Category Archives: Publishers

Where Have I Been?

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Damned if I can remember.

Shoved a full-flown memoir of my two years in Southeast Asia during the Viet-Nam War — “HOTEL CONSTELLATION: Notes from America’s Secret War in Laos” — to the family and a few very close (tolerant) friends.

Finished a supernatural adventure novel called “The Mark of the Spider” and sent it out to beta readers last spring. Still awaiting feedback, so that’s not promising.

Rewriting a straight sci-fi called “PSNGR” — formerly “The Passenger”? — seemingly forever. Instead of tackling chapter 28 today, I’m doing this.

I first wrote PSNGR as a long short story; then as a graphic novel when I had a comic book publisher willing to take a look at it. Now trying to finish it as a potential indie publishing project.

Bailed on my writer’s group for personal reasons having nothing to do with the calibre of their kind feedback.

Journeys, which is what this writing process was intended to be, can be tortuous. Witness The Odyssey. Which is not to say my journey has been nearly as exciting, or even interesting.

And the point is …

But I digress from my intent today, which is to point out links to two stories that struck my fancy.

Ten Books that Were Written on a Bet — From the terse Dr. Seuss to the loquacious James Fennimore Cooper and C.S. Lewis, I’ll be dipping into this list in future.

Publishers Are Now Shedding Best-Selling Authors — So … what’s the point?

Bottom line

keepcalm

Things I Wish I had Known

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Florence Osmund

Florence Osmund wrote a wonderful piece for The Book Designer blog back in July entitled “Four Truths and Four Myths That Every New Novelist Should Know.”

I might still have tried this fiction-writing thing if I had known this, but maybe not.

We’ll never know.

I hope some new writer will.

 

 

Writing Around Life

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You have to write every day, if you want to be a writer.

Everyone says that.

Okay, maybe not everyone, but enough people to make it seem likjune-children-s-day-calendar-symbol-white-cube-41085882e everyone.

But what about life? You know, living? Doing the living stuff, like sleeping and eating and earning money and taking care of the kids / elderly parents / needy loved ones. What about that stuff?
I began this writing adventure exactly three years ago when I finally discovered I had a story I wanted to tell. At that time I was a senior consultant with a hard-working wife, two adult children, the greatest granddaughter ever born, a large group of friends and a serious passion for nature photography.

When does a guy write?

I’m a morning person so I moved the morning up a couple hours. The alarm started its annoying buzz at 5 a.m. Not that bad for a morning person, especially in the summer when it’s lighting up out there at 5 a.m. During the winter, it got harder.

I kept this up until last year when we experienced a family health crisis. I found I could not write at any hour, much less 5 a.m. Two years and three books in the computer, and I couldn’t write!

So I stopped and dealt with life. Sometimes you do that.

Was I less a writer than I had been the previous two years? No. I wasn’t producing stories, but I was a writer with more important things to do.

When the crisis eased, I found I still couldn’t write until my wife asked me to take it up again. I told her I just couldn’t focus enough to make things up, i.e., write fiction.

Fine, she said. Write something else. I did. Ironically, or maybe not, I turned to working on a memoir about my two years in Southeast Asia during the Viet-Nam War. That is, I went back to doing what I knew: Reporting.

The project took a year — much longer than I expected — but it’s done.

Am I back to writing fiction at 5 a.m.? Nope. Still cleaning up the memoir mess. (Doing the maps took two weeks alone. I devote at least half a day a week writing customized pitches to agents and carefully filing their rejects.)

So am I a writer or not?

Yeah, I’m a writer. Sometimes life intrudes, and you need to clean up a mess or two.

I’ll be back to writing four to six hours a day like the old days, but I’ve already decided that I won’t be doing the 5 a.m. wakeup call again. Life is too short, and I’ve found other things I can trim.

Write on.