A Week in the Writing Life, 17 June 2023

I'm surprised I wrote anything this week because the US Men's National Team is playing, baby

I’ll be here in Des Moines this weekend.

Another summer week has passed by, and it feels like I was keeping busy without getting a lot of work done. Of course, there were times where I slightly vegged out, but I did get some things done.

Stop in for a while. We’ll talk.

Home Front Stuff

My wife Laura has taken to joking I watch soccer all the time. One of the advantages of being a fan of soccer (football)¹ is there is literally no off-season for the sport in a practical sense. Most of the club leagues in Europe run from August to May (a little longer this year due to the weird World Cup interruption in November), while Major League Soccer here in America runs from about March to November, and some Central and South American leagues run a similar schedule.

Also, the summer is typically the time for big international tournaments involving the national teams of various countries. The CONCACAF² Nations League and Gold Cup tournaments just got started this week, and there are various qualifiers and tournaments active in Europe and South America³.

Basically, this is my way of explaining why I didn’t get any writing done Thursday when the US Men’s National Team (USMNT) played Mexico in the Nations League semifinal and beat them Tres A Cero. It’s also my way of explaining why I’d consider writing a whole fiction series about a burgeoning American soccer star (The Yank Striker) since I’m just that obsessed over the sport⁴.

In other news, my daughter’s staying over for the weekend and I’m expecting to meet with both my kids for dinner tonight. So, there’s that.

What I’ve Been Writing

I’ve continued to make some slow progress on Book Two of The Yank Striker series, but not quite as much as I would like. It’s just a matter of sitting down and putting what’s in my head on the page and start to mess around with it (my highly technical term for the revision process).

I’ve ended up writing a lot more on the blog in the past few months. Earlier in the week I heard of the death of Cormac McCarthy and I decided to put something together on it. He’s not one of my childhood idols or anything, but I do think he’s one of the better writers I’ve encountered on the page and I don’t usually say that about “literary” authors.

Although this weekly edition of the newsletter will always be free, I also am interested in putting together more paid-subscriber exclusive material. I want people to get something of value for subscribing to me, even as I make sure to keep it affordable for anyone who wants to upgrade their subscription.

So, next weekend, I am going to put out an exclusive article connected to my new book series The Yank Striker. In my new book, readers are introduced to Donford Football Club, a Premier League team located in the East End of London, which offers the title character, DJ Ryan, a team tryout. Of course, no such club actually exists, except for in my book. The article will be “A History of Donford FC” and will give you some background to this world I’ve built for the series. I hope you give it a look.

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

As of this writing, I’m hoping to be in Des Moines for the Author’s on the Riverwalk event. I’ll let you know how it went next week, but I always look forward to getting out, meeting people interested in literature, and talking about what I write.

On separate posts, I’ve been posting an updated list of appearances I’m making this summer and beyond. I’ll also be posting those on Substack Notes, Facebook, and Instagram. If you are not sure where my links are for not only my Facebook and Instagram pages, but my links for The Yank Striker, either go to my author’s page on Substack or the Link in Bio Page on my Wordpress. You’ll find it all there.

Trying to promote the site, my book series, and my appearances has been a bit of work as well. I don’t pretend to know everything about marketing and social media, but I might know a little more than I did before.

What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations

I’ll continue adding a couple of these every week, but I’m tempted to restrict the majority of them to Substack Notes posts. Those I don’t get to here I’ll post on here. There’s so much good writing on Substack and Wordpress, but there’s no way anybody can read it all and get anything done in a week.

Even my kids were asking me about the recent reports of what the US government knows about UFOs.

Erik Hoel

did a great job of debunking those reports (and the news organizations breathlessly reporting them.

Some of my favorite writers on Substack, the

Iowa Writers Collaborative

, got together IRL this past weekend in the Amana Colonies (look it up, non-Iowa readers) and talked about how they’ve been doing something new in the world of Iowa journalism this past year. Go check them out.

Iowa Writers' Collaborative meets in the Amanas

Laura Jedeed

put out a new post on an article she did about what she saw at the recent Turning Point USA convention. Definitely worth a read.

Disco Fever

Finally, over at

On Substack

, Hamish McKenzie put out an interesting exploration of how other writers are using Substack Notes that might give me some ideas.

Laurie Stone is using Notes to seduce new readers

Writing Quote(s) of the Week

Two quotes for this week. The first quote from Stephen King comes via Veronica Blake, an author I follow on Facebook:

Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.

• Stephen King

And the next quote on writing comes from Cormac McCarthy (RIP):

I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else.

• Cormac McCarthy

Final Thoughts

That’s it for this week. Keep an eye open for the paid-exclusive content I mentioned for next weekend, which will see me back in my hometown of Muscatine. Writers keep writing and all of you keep safe.

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1. I use the term soccer here typically since I’m for the most part writing for an American audience, but in other contexts (like my football series The Yank Striker) I use football at the very least interchangeably with soccer.

2. The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, the regional governing body of football.

3. This also is not taking into account the start of the transfer season in soccer, of which the whole Lionel Messi move to Inter Miami is just a small portion of that news. Picture a Hot Stove baseball off-season involving dozens of leagues on six continents.

4. For those readers not particularly interested in the sport of soccer, I also promise this will be the maximum amount of soccer-related material you will likely read in my weekly newsletter. Thank you.