Category Archives: Writing

family, self-publishing, Writing

Still Not Writing

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I read a post the other day, over at The Passive Voice, about a writer who self-published five years ago, and has sold over 3,000,000 copies of her books since, most of those of her self-published books. While I rejoice at her success, it’s hard to read that and think “Why not me?” Very bad, I know, to compare oneself to another writer. She says her first break-through came without any publicity effort on her part, though actually her publisher (some of her books are with trade publishers) had a promo of one of her books that happened to coincide with her self-publishing release. Hence, she did have what turned out to be an effective publicity campaign.

In another post, a writer who went from trade publishing to self-publishing in a similar, or perhaps later, time frame, made a post about how dangerous it is to check your sales numbers. Dangerous in the sense that it’s useless, doesn’t get you to writing more, and in fact can turn you away from writing. Well, it’s true that I check my sales numbers every day, and it’s also true that seeing those zeroes pile up discourages me from wanting to write.

I was going to write Monday night, but came home and was diverted. My mother-in-law, who now lives with us, needed help with her finances. My wife was helping, but it was a situation where it was better if one person searched through check registers and another wrote. So I helped with that. After we had the data concisely on paper, I went to The Dungeon to put it in a spreadsheet in order to compute the magic number. I had to do a work-around for a couple of missing statements. Sometime close to 10 p.m. I had the number, went upstairs, and gave it to her.

That was too late to go back downstairs and try to shift my brain’s focus from numbers to words, so I wasted the hour before going to bed with mindless Facebook reading.

Yesterday evening was filled with going through a week’s worth of accumulated mail, then watching two television programs and some news. Tuesday is the only evening that has programs on that I want to watch.

So here it is Wednesday morning. This is the first bit of writing I’ve done all week, except for my blog post on Sunday. I realize that, should any fan happen to drop by this page, or even should a casual visitor somehow surf here, or—heaven forbid—a family member come upon this, this will seem like whining. I suppose it is.

Perhaps life will turn around. Or perhaps I’ll learn to be productive in 15 minute chunks of writing time, or learn how to write in manuscript with significant distractions. And then, perhaps someday, I’ll have a reason to check sales numbers.

Writing

Can’t Write

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It’s not writer’s block, but I just can’t write. It’s not as if I have something to say but can’t figure out the words. Nor is it that I can’t figure out anything to write. It’s more, why bother? How will it help me or the world?

I had every intention of sitting at my computer this afternoon and writing a blog post about our recent road trip to Massachusetts and Rhode Island.  I have much to say about that. But why bother? There’s aren’t three people in the world who will read it and care about it. Will it further my writing “platform” to add a post about that? I doubt it. I even have an idea for a follow-up post for Wednesday, but why bother?

Life is pressing in on me. Lynda wants me to look over some stock trading material with her, for which we paid good money, so I need to do that. With that hanging over my head, I just don’t feel like writing. I need to leave The Dungeon, head upstairs and do that.

I really don’t know what’s to become of me as a writer. At present I can’t see much hope for it. Perhaps it’s a tunnel I’m in and I just need to get through it. But right now I feel like I’m running from crisis to crisis, or major (and time-consuming) event with no end of them in sight.

I guess I don’t write well under adversity.

I don’t know when I’ll be back.

miscellaneous, Writing

I Need A Rest

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Well, another week went by and I didn’t do my mid-week blog post. I don’t suppose the excuse that I was in two days of off site (though in-town) meetings would make any difference. Days like those are enough to fry the brain and dull the senses. Wednesday was the first day. I came home and don’t remember if I came downstairs to the desktop, which is where I usually write my blog posts.

I’m not writing much today. Yesterday was a busy day, though not as busy as some Saturdays have been of late. At the end of the day the house was more of a mess than it was at the start. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? We took some things off the walls in preparation for selling them. That’s good, though having them in other places in the house is bad. We went through my shirts and found 21 XXL that are too big for me now, and took them out and prepared them for sale or donation. That’s good in two ways, except that’s bad in that these shirts are now hanging from the bar in the kitchen, and a couple fall off almost every time we walk by.

Some other good things happened, however. Lynda put a couple of ads on Craig’s List for things we have for sale, including for a general, private sale of all the many kitchen and linen items. The garage is more stuffed than ever, but having the ads up gives me hope.

I’ve put all writing projects on hold for now. I found myself being too easily provoked and way too irritable when minor things go wrong. Today, after returning from church (where we had an excellent brunch during life group and so we didn’t eat lunch at home), I went to the sun room, plunked myself down in the easy chair we just moved there, put my feet up on the hassock we just moved there, and read in my book of A Conan Doyle letters. I think it’s been a year since I did that. I read about five pages before falling asleep, and maybe two or three after waking up.

