The Power to Move Forward

Let's face it. When you're working on a writing project, it isn't all fun and games. Not all the time. True, there is often a tremendous rush involved: during my first draft, for instance, I was many times transported by my writing. There existed only the screen in front of me, the typing of my fingers, the music in my headphones. Why? Because I was so involved in the story. I lived, at least temporarily, in the respective minds of my characters. That is what makes writing so addictive, when it's so full of disappointments.



But it isn't always like that. Every writer must also weather the storm of naysayers, experts, doubters, haters and salespeople who swarm all over the business of writing like flies on fresh roadkill. Because that's what it is, folks. When you write and put yourself out there, you scent the air with your blood, and it swirls in the water. There are always bigger sharks than you.

Scary times. Sleepless nights. The roller-coaster ride we know so well, that takes us from delusions of grandeur to the pits of black despair, and back again. It makes me want more cotton candy every time.

Why? Deadlines, for those of us lucky enough to be hooked into agents, publishers and editors, and for those who sell their articles and have to keep to a tight schedule. That's one reason for the stress. Another? When you're nobody ... trying to be somebody. In such a case, the novelist is always writing on spec, in the hopes that the industry (which Kafka would have wet his pants over) might deign to give her or him a momentary glance of recognition.

Unfortunately, I have no answers. How could I? If I did, I could be one of those motivational speakers and make my living that way. One of the reasons I write these blog posts is to buck myself up: when it inspires some of you, that's great too, but it's gravy. I need this.



But if I did have an answer, it would be something along the lines of: Believe in Yourself. Follow Your Heart. You want to be a writer? You want to wake up, morning after morning, year after year, essentially alone with your need to create written works? If so, you have to find some way of believing in yourself, and I'm not just talking about belief in your abilities, formidable as they may be.

Nothing fancy here. It may be a simple mantra: "I can do this" or "Write Every Day"

But then you gotta do it. Don't get it right, get it written, as my old professor used to say. There comes a time when a writer has to show her or his stuff and sling the words down on the page. What separates the writers from the wannabes is this: the writers take what they've got, and rework it (or scrap it), and keep trying, and work on craft, and submit, and learn, and read (very important), and write some more, in a continuing process. The wannabes sit back and talk the talk, or else quit ... and often both.



So where does that leave you? Do you feel lost in this (as I often do), yet unwilling to give up? I'm not one of those motivational speakers, as I've said, because if I were I'd be raking in the cash doing that, instead of playing with imaginary fictional characters on paper, doing structural edits, soliciting feedback, and the like.

Look to your heart. Keep trying. Be true to yourself and your art, and don't try to second-guess a fickle marketplace that not even its careerists comprehend. Believe in yourself, do the legwork, and be tough. Stand tall and keep your pencil sharp.

A Writer's Daily Nutrition Log

Is this thing on? taps microphone

No, looks like we're text-only. That's all right. I can work with that. No pictures, though ... wait, here's a picture!



Isn't that nice? I'm selling that for $10,000, and please don't waste my time with counter-offers, nor should you approach me (the artist) without a licensed art broker. I don't talk to just anyone.

Anyway, getting back to the subject of this blog post: the Nutritional Needs of the Modern Author. Let's see. Today, after getting out of bed at 2PM, I struggled against ennui, made it to the communal kitchen here at the homeless shelter, and after directing Davey away from the blazing flames of the gas range (Davey has a full beard, looks like a deranged Santa, doesn't smell good on fire), I poured myself a cup of black concentrated stale leftover coffee--with a caffeine concentration that makes amphetamines look like OTC--shoved it in the microwave, then while it was heating up I ate two freckled, speckled yellow-black bananas. Not quite soft, just starting to fill the homeless shelter with the tropical liquor of their putrefaction.

So: coffee, two bananas ... oh yes, a cup of grape juice (Davey yelled at me for finishing it, but Fortune favors the brave) ... and back in my rack, my cubbyhole, on my just-sprayed mattress, I unlocked my broken footlocker and took out my secret stash: premium-quality vitamins. That's right! That's the key. You can write a novel IN A MONTH if you have the right vitamins, and in my case I have MegaMen vitamins from GNC [this is not a paid advertisement], as well as high-potency sustained release Vitamin C (to ward off the effects of scurvy, from when I was a sailor, and we got lost in the Azores, or was it the Bermuda Triangle, but in any event we ran out of fresh fruit, and it left several of us snaggle-toothed, if not dead).



You see, anyone can go to her/his local grocery store and steal cheap store-brand vitamins. Or buy them. But if you're serious about this writing kick, which many of us are (way too many)...partly because many if not most of us are unfit for any other occupation...you need the good stuff. In my case, I'm a strappingly handsome man in