happen if I go out on the open market and ask if anyone might be interested in working with me1.

What I’m Doing Having to do With Writing

I’ve had the opportunity to do some site maintenance both on Substack and WordPress. I believe everything is caught up regarding the access to the site, so that’s great news.

At some point, I need to take a closer look at my recommendation list. There are so many great writers on Substack and different places, I need to do a better job of letting people know who’s doing some great writing I’ve come across. It’s not like I have a lot of money around to give people, surely2.

So what I can do is let people know about all the writers here who have something good to say. In fact, I’ll mention a few of those writers below after a long absence of recommendations here in the newsletter.

Also, I am researching how to put together chapbooks for my poems. I have the feeling before the year is out, I will likely be hawking my first chapbook at some of my appearances, making me a dual literary threat, lol.

Writing Quote(s) for the Week

This is absolutely true. You can take advice from critics, but in the end, these are stories and you can like or dislike whatever you prefer.

As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.

  • Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

Also, I am including likely the most well-known quote of Bill Wundram, the longtime reporter and columnist for what became the Quad City Times beginning in 1944 and only wrapping up in 2022, passing away the next year at 98 years old. I had the honor of meeting Wundram a few times during my career as a journalist, but I mostly observed him on the written page. It would be a saying he would repeat in his columns, usually in response to some long-neglected issue or problem in the Quad Cities.

Is anybody there? Does anybody care?

  • Bill Wundram

Reading Recommendations

It’s been way too long since I’ve recommended a few writers and articles to everyone, so I decided to include a few here. Some I’ve recommended before, while others I’m mentioning here for the first time.

Ed Tibbetts has been writing a lot about the Quad Cities of eastern Iowa and western Illinois just as much as he did when he was a top political reporter for the Quad City Times. While a lot of his coverage has centered on the trials and tribulations of the Davenport City Council and what they don’t want to share with the public, I was interested in this article about what the majority party in Iowa (the Republican Party)’s vision for the teaching of history in the state was.

Kyle Munson, like Ed a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, put out this article about the new book, What Works in Community News. The new book by Ellen Clegg and Dan Kennedy is a more complex and nuanced examination of the successes of local news and how there’s no one solution to a problem many good journalists are trying to solve.

Another former Quad City Times writer, Tory Brecht, looks into a long-neglected property in Davenport, Iowa with this article. In the process, he in a sense has a seance to resurrect the spirit of Bill Wundram, a Times reporter and columnist who had an absurdly long 70-year-plus career there and became legend throughout the Midwest, never mind just the Quad Cities.

And for something completely different, I recently ran across OK Doomer, written by Jessica Wildfire, in my Substack recommendations. She does some great articles about public health and climate change, but what first caught my eye was this piece where she described why she’s walking away from her academic career and the reasons behind it. I was impressed by the breadth of her knowledge about what higher education is truly right and the direct efficiency of her language.

It’s collapsing because nobody really cares about it. As a tenured professor, I’m not supposed to say that.

It’s true.

Nobody really wants to admit they don’t care about education. Some people get angry when you point out this simple fact. Everyone wants to talk about how much they care about education. They want to watch movies about great teachers. They want to complain about the bad ones.

  • Jessica Wildfire

There’s actually quite a few more articles I’ve enjoyed over the past month, but some of those might get a Substack Notes mention.

A Few Links About My Books and Appearances

This is a link to my upcoming appearances, which just got updated.

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

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

Shameless Self-Plugs and Notices

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

While you’re here, I wanted to add just a quick description of how The Writing Life works. With a free subscription, you always will have access to my newsletters on the first and third weekends of the month, as well as selected articles up to a month after they’ve been published. However, If you have a paid subscription with me (which is pretty inexpensive), you will have access to all of my articles here, all of my archives, and my eternal gratitude. Plus, probably some first-dibs on possible future offers.

Final Thoughts

I’m almost done with the road, Hon3.

Looking forward to hanging out in Fort Madison full time and making it my true home. But wherever you are, that’s home to me.

See all of you later. Writers keep writing and all of you keep safe.

-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 is the part of the newsletter where if you happen to be an artist and would love to illustrate the covers of a soccer drama series for some cash, feel free to email me at jasonliegois@liegois.media. ↩︎
  2. That’s why I don’t stress out because I don’t have a massive amount of paid subscribers. ↩︎
  3. My wife if you couldn’t guess. ↩︎