It’s amazing what a nap will do for your outlook. I don’t think it was more than half an hour, but I felt much better. I came downstairs and, instead of a writing task, I completed all my budget entries on my budgeting spreadsheet. I even went back and picked up the tiny interest deposits that go monthly into our HSA and money market accounts. All three accounts are now fully entered and balanced. I still have a stack of papers to file, but will try to do them over the next couple of days.

Yes, writing is shoved aside for now. Perhaps in two or three weeks I’ll be ready to get back into it, in a small way.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Headshots, Preserve The Revelation, self-publishing, Short Stories, The Gutter Chronicles, Writing

Unfinished Writing Projects

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMy intention for today was to write a lengthy post on the status of several writing projects. However, two things intervene. First, I’m in New Orleans on a business trip. I’m not sure I feel like taking time to do a detailed analysis of my writing-in-progress. Second, since around Sunday my gumption for writing has tanked. At present I don’t know that I care much if I write any more or not. The reasons for that are complicated and I won’t go into them here. Suffice to say these are not the days for me to be making bold plans for adding to my published titles.

I will say a few words about my projects. The easiest one should be to publish my last short story, “Sierra Kilo Bravo“, at Smashwords, making it available to Nook, Apple, etc. That means pulling up the file for the Kindle publication, making a few simple changes, and hitting Publish. Along with that I want to republish the other stories in the series to add a link to this one to it. Also fairly simple. But I haven’t felt like doing it, now a month since it went live for Kindle.

Another fairly easy project will be to correct typos in my two baseball novels, In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People and Headshots. I re-read them some time ago on my Nook, found enough typos in each to warrant fixing them. This is a one-day project for each book. So far, I just haven’t felt like it.

SBC book front coverThen, I have some typos to fix and new data to add to my family history book, Seth Boynton Cheney: Mystery Man of the West. This is a little more complicated. It’s a print book, so unless I want to have the cover redone due to pages added I’ll need to add the new data without too much lengthening. The good news is I sort of planned for this, putting a couple of blank pages at the end of the book. So long as the new data doesn’t take up more than them, I should be okay. I have some of these marked, and one of my wife’s cousins also marked some. She didn’t give them to me, but will when I ask her. This should be my priority, I suppose, but so far—you guessed it—I just haven’t felt like it. A related project, some cousins have asked me to publish a color edition of this. That will require rework of the cover, since the page thickness is different when you print in color, but otherwise is a simple thing. I need to do that right after making the corrections to the black & white edition.

So what does that leave as far as w-I-p go? I have three books started:

  • Preserve The Revelation. This is a sequel to my first church history novel, Doctor Luke’s Assistant. A couple of years ago, when in a period of uncertainty as to what my next project should be, I wrote the first chapter of this. Since then ideas for the book continue to find their way into my conscious thinking.
  • Documenting America: Civil War Edition. This would be the next in my Documenting America series. I got well into this last year and early this year. I’d guess it’s 40 percent done. I have pushed this far from my current thoughts.
  • The Gutter Chronicles, Volume 2. The first volume was a reasonable success at the office. I’ve completed three chapters in that, and am well along with the fourth. It’s been over a year since I’ve worked on it, but I’d say I’m about 20 percent done. Ideas for remaining chapters of this have been bubbling up of late.

TCEEA print cover 01That leaves my two Thomas Carlyle projects, wanting to join their brother on my virtual bookshelf. These are the two I’m actively working on. At the office I use my free time to work on Thomas Carlyle Chronological Composition Bibliography. At home I use free time to work on Thomas Carlyle’s “Chartism” Through the Ages. Both are well along, though neither is close to being done. They are perhaps silly things to work on, as neither would be a commercial success. However, at least these two are holding my interest.

Well, this post ran longer than I expected. Still, it’s the short version. I write it not so much as to inform you, my loyal readers, about what’s coming, as to help me bring order to the chaos that’s happening in my head and finding it’s way to paper and pixels. May the order come soon.

goals, miscellaneous, Short Stories, Writing

The Busyness is Overwhelming

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Right now, I simply can’t commit time to blog posts. I’ll still slip one in once in a while, but unfortunately I won’t maintain a regular schedule. Life has thrown many things at me right now, and just now I have to process through them. An example: the lock on our front door no longer works. We discovered this Friday evening. Rather than call a locksmith then and perhaps pay extra, I’m doing it today. I’ve looked them up, have three choices written, and will call shortly. Then I’ll have to call home and tell them whether a locksmith is coming. Such a pain.

At the same time I’m trying to maintain a little bit of a writing schedule. I published a short story last weekend, and last week I worked on my two Thomas Carlyle projects. I have that mostly worked out of my system at present, but not fully. Maybe by the end of today I will, then will put those projects back on the shelf for six months. But today I pick back up my book Seth Boynton Cheney and begin to make edits for it, and then to prepare a color edition for printing.

So, my couple of faithful readings, feel free to check in from time to time. Just don’t expect posts to be coming on a regular schedule.

poetry, Writing

Poetry No Longer Comes To Me

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I began writing serious poetry on August 31, 2001. Yes, I remember the date, because I was at home, laid up after a heart attack scare (it wasn’t one), and during those days at home decided to try my hand at it. The poem I wrote, “The Spring House”, is included in the one poetry book I’ve published, Daddy-Daughter Day. One person has told me it’s the best poem she’s ever read. Of course, she’s only seen it after it’s gone through much pondering and editing.

But of late, say for the last two years, poetry barely comes to me, either by inspiration or perspiration. I think if I should decide this evening to sit and write a poem, I would be unable to. I’d stare at a blank sheet of paper, perhaps write a title, and then…nothing.  Knowing a poem should consist of images and metaphors, with lines as the defining unit, I’d search my brain for an image or metaphor that would illustrate the title, but then…nothing would pass out of my brain. I’ve even found it impossible to write simple haiku (though, granted, my rules for haiku are somewhat more restrictive than what many people use).

I could speculate long on why this has happened. Is it life closing in on me, squeezing me? Is it the heavy concentration on prose writing over the last four years? Is it the turmoil in the world? Is it any of twenty other things I could write? Or probably the combination of them?

Or, perhaps, I was destined not to be a poet. Perhaps that was a false start on my writing career. Perhaps prose is my field, not verse. I used to sense inspiration on my noon walks, or while commuting to and from work. I’d observe something in nature, and begin a haiku in my mind, without being able to write it. Perhaps one in four or one in five of these might find its way to a completed haiku, and survive until I was back at the office or at home and could write the words on paper. I have dozens of pieces of paper with these haiku on them, waiting to be gathered and put in a retrievable file.

But, as I say, even these simple stanzas eluded me. But yesterday, on the way home, I was thinking about this. Since inspiration wasn’t there, I decided to try perspiration—work at it. I observed the sky. Cumulus clouds were ahead of me, to the north: towering, white, fluffy. The same clouds were to the west, with the lowering sun giving them a back-lit quality. Traffic was more or less normal. My health, well, yesterday was a bad day. I had an increase in sinus drainage and, I think, a high blood sugar episode. I spent half the afternoon simply sitting at my desk, getting nothing done, but being there in case someone needed me.

I took all these elements, and over five minutes of driving was able to hack out a haiku, using my rules, which include the 5-7-5 syllables as being the longest allowed, not a fixed amount. I did break one haiku convention, in that the third line is actually a metaphor, whereas haiku are supposed to be images, not metaphorical. I doubt my editor will care.

I thought it wasn’t bad, and said it over and over till I was home. There, I became immediately involved in supper prep and forgot to write it down. It wasn’t till about 10 p.m., more than four hours after the writing, the I realized I needed to commit it to paper. Fortunately I remembered it, found a note pad, and “created” it in tangible form. That means it’s copyrighted, even in manuscript.

It’s still not in a retrievable file yet. Perhaps that will happen tonight. And I’m not saying it’s a good poem. But it was a creation wrought of perspiration, finding a little inspiration from intentional observation. I’ll take it, and maybe build on it. I considered posting it here, but think I’ll not inflict it on my couple of readers.

self-publishing, Short Stories, travel, Writing

A Short Story Completed

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This summer, writing has taken a backseat in my life. I haven’t completely abandoned creative writing, but time to give it much focus simply hasn’t been there.

What have I been doing instead? Well, in early June we babysat our three grandchildren for almost two weeks, then their parents arrived and stayed with us a few days. They went on a ten day road trip, coming back in early July for a couple of days. That has a way of taking up a lot of your time.

Then there was my wife’s family reunion the last weekend in July/first of August. I was reunion planner. I know, that sounds strange, doesn’t it? But I was, and it took a fair amount of work. Part of that was completing a formal edition of my family history book. Seth Boynton Cheney: Mystery Man of the West, focuses on the patriarch of the family, but it’s much more than that. 292 pages of biography, photos, maps, document images, and pages and pages of data I’ve collected on a number of ancestors in the family. My goal was to have it published by June 15, to give people plenty of time to order it before the reunion. I came very close to making it. The book was done by the 15th and a proof copy ordered. It then took me to June 27th to have all the corrections made and have it published.

Then there’s stock trading. That took a back seat to the reunion, but since that I’ve hit it in a big way again, trying to make some money to augment the retirement funds. I’m actually not doing too badly for the year. I have losses, but almost none since April, with a string of winners since then helping to recover from other losses. Unfortunately that work isn’t going to change very soon.

Work at CEI has been about normal. I submitted abstracts for presentation of two technical papers, one of which was due Friday. I came within about two paragraphs of completing it then. I printed it out and have it at home with me. Hopefully tonight I’ll be able to read and edit it and figure out those couple of paragraphs I lack. Tomorrow I’ll be able to type the changes and upload it sometime in the morning. I advised the organization that I’d be on that schedule, and they said that was fine.

So, back to the short story. It is the last in the Danny Tompkins series that explores teenage grief at the loss of a parent. The subject for this story eluded me for half a year. Finally around May I knew what it would be, and I wrote a few paragraphs. The hindrance of the “blank page” having been overcome, I came back to it from time to time, as I could carve out a little time for it. Slowly it came to being.

On Friday I worked on it a little on my noon hour, and realized I wasn’t sure how to end it. This one ends the series of five stories, so the ending needed to be both for the story itself and for the series. This afternoon I sat down to work on it, first editing what I had. As I did that the idea for the ending came, it being a little different than I’d thought it would be. It reads more as a memoir than a story, but it’s done, and it’s as good as I can make it, so I’m going with it. I did the Kindle version formatting this afternoon. I was about to work on a simple cover for it, but realized I can’t get to the photo I was going to use. So I’ll have to take another photo, which I’ll do when I go upstairs. I know exactly what I want with it.

My goal is to have this available on both Amazon and Smashwords by Wednesday, August 19. It will be close, but I think I can do it. Smashwords doesn’t take much more formatting than does Kindle, and the same cover works for both. With luck I’ll have it all done tomorrow evening, and the books will be out in time. I also need to go back and add links to all five stories to the ones already published. That I’ll do before the week is out. Then, next weekend I’ll begin promotion of the new story and the set.

After that, I have another story started in a different series. I need to finish and publish that. Then, I’ll see.  I know which two novels I’ll work on next, and which book-length non-fiction. We’ll see which of those bubbles up to the top. The busyness doesn’t appear to abate in the months ahead. Another reunion that includes a long road trip awaits. A business trip will take me away for a couple of days in September, and another might do the same in October. But I’ll be writing. I’ll keep my few fans updated here.

family, goals, stock market, Writing

Hard to Return to Routine

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On June 11 our three grandchildren (ages 7, 4, and 2) came to stay with us while their parents went on a sabbatical trip: business mixed with pleasure. I immediately shifted my routines and established a new routine. I delayed coming in to work until around 10:00 a.m. I got the kids up, fed them breakfast, got them dressed, had the two older ones make their beds, saw that their teeth were brushed, then headed out for work. My wife took the day shift. In the evening we worked together on supper and jointly got them ready for bed. Afterwards I spent a little time in The Dungeon, working on writing and stock trading tasks.

Then, on June 23 their parents arrived, and the routines were shot. They all left two days later on the next leg of their trip, returned on July 6, and left for home on July 8.

So it’s July 9, and time to get back to our usual routines. Actually, I should have begun that on June 25. I tried, really I did, but there were things working against me. One was the Independence Day holiday, which gave my a 3-day weekend Friday-Sunday. The other was lack of a major writing project at home and delay of a certain project at work. So I was without a focus at each location. Consequently I floundered at both. I got stuff done at both, but my productivity was nowhere near what it should have been.

Also working against the routine is being the organizer/planner of my wife’s family’s reunion the last weekend in July/first in August. It’s going well, but it’s a one time thing, not a routine thing. What writing tasks I had were minor corrections to on-line listing of my books, again not routine. At work I had a series of one-off things to do. I also have non-routine things coming up the end of August, end of September, and end of October.  Planning for those has already begun—another thing to draw me out of my routine.

I don’t do well with the non-routine. I’ve long noticed that, but it was certainly confirmed this month. Last night I found myself at home, the kids and grandkids gone, and the evidence that they’d been there mostly cleared away. So I went to The Dungeon in the evening, was confronted with some non-routine tasks, and almost got nothing done. I finally concentrated on my stock trading routine, and was able to enter one trade with my broker, which filled today. Yea! Back to routine.

We’ll see what happens over the next four months. I hope I can be productive, but I’m afraid I will be only marginally so. I have most of the non-routine things on my to-do list (the non-work ones, that is). If I just work that list I’ll be okay.

family, Genealogy, Writing

Seth Boynton Cheney – Mystery Man of the West

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This announces that my latest book, Seth Boynton Cheney: Mystery Man of the West, is now available for sale at Amazon and CreateSpace.  This is a family history, not a book for the general market. It traces descendants through Seth, who was descended from John Cheney of Newbury, Massachusetts, through his son Peter. I’m posting this to be complete in announcing my books.

Here’s the link to the book at Amazon.

I just realized I don’t have the cover here as a jpeg, so I can’t post it. Maybe I can grab one from Amazon….ok, got the front cover, I think.

SBC book front cover