The Writing Life, 6 July 2024
Feeling good about my writing productivity for the year so far, all things considered.
Hey, everyone.
I’m still hyped from last week’s writing convention (mentioned above). A lot of what I get out of those events is inspiration and motivation rather than knowledge (although I got a lot of good ideas and knowledge from the event as well). I feel like I’m on a bit of a roll during the past few weeks.
The Home Front
I’ll keep this brief.
I helped my daughter move into her new apartment in Muscatine, so now she’ll have her own place in the town she works at, which is always convenient. And we went up to Muscatine for a bit to celebrate the Fourth of July.
However, it was a bummer the US Men’s National Team (USMNT) crashed out of the Copa America. If you are curious, I was not a Gregg Berhalter1 must go guy, but I am after this tournament. We need to represent well when the World Cup comes to the USA in two years. We need to be be making more progress. When the women’s team crashed out of the last World Cup, they cleaned house and got what was considered the best women’s soccer coach available. Hopefully, they’ll show the same amount of guts to deal with the men’s team2.
Anyway, back to the writing.
What I’m Writing
There’s been a mix of items I’ve been working on this week. Some of the advice I’ve recently received is when you finish with the first draft of a story, let it sit for a while before tackling revisions. You might find it useful to be working on another writing project rather than pondering the last one. In recent times, it appears I always have more than one project in different states of development. It has certainly helped me to keep productive and putting words on the page on a consistent basis.
Some of those projects include:
The Yank Striker 2 (totally unoriginal working title), the sequel for The Yank Striker (look below for more information on the first book in the series). I am now 40,000 words at least into the first draft, although several thousand of those words could very well barely make it past the first draft. Considering the time period the book covers is concise, I don’t want to have it go much longer than 80,000 words. I’m not sure this means I’m halfway done with the first draft, but I’m a lot further along than I was at the beginning of this year. I’m feeling better about it at least.
Then there happens to be the Untitled Pro Wrestling Family Drama project I first got the idea for more than a year ago. I’ve likely written at least 12,000 words on this project without barely trying. A lot of these words will likely not even make it into the first draft, or perhaps it will make it into what I used to call the “odds and ends.” These are all old scenes, ideas, etc., I wrote but had to be removed from the main text due to various reasons. I heard another, better word for it recently - “The Boneyard.” I always think it’s a good idea to hang on to these ideas and put them in a safe place away from the main text for a couple of three reasons3. First, you could always change your mind and decide you need to put the text back where it came from or perhaps someplace else it would be useful. Or, maybe you decide it could end up being its own story or something totally different. You never know. Anyway, it’s coming along.
I’m continuing to produce poetry, as well. I’m going plenty of new work, although I want to continue to produce more and publish it in a chapbook or two. I’ll talk more about it when I get closer to getting something done.
Writing Progress at the Halfway Point of 2024
I don’t usually talk hard numbers here on the newsletter, but since I’m at the midpoint of the year, I usually take a look at my productivity and goals for the year and see how well (or not) I’ve stuck to them. What were those goals, by the way?
My Writing Goals for 2024
When I set my goals for 2023, I decided to keep them relatively modest. For those who didn’t care to click on the link, I decided to set a few modest goals. Since I made it to 200,000 words the previous year, I decided (based on my writing data of the past several years) I could reach 200,000 words again. Also based on my past data, I decided I could make my daily writing goals for at least 75 percent of all the days in 2023. As a quick reminder, my daily quota for writing is at least 500 words written per day or at least 30 minutes per day spent revising past work or planning new work.
Here are those goals, as well as a progress report on where I am on all of them.
I want to write at least 200,000 words this year and meet my daily quota at least 75 percent of the time. So, these will be my quotas for this year (and I think for the subsequent years to come).
At the halfway point of the year, I’m on track to meet these goals. I have written 105,808 words for the year, and thus 5,808 above pace. I’m averaging 17,635 words per month, and I’m meeting my daily average quota (500 words per day or 30 minutes of working on revisions or planning/prewriting) 84 percent of the time. Out of curiosity, I’ve logged by my own estimate 3,690 minutes of revision or planning/prewriting work for the year so far. In all honesty, I tend to undercount this time.
The word count happens to be the lowest since I started setting yearly goals of 200,000 words back in 2022. This is not a surprise to me, since I missed a lot of writing time, especially between March and May, on a lot of commuting back and forth between my job, my new home, and either a hotel or my son’s apartment in Des Moines.
What I am pleasantly surprised about is how I am now back on track to write 200,000 words this year at least. I really wanted to push to get caught up during summer break and it looks like my efforts are paying off at least. Maybe I get a bit obsessive with writing data, but it’s resulted in me being more productive during the past eight years than I was during the entire rest of my life, so I figure there’s something to it.
My preference would be to publish The Yank Striker 2 by this summer. However, if I manage to get the rough draft finished by the year’s end, I’ll consider it a win. I prefer to keep positive, however.
Yeah, about that.
I have written more than 40,000 words for the first draft; of course, maybe 5,000 of those will be tossed out of hand as repeating or unnecessary. I was really hung up on this for a long time, but I’m finally starting to make progress. If I managed to get a rough draft completed by the end of the year, that would be amazing. Right now my chances are less than 50 percent, but it would be wild if I was able to release something by next year.
I want to write more poetry this year. In fact, it would be great if I managed to get some of my poetry published in some journals, or perhaps in a chapbook format. Hopefully, my Poetry Nights will produce some more material for this project.
Writing more poetry this year - definitely on track with this.
Publishing poetry - other than this blog, not just yet. Still getting the handle on everything having to do with poetry.
So considering the craziness of the last few months, the fact I’m as on track with these goals as I am is something of an accomplishment.
Writing Quote(s) for the Week
Two quotes for this week by two writers who get straight to the point, in their own fashion.
If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!
Jackie Collins
If a story is in you, it has to come out.
William Faulkner
Author’s Note: The following material is some basic information about my sites and my books.
If you’re a returning reader and have already read about them, clicked on the links, or even subscribed to the site and maybe bought a book or two, feel free to skip until the end.
For those of you coming here for the first time, you might find the links useful to figure out what I’m about.
A Few Links About My Books and Where to Find Them
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.
The Holy Fool
Debut novels are tricky things. While I’ve not asked this question specifically of some of my fellow writers, the general impression I get is most writers consider their debut novels both with pride at their accomplishment and ruefulness at missed opportunities for improvement. And I’m no different.
You can get the paperback version of this book on Amazon here and the ebook version of it here.
A fellow Iowa writer and organizer of the Windsor Heights Book Fair, Tyler Granger, recently did a review of my book: you can find 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.
The Yank Striker: A Footballer's Beginning
What would an American soccer superstar look like? Not just someone who was a good player, but an actual legendary, world-class player, someone on the level of a Lionel Messi, a Diego Maradona, a Pele? Where would he come from? What would he be like as a person? And what would his path to soccer superstardom look like?
The paperback version of this book can be found on Amazon and the site of my publisher, Biblio Publishing. It is also available in ebook format on Amazon here.
For full links to these and other helpful places having to do with me and my writing, you can go to this page on my Wordpress site, Liegois Media.
You can also get my books 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.
About This Page
I post here regularly on weekends, usually Saturdays, with the odd bonus posts happening as well. They run as follows:
First and third weekends of the month - my normal The Writing Life newsletter, which you are reading now.
Second weekend of the month - Prose Night at the Writing Life, where I run original essays, short fiction, fiction excerpts, or longer-form advice about writing.
Fourth weekend of the month - Poetry Night at the Writing Life, where I post original poetry and (usually) a bit of background about the poems.
In the event of a fifth weekend of the month, I’ll either take a break or post some sort of bonus writing-themed material.
This is where I briefly promote this page. I’ll keep it short.
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.
Final Thoughts
That’s everything from this week. Next week for Prose Night, I’ll do a writing advice essay regarding revision and planning ideas from a course I took at the writing conference sponsored by the Midwest Writing Center in the Quad Cities. Hope to see you then.
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The USMNT head coach, in his second stint in the role.
Sorry, I’m too much of a fanatical USMNT fan not to mention it. There’s more than a few reasons I decided to start an entire book series about a soccer player.
This is not a grammar mistake, it is a juvenile Sopranos reference (actually, a quote from the character Phil Leotardo.