A Week in the Writing Life, 3 September 2023
Summer's wrapping up, but unfortunately the summer weather is not
Let’s talk about writing and a few other odds and ends.
Home Front Stuff
Well, it was pretty decent weather we had this week, comparatively, but it’s going to get into the nineties today and won’t cool down until next weekend, at least. And I think we’re not going to be getting any rain for the foreseeable future. You wonder about how all this wild weather is going to eventually have an effect on the crops in Iowa.
Labor Day weekend in Iowa has seen my wife and I watching the Iowa Hawkeyes starting their season at home, but we were happy to watch it on the television. We don’t want to sweat to death when the weather will be in the nineties, and those benches at Kinnick Stadium are actually pretty narrow.
What I’ve Been Writing
Not to talk numbers here, but I think I’ve seen something of an improvement over this past week. I usually try to meet a quota of 500 words per day of fiction or nonfiction written totally out of the context of my working life1.
I feel confident I have been at least a little more active on The Yank Striker 2, especially beginning to fill out a scene that happens to be [SLIGHT SPOILER TO The Yank Striker] young DJ Ryan’s debut match with Donford FC. Once I actually properly revise that scene, I think it’s going to be a funny highlight of the book, once I actually give it a good revising.
I’m hopeful I can put together a rough draft of The Yank Striker 2 by the end of this year or the early part of next year. With some sufficient revising and editing, and keeping ambitious for deadlines, I would love for a release date on this project sometime just before June 2024.
This would be the most ambitious completion timeline for any of my novels to date. I was probably writing out the first notes for The Holy Fool back in 2010, but it did not head out for publication until 2019. And I was seriously thinking about how I would put together a fiction book based in the worlds of American college football and English soccer a good decade before The Yank Striker was published this year. So, completing a book in a signle year is a bit ambitious. However, I do know my productivity as a writer has increased considerably since the days when I first started writing those books. In addition, since this is the second book in a series, much of the leg work for the book already has been completed.
I also think I need to review my outline notes to the book. I want to make sure I just add the essential scenes to the story and leave out pretty much everything else. I get the feeling if I do this, I might wind up with a shorter book than what I anticipated. However, that’s not the worst thing. I have the feeling a book set during the course of a soccer season might get repetitive if I showed everything I could show.
Also, I’ve been reading The Barcelona Complex, a 2021 book by Simon Kuper. It’s a study of the history and culture of FC Barcelona, the former club of Lionel Messi and many others. I’m glad I’ve had the chance to read it as part of the continuing research I’m doingh for the The Yank Striker series. You will see a full book review of the book tomorrow here on Substack and on Liegois Media.
Where I’ll Be and Where You Can Find my Books
Here’s my upcoming appearances:
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.
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.
The Holy Fool and The Yank Striker are available in paperback and ebook formats. The links for those books are on the sidebar here and in my author’s profile.
If you want to go into a bookstore in Iowa and pick up one of my novels, you can go to:
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.
This Week in Writing Advice
For this week, maybe just check out the section on What I’m Writing, especially the bit about how I’m concentrating on just a few essential scenes in the story for the rough draft. This prevents you from having a bloated rough draft, helps propel your story forward, and if you need to add some additional scenes, you can always include these during the revising process. I’m going to be honest, though, a lot of those scenes really aren’t necessary.
What I’ve Been Reading/General Recommendations
I might make some further recommendations during Labor Day on Substack Notes if I can think of it heh heh.
For now, check out this article from
, one of the first people I ran into when I got onto Substack, where she has a good suggestion for fighting writing burnout2.
Writing Quote of the Week
This rings true for me.
Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?
― Cornelia Funke
Final Thoughts
Sorry I was late again. I’m going to start writing the next edition, like, tomorrow, on top of everything else.
I have a shout-out to Georgia from
tech support who helped me figure out exactly why my photos weren’t showing up on social media posts. It was a weird problem I had for about a month until the support people finally clued me in to what was happening, so thanks to her.Hope you have a great Labor Day weekend. I always love hearing from people in the comments or by email, so say hi or let me know what made you push the subscribe button or what might tempt you to do so.
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For example, I don’t count lesson plans or special education documents in my daily writing count.
Feel free to consider this some additional writing advice, as well.