A Week in the Writing Life, 21 August 2023

Finally, maybe, making some progress on some new stuff... and not.

Some of the woods around my childhood neighborhood in Muscatine, Iowa, 11 August 2023.

Hi, everyone. Let’s talk writing.

Home Front Stuff

I’m in the middle of in-service days for school, which means I am once again attempting to find time to write. Obviously, I don’t have as much time to write when I’m in school for several hours every day. Then again, there have been more than a few times I’ve seriously considered whether I write better on tight deadlines or with a small amount of time to work.

It’ll be interesting to see if I’m more productive during the next few weeks or not heheh, I got way too lackadaisical.

And on that note…

What I’ve Been Writing

Again, not much.

I have to keep this in perspective, however. In my younger years - that is, from my college years to about a decade and a half ago - I might go years without having written anything of value. Or, if I did, there wasn’t much size to the writing. It wasn’t until about the end of this period, when I first started developing what became The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt, did I start to try and mold myself into an actual writer rather than just simply claim to be a writer.

Since I’ve begun this learning process, and especially since I started blogging regularly on Wordpress (Liegois Media) starting in 2017 and keeping consistent records of my writing productivity, I’ve not gone for more than a few days in a row without writing. In fact, 2022 was my most productive year ever writing from a word-count perspective, and this year might at least match or equal it, my current dry streak notwithstanding.

I think the point is, I’m very glad I take being a productive writer seriously. I’m glad I’m constantly attempting to better myself, and I devote more time to the craft than I do almost any other hobby I have (although my wife Laura might say watching soccer is right up there as far as the time I spend doing it).

However, I think there are times where you have to take a bit of a brain break, especially if you have something going on like getting ready for a brand new school year and hoping it goes well. Just don’t let it go on for a couple of years, trust me¹.

One bit of good news is I managed to get more of a scene written on The Yank Striker 2. Now, if I actually finish that scene in the next week, I’ll be feeling really accomplished.

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

As the summer is ending, I’m setting aside a few weekends for appearances at local book fairs and other events, and I’m hoping the weather is much cooler than it is out today. So far, here’s the events I’ve got planned².

• From 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 9, I’ll be at the Groundswell Cafe, 201 3rd Ave. SW, Cedar Rapids, for an Indie Author Book Expo.

• (JUST ADDED) From 12-6 p.m. Oct 1, I’ll be at the Windsor Heights Book Fair, 1141 69th St., Windsor Heights. It’ll be my first time at this event, so I’m looking forward to it.

• From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 14, at MERGE, 136 Dubuque St., Iowa City, I’ll be participating in the book fair as part of the Iowa City Book Festival that week.

• And from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, I will be at the Elwell Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds as part of the 8th Annual Indie Author Book Expo.

By the way, both of my books, The Holy Fool and The Yank Striker, are now available in paperback and ebook formats. Check out the links for those books on the sidebar here and in my author’s profile. Any purchases (and reviews) are absolutely appreciated.

If you actually want to go into a bookstore in Iowa and pick up one of my novels, there’s a few places to do so in Iowa. They include:

• Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave # S1, Des Moines

• Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella

• The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

All of the above are fantastic locations for an afternoon of book hunting.

What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations

If you got a text or email from me last week, I didn’t mean to clutter up your inboxes or DMs. I just found out there was a new way of spreading the word about my Substack, so I decided to take advantage of it.

Now you can find and follow friends on Substack

Writing Quote of the Week

I talked a little bit about using commonly understood words, and here’s Uncle Steve with an interesting measurement regarding when a word is too obscure to use. (I say one exception to this idea is if the word in question can help tell a story in a way no other one can.)

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
― Stephen King

Final Thoughts

That is all for now. I was going to have a bit more, but there’s one or two items I think I’m going to post separately tonight not to bog the newsletter down too much. Let’s see if I can surprise a couple people.

As always, a free subscription to my newsletter is helpful, but a paid subscription would be a big help, of course. If there’s something I could provide here in this writing newsletter to get you to hit the subscribe button, I’d love to know about it.

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1. Even though I held off on the writing advice section this week, I have to admit this section is sort of turning into writing advice lite in some ways. :)

2. Looking at all of this below reminds me I need to get all these dates in my Google Calendar.