The Writing Life, 18 May 2024
Still in internal exile in south central Iowa, but trying to get some writing done as I finish up my time there.
It’s nearly the beginning of summer and even though I don’t like really hot weather, at the moment it can’t come fast enough. Let’s talk about writing and life, not necessarily in that order.
The Home Front
I am still on the road in Pella, Iowa, this week for professional and personal reasons as I continue to wrap up my teaching contract in south central Iowa. It’s quite obvious to me the existence I have been living for the past three months has been affecting me mentally.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m in a lot better position from a personal, family, and professional viewpoint than I have been in a while. This place has been part of my history for the past four years. It’s where I wrapped up my second book, The Yank Striker. I saw my kids progress from just out of high school to young adulthood (even though they weren’t living with us most of the time) and my wife got her first opportunity to run a city.
And the past few months have been intriguing. I’ve had the chance to spend some time in the most Dutch city in America, I believe (Pella, Iowa). I’ve laid my head for a while in the middle of the biggest city in Iowa (Des Moines), and I honestly enjoyed the experience, walking to where I needed to go and living in the hustle and bustle of a town where I could find just about anything I needed.
However, this has been a long road, to be honest. For a while, due to personal circumstances, I wasn’t quite sure where I would be staying from week to week. All of this uncertainty, being away from my wife and others, started to wear on me. When our dog Winnie passed away last month and I wasn’t there, it pretty much symbolized everything for me. I do believe this uncertainty and the sheer amount of time driving from one place to another - especially at one point where I had a two-hour round trip commute to work - affected my motivation to, and eventually my productivity, when I wrote.
I’m now less than a week to saying good bye to south central Iowa, and I’m doubting I’ll ever return there other than to visit or to drive through. In the few number of days I’ve spent in Fort Madison since we first moved there, it’s started to feel a lot more like home. It reminds me of my hometown of Muscatine, my parents’ hometown of La Crosse, Wisconsin1, and Clinton, Iowa, where I spent 10 years of my life. And all of those places lay along the Mississippi River, which I no longer believe to be a coincidence.
Less than a week left. Then, it will be summer and time to rest, get caught up with writing, and getting more familiar with my new home. The crazy thing is, I won’t be quite done with traveling, yet. I’ve got book events on Memorial Day weekend and the second weekend of June (check out the link lower in the newsletter where it says “The 2024 Book Tour”), and then my wife is scheduling a visit to Chicago on the first weekend of June2. However, those trips will only involve a small amount of traveling and only a day or two of time in a hotel, so it won’t be that bad.
In the end, I have a lady to see in Fort Madison. I can’t wait.
What I’m Writing
I’ve been getting a bit of writing done regarding The Yank Striker 2 these past couple of weeks. I’m just about ready to complete this story sequence that’s been clogging up my mental capacity and… well, I wouldn’t say I was blocked, but I would say I wasn’t quite sure what order all the words should go down on the page, and what those words should even be.
However, I do think I am on the edge of getting it all down on paper, which is a good thing. Once that is done, I’m going to have to see what my notes look like and start planning for whatever scenes are remaining in the story and get those plans made. I feel like I know what I will want to, but I need to know where those notes are and what they all contain and I’ll be able to move forward.
Of course, it’s going to take a while to figure out where to start, but to make sure I keep up writing productivity, I am going to want to have some projects on tap. Luckily, I have a few I can keep busy on.
What I’m Doing Having to do With Writing
There’s more than a couple appearances I’m making in the next few weeks, but you can check out the link below (The 2024 Book Tour) to look up the details for those. First one will be a week from today in Des Moines.
With all of the road trips and etc., there’s not much to talk about regarding this subject this week. I’ll try to have something to report on for the next newsletter in two weeks.
Actually, there is one more thing. This was something I originally posted on my Instagram page.
I am one of the more useless writers when it comes to branding. People ask me what genre of writer I am, and I say, “well, with The Holy Fool, I wrote a journalism thriller, and with The Yank Striker (and The Yank Striker series) I wrote a soccer drama, and now I’m considering writing a pro wrestling family drama.” Not exactly an advertising-friendly description, is it?
However, I have had a realization about what all these books and/or ideas have have in common. I have considered writing a fantasy project, as I am a fan of the genre. I always have been fascinated with the creation of a new world, something removed from the real world and yet reflecting it. That’s what fantasy does, but isn’t that in a sense what I’ve done with my writings? In The Holy Fool I focused on the subculture of journalism, while in The Yank Striker I focused on the subculture of soccer and (to an extent) college football. Pro wrestling is so much its own subculture it has its own terminology and legends. Isn’t this the same thing in a sense as fantasy writing, minus magic, for example?
Even though my writings are set in a world that mirrors ours, the characters who inhabit them live lives much different than those of the vast majority of people. They are reflections of the real world, but in another sense it is an escape from them. If I had a catchy name to call this type of writing, I might be on to something. Feel free to pitch me some ideas in the comments.
Writing Quote for the Week
I’m glad my mother (and my father, for that matter) always taught me there was no real difference between what men are and what women are. I hope this informs my writing as well.
A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.
Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society
Writing Advice
My current philosophy regarding providing writing advice here is I’m just as interested in critiquing writing advice from others as I am providing my own writing advice. To be honest, it’s easier to do the former than the latter.
So, there was one little bit of writing advice coming from one of my favorite authors (the master of dialogue, Elmore Leonard) I found to be… somewhat vague. Let me share it here and I’ll attempt to analyze it.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
Elmore Leonard
For a single sentence with one verb and eight words in all, there’s a lot to unpack here.
Typically, I am a fan of rewriting and/or the revising process3. If you take your writing seriously, you should be willing to put in through the revising and editing process at least a few times. Even Hollywood screenwriters making a dozen or more revisions to their scripts is not unheard of.
It’s the first phrase of the sentence which throws me off. What did Leonard mean by something that “sounds like writing?”
In trying to analyze this advice, I’m thinking of what he was known for as an author, what made Hollywood eager to adapt his books into films like Jackie Brown and television series like Justified. Whenever I have either a student or a member of a writing group asking me for advice regarding dialogue, I always suggest they take a look at how Leonard wrote dialogue. Not only was it often humorous and often entertaining, I am always struck by how natural his dialogue is. By this, I mean whenever I read his dialogue, I can see normal people having conversations that sound exactly like this. I can overhear such conversations in coffeehouses, taverns, sports matches, and other everyday situations.
What I can see is Leonard wanting to avoid anything artificial in his writing. He was never one for doing something unrealistically for the sake of some artistic goal. From all of his fiction I have read, he wanted to catch the interest of his readers by showing them not something that sounded like a person playing with words and the order in which they were said, but with authentic human interactions and behavior. I think this could explain why Leonard might advise prospective writers to avoid anything that “sounds like writing.”
Assessment:
Is this good advice? Yes, for the most part. However, if I was going to give guidance to beginning writers what to concentrate on and what to avoid, I would likely not mention this advice to them. If you have to spend five paragraphs or so trying to explain the context behind the advice, it might not be for those writers who are still trying to figure out how to develop and organize ideas, for instance.
TL;DR - good writing advice, but not for beginning writers.
A Few Links About My Books and Appearances
This is a link to my upcoming appearances, which just got updated.
My first book is a journalism thriller set in Chicago during the turbulent days of the 2008 election and the start of the Great Recession. Check out more about it here.
My second book, the first in the The Yank Striker series, is a soccer drama telling the story of the beginning of a young American’s career as a player. There’s more about it here.
Shameless Self-Plugs and Notices
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.
I’m always looking for some new places to place my books (especially in eastern Iowa), so feel free to hit me up in the comments if anyone has a suggestion.
I wanted to add just a quick description of how The Writing Life works.
With a free subscription, you always will have access to my newsletters on the first and third weekends of the month, as well as selected articles up to a month after they’ve been published. However, if you have a paid subscription with me (which is pretty inexpensive), you will have access to all of my articles here, all of my archives, and my eternal gratitude. Plus, some first-dibs on possible future offers.
ALSO… I’m having an event in Des Moines soon. If you sign up for my paid subscription on Substack, you have the right to come to one of my events this year and pick up a FREE autographed copy of either The Holy Fool or The Yank Striker. I look forward to seeing you there.
Final Thoughts
The road, as it is, is getting near the end for this school year and me, and I am looking forward to spending a good portion of this summer catching up on my writing and rest.
See all of you down the road. Writers keep writing and everyone keep safe.
-30-
Home of the biggest six pack in the world. Look it up on Wikipedia or whatever, kids.
This will be, after more than fifty years of existence, my first substantial train voyage. I’ve long been fascinated by trains. My grandfather worked for a railroad, and my new home is the site of an Amtrak station and a very active railroad freight yard. Even traveling in the coach seats due to only being four hours away from Chicago, it’s still going to be more comfortable than squeezing myself into some coach-class airplane seats. I’m never flying commercial airliners ever again if I can help it.
Rant and rave over.
Some (like me) call it the revising and editing process, others will call it the rewriting process, even though I consider it to be part of the overall writing process. One of the things you will notice about writing is many people will have many different words for the same thing. It’s like martial arts where everyone has different names for the same punches, strikes, and/or holds.