The Writing Life, 15 November 2024
As 2024 starts wrapping up, I'm trying to take advantage of the time left to meet some goals.
The end of the year is coming faster than I anticipated. It feels like at times my fingers or mind are weighed down with lead even though I have a clear idea of what I want to write when it comes to fiction for certain.
46 days left in the year. If this was a 5,000 or 10,000 meter race, this would be the time when I’d have to start sprinting. I’m not too much for the actual sprinting nowadays, but I might be able to manage the literary equivalent.
Let’s talk writing again.
The Home Front
We (my wife Laura and myself) are continuing to settle in the new homestead. All of the essential work took place a couple of weeks ago - at least, all of the things needed to live there and be there.
Now, we’re in the process of doing little things for the place, like reinstalling closet doors, having someone else install a garage door opener for us, and beginning to sort through the boxes of belongings that have been transported between four different residences over the past five years. That’s a lot of moving, and I think my wife and I are of the same mind that we want to stay in the same place for a while.
Not too much else to mention about home, except my son has moved into his new home in Des Moines with his girlfriend. He has a lot more to do, but he’s far more talented with home improvements and repairs than I’m ever going to be, but I was glad to help him finish moving in there.
What I’m Writing
Current progress on my ongoing projects:
The Yank Striker 2, the sequel for The Yank Striker: I’m proud to have rushed past the 63,000-word mark for the rough draft. Like I said in the beginning, I know where I’m headed to with the text, I just need to get over my insatiable need to have a perfect first draft rather than what I need to be doing if I am an actual serious writer, which is throw something as fast as possible into a document or onto a page and then wait to make it into something coherent somewhere around the fourth draft.
My mini-goal is to have a completed 75,000 word rough draft by 1 January 2025. With 46 days left in the year, I’d have to average just over 260 words per day on this project alone just to make the quota. I think it is absolutely possible.The Untitled Pro Wrestling Family Drama project: No real progress recently. In my planning, this is the project I want to work on when I let The Yank Striker 2 rough draft sit for a while, so I want to have something to work on. I just need to figure out where I want to take the storyline from where it now is.
The Untitled Liegois Poetry Chapbook: No recent progress on this, but I am feeling good about the book’s layout and design based on some feedback from my poetry friends. I want to check in with some local printers and see what it would cost me to move forward from here. I want to be a published poet, even if I am publishing myself.
In addition, I toyed around with some fan fiction I've left long dormant, and a glance at some of the writings in my "morgue" of old projects might have inspired something. All that I've got on a document is the document and a title, but the rest of the story is cooking in my head. We'll have to see about it.
Writing Quote(s) of the Week:
I decided on not one, not two, but three quotes this week from a writer I discovered in college and has become one of my authors ever since. Rest in Power Octavia E. Butler (1946-2007).
I don't write about good and evil with this enormous dichotomy. I write about people.
Octavia E. Butler
Everything is political in one way or another.
1997 interview in Conversations with Octavia Butler
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God
Is Change.
Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
Writing Advice
It’s been a while since I’ve done this. Whether I have given this advice in the past or not, I think it is still valuable for those who have not heard it. It might seem simple, but I’ll discuss it here.
The following is a paraphrase of a conversation I had with a high school student about an essay he was writing. Writers sometimes don’t think they have enough to write about. They might not have been curious enough to ask enough questions.
Student: I’m not sure what else to write about. This is what I’ve written so far.
Me: All right. Show me what you’ve written so far.
(The student does so.)
Student: I don’t know what else to put in here.
Me: Okay. You wrote this sentence that told us this, right?
Student: Yeah.
Me: So, why did this happen? If you explain it, there’s another sentence there.
Student: Oh, all right.
Me: What about this next sentence? What happened because of this?
Student: Oh, okay.
Me: You did it with the following sentence here, right? You showed how this happened because of this.
Student: Yeah. Honestly, I just threw everything in there and hoped it was enough.
Me: Yeah, I get it. But you doing that is the same as you writing a whole bunch of information on a whole bunch of 3x5 cards and tossing them at me expecting I’m going to make sense of it. And I’m a good reader, but I’m not that good.
Student: Okay.
Me: See how “because” shows why this happened? See how “then” and “as a result” show what’s coming up? See how “for example” lets the reader know you’re going to give some more explanation for what you just wrote? You need to connect the ideas.
Student: All right. Thanks.
I tell my students: I can do one particular trick. But I do it pretty well.
What I’m Doing Having to Do With Writing
(AKA personal appearances)
I (also sometimes known as The Dude In Purple) have some events coming up 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 events1:
I will 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, and this weekend I’m hoping to reach out to some other groups as well. Hope to see you at one of those places.
How to support me😊.
Go to the links on the side if you are reading this on a desktop/laptop or the links on my profile to check out some of my other links. For example, in those places, you can find out about my first book, the journalism thriller The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt, as well as the first book in my The Yank Striker series, The Yank Striker: a Footballer’s Beginning.
If you happen to visit these fine independent book stores, you can find my books there:
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.
I love it if you are signed up for my free subscription, but I would love it if you signed up for a paid one. The monthly rate is the lowest I can put it ($5 per month) but my yearly rate of $35 is a steal at less than three/fifths the monthly rate.
Now, if you are interested in supporting me but can’t quite afford a full subscription (although my paid subscription is just five dollars a month or an even better steal at thirty-five dollars a year), I have a new option for you.
I am now on Venmo. If you are interested in a donation of whatever you can provide, you can just send whatever you can afford to there. You can choose to buy me a cup of coffee or whatever you can afford. Just click the button below or scan the QR code below to help out. Anything you can provide helps me keep things going.
Final Thoughts
That’s about it for now. All you writers keep writing, and everyone else keep safe.
-30-
Promotional image courtesy of the sponsoring organization.