Tag: The Writing Life

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.

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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. 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. ↩︎

Returning to the River: A brief announcement

Hi, everyone.

I know I promised you some original writing, maybe even fiction, this weekend. Let me assure you it is coming – at 5 p.m. Central Time today. However, I wanted to take a moment now and let everyone know about some personal news.

It turns out I’m soon to be on the move, and both my wife and I will be returning to more familiar territory and a very familiar river.

My wife Laura has just accepted a new job as a city manager for Fort Madison, Iowa. It’s two hours away from where I’m living in Chariton, Iowa, right in south central Iowa. It will be much closer to our hometown of Muscatine, Iowa, where my parents, her mother, and eventually my daughter will be living. It’s a great opportunity for her, and I couldn’t be prouder.

As for me, I’ll be joining her after the school year’s over and seeing what opportunities present themselves. I will miss my school district, as it was a good one (Twin Cedars) and I have been having a good year working with a great group of colleagues. However, Laura’s been my home for 25-plus years, so I go where she does.

I do plan to keep in touch with those I’ve made friends and acquaintances with in Chariton and the area, especially some of my work colleagues and area writers I’ve had a chance to meet here during the past three years. However, I’m hoping to reconnect with some of my old friends and writing enthusiasts from the Muscatine/Quad Cities area, as well as any new ones from around the Fort Madison/Burlington area.

My current home.

Chariton will always be a part of my life, I believe. It will be the place where I finished my second book, started a few other projects, and started writing on Substack. It is likely going to be the last home me, Laura, and our two children ever live in again after a brief period when my son came to stay with us and work in Chariton and my daughter was attending the University of Iowa from her laptop.

Downtown Chariton, Iowa

However, I’m going to be closer to more of my family, and closer to the Mississippi River, where I’ve lived next to more than forty years. The older I’ve gotten, the more I have been fascinated by rivers in general and the Mississippi in particular, and visitors to this page might have seen a poem or two inspired by river life. When I had the chance to tour Fort Madison recently and watched the sun dancing off the surface of the waters, the sight felt so much like home to me I could barely shake it.

The Fort Madison, Iowa riverfront.

I can’t wait to get started on the new adventure. I’ll probably tell you a bit about it here, too.

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, 2 December 2023: Sorry this is a bit late

I’ve had more than a little bit going on the past couple of weeks and all that plus the holidays has been a considerable time drain. When you factor in my traveling halfway across the state of Iowa and back again today, as well as the rest, this newsletter might actually might be one of the shortest I’ve done rather than a substantial recap of how productive I’ve been over the past two weeks, which would be a massive exaggeration1.

So let’s talk, even though there’s been only a little bit of writing going on.

The Home Front

There’s been more than a few things going at home, and some of it I prefer to keep to myself. One of the things I will share is the passing of my father-in-law this week. Larry had been in ill health for several years, but his condition had gotten worse over the past several weeks until he entered hospice care at his home on the Iowa River in Louisa County.

He and my wife Laura had not always had a good relationship, but it had improved during the last decade-plus of his life, which I was happy to see. He was also able to get to know my kids then as well, which I was very grateful for.

Even though we knew this day was coming sooner rather than later, it was still a rough situation when it arrived. All I’m glad for is he’s at peace and Laura was able to properly wish him goodbye, because that’s not something everyone gets.

What I’ve Been Writing

I haven’t been writing a massive amount, but I did whip up two new poems last week during the Thanksgiving break, if you hadn’t noticed.

Unlike some of my previous poetry posts, this was actually brand-new material and not some poems I had lying around from past years. I was happy I was able to put them together, and I’m finding myself challenged by the prospect of putting together verse with more vivid descriptions and word choice than I typically use in my prose.

There’s an interesting story connecting the two poems I can’t quite get into at the moment. I’ll get to it eventually, however.

I’ve been lagging on some of the other projects, however, including The Yank Striker 2 and some of the others. However, I’ve been counting up my word totals and even without adding in whatever pitiful words I wrote this past week and beyond, I’m already ahead of the 200,000-word total I had hoped to meet at the beginning of this year. If I can get a little more consistency with my writing productivity, I’d be happier, but it’s a good milestone to have.

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

Very little, although I am planning today to meet with some of my writing group friends in Des Moines for a holiday get-together today. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Really haven’t been able to make many other related plans. I’ll let you know if any come up.

Writing Quote(s) of the Week

Two quotes of wisdom today. The first one by fantasy novelist, fellow Midwesterner and fellow Gen X writer Patrick Rothfuss:

If you want to write a fantasy story with Norse gods, sentient robots, and telepathic dinosaurs, you can do just that. Want to throw in a vampire and a lesbian unicorn while you’re at it2? Go ahead. Nothing’s off limits. But the endless possibility of the genre is a trap. It’s easy to get distracted by the glittering props available to you and forget what you’re supposed to be doing: telling a good story. Don’t get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That’s a story. Handled properly, it’s more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.

Patrick Rothfuss

I never related to all of these writing quotes about how difficult it was to write and how much psychological torture writers must put themselves through. On the other hand, this quote was much more relatable to my experiences toward writing and its importance in my life.

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.

Graham Greene, Ways of Escape

Where You Can Find my Books

I’ve got links to my books in paperback and ebook format in the sidebar here, but you can get them in person at these fine Iowa bookstores:

  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave # S1, Des Moines
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
  • 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 it for right now. It was a bit tough to get out this week’s newsletter, but sometimes you take pride in the couple hundred words you squeeze out of your brain over a long night rather than the few hundred flowing out of it on other days.

Next week I owe everyone (and myself) some new fiction. Right now I’m leaning toward an except from The Yank Striker 2 or this pro wrestling project bubbling in the creativity cauldron off to the side. You’ll see it next week, though.

So, this month:

  • December 9: new short fiction/excerpt.
  • December 16: The Writing Life newsletter.
  • December 23: Poetry Night at the Writing Life.
  • December 29: Not sure – might take the holiday off. We’ll see. 🙂

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  1. Then again, I originally thought I was going to have three weeks between official newsletters rather than just two of them. I’m the sort of person who has to triple-check each event on my calendar and even then check it one more time. ↩︎
  2. Don’t give me ideas. (Insert grinning emoji here.) ↩︎

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

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

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

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

What I’ve Been Writing

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

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

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

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

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

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

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

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

Writing Advice for the Week

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

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

Hilary Mantel

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

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

Writing Quote of the Week

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

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

Vladimir Nabokov

Where You Can Find my Books

I’ve got links to my books in paperback and ebook format in the sidebar here, but you can get them in person at these fine Iowa bookstores:

  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave # S1, Des Moines
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella. Pella Books is celebrating its 24th anniversary this month, and they’ve got more than a few events to celebrate. Go ahead and check them out.
  • The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

All three are great independent bookstores who deserve your support.

Final Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Schedule for the Blog:

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

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

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

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

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