The Writing Life, 7 December 2024
Winter has come, and the end of the year approaches as well as old and new goals. Also, news about one particular project.
December is finally and truly here. It seemed like at times earlier in 2024 this year would never come to a close, when it stretched ahead of me like the long highways I was constantly on as I probably drove enough miles to make a few complete circles around Iowa. Lot of tough times, some of which I talked about here and other issues (politics, cough cough) I haven’t and won’t touch on1.
However, the second half of the year has flown by more than I was expecting. I’ve gone from staring at 80-degree-plus October days and wondering when fall would finally arrive to a definite winter2. And as I approach the end of the year, some of the personal writing goals I set for myself both at the beginning of the year and part of the way through it are coming closer to reality.
Let’s talk writing, shall we?
The Home Front
Other than the fact snow can still exist in Iowa and my wife has wrapped up our Christmas decorating, there’s not much to talk about on the home front. I got to see both my kids and my parents over the Thanksgiving week, which in both cases are becoming rarer treats especially with my kids having their own personal and professional lives to attend to.
I hope Thanksgiving week worked out for all of you. All of the students (and many of the teachers) are likely counting down to the Christmas break, so we’ll see how that goes.
What I’m Writing: Projects
Current progress on my ongoing projects:
The Yank Striker 2, the sequel for The Yank Striker: I’ve continued to make good progress on this rough draft. I’ll talk about this a little more in the next section of the newsletter, trust me.
The Untitled Pro Wrestling Family Drama project: Again, no real progress recently. I might hold off on further pronouncements on this until I actually work on this.
The Untitled Liegois Poetry Chapbook: Um, about that… check out below for a bit of a surprise.
Writing Goals
Way back some time ago, I set some goals for myself for this calendar year.
At the time, just before the start of the new year, I set for myself three goals in particular for 2024. They were the following:
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).
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.
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.
So…, how did I do on them?
As of the end of November 2024, I have written 202,212 words for the year 2024, meeting my minimum quota. I had hoped to reach it by Thanksgiving Day, but it actually happened on Black Friday.
As of the beginning of December, I am 12,940 words away from matching my personal best record of last year (215,152). I only have to write about 417 words per day for the rest of the year to match it. Considering I've exceeded 12,940 words a month in all but two months this year, another personal best record appears in sight.As of this writing, I'm now at 70,000-plus words on the rough draft. I will need to only average about 200 words per day on this project from now until the end of the year. This does not seem to be much of a difficulty in itself. Now, I’m wondering whether I will have to add some more to the text later. I’ve shown the last big game of the book, and now I am hoping to wrap up things soon. We’ll have to see whether I have a nice, neat tale by 31 December 2024.
As for the poetry book…
I am delighted to announce I have self-published my first collection of poetry. After months and maybe a couple of years wondering how the heck I should go about doing it, I just went ahead and did it.
The title ties in with the theme of the collection, which is river life and traveling. I grew up around the Mississippi River and had to do a lot of traveling over the past year, so I ended up writing more than a few poems about traveling recently. My decision to set aside every fourth weekend of the month on this blog as Poetry Night ended up motivating me to do a lot of poetry. There are nineteen poems in this collection, spanning from one as early as 2010 and some as recently as this fall.
To be honest, there is a lot I do not know about the poetry world. I recently became a member of the Iowa Poetry Association and am hoping to find more opportunities to publish my work either by the poem or in collections.
I’m planning on announcing an official holiday launch and/or places to obtain my collection soon, maybe on this month’s Poetry Night post. Stay tuned.
Writing Quote of the Week:
I don’t feature a lot of poets in this space, but this comment from a past poet of the previous century seemed to harmonize with my thoughts on writing.
I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.
Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Writing Advice that’s Really Just a Saying
I often have a problem with my own first drafts of being too wordy, of using too many unnecessary words to describe something when two-thirds of the amount would do just fine.
I have a new saying describing this phenomenon. Here it is:
The words are managing to tackle the story.
What I’m Doing Having to Do With Writing: Social media
I’ve gotten onto social media for a bit as a way to reach out and get the word out to more people about what I’ve been working on. Frankly, if you put “Jason Liegois” into any halfway decent search engine, you’ll be able to track down most of them. I can be found on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads at the moment. I was on Twitter for a bit, but I’m not on there now.
Saying Goodbye to Twitter
You might have noticed that I don’t write too much about politics here. I’m not sure when or where I mentioned it before on here, but I’ve made a conscientious decision to focus this Substack (and my other blog page, Liegois Media) on, as I put it, writing and the writing life.
And now… I have joined with many other writers and creatives on Bluesky.
You can find me on Bluesky at @jasonliegoisauthor.bsky.social . I try and cross-post all of my blogs there as well as check in and get to know other writers. Maybe I’ll see you there3.
Podcasting!
By the way, over the Thanksgiving break, I had a great conversation with a fellow writer in Iowa and friend Amber Rodgers as part of the Saga Studio Podcast. We talked about The Yank Striker quite a bit, as well as The Holy Fool and some of my upcoming projects. Check it out here if you want to give it a watch.
What I’m Doing Having to Do With Writing: Personal appearances
I first want to thank the Fort Madison Area Art Association for hosting a book signing for me and several other area writers at their headquarters last Saturday. It was a great event and I’m definitely eager to do another event with them.
I’m still 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 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 go follow the links above, you will be able to buy both the paperback and ebook versions of my books on Amazon. Again, if you just put “Jason Liegois” in Google you’ll probably find them on the first page of search results.
If you happen to visit these fine independent book stores, you can find my books there:
[ABSOLUTELY BRAND NEW LOCATION! 😊] Bent Oak Books, 619 7th St., in my new hometown of Fort Madison, Iowa. They’ve been open for just about a year and just recently opened up a new used book section at their store. I can’t recommend them enough.
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, 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. 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 it for now. All you writers keep writing, and everyone else keep safe.
-30-
This has always been and always will be a writing blog, not a blog about politics, no matter how tempting all those eyeballs interested in politics are. While politics naturally seeps into everything (including fiction and poetry), it does not have to be front and center, and for more than a few reasons I have elected not to keep it front and center.
For a bit I was worried it would never snow again in Iowa. Thank goodness it still can.
In these newsletters I might post all of my social links in one place at the end for those who can’t find them in the sidebar of the desktop site or in my profile area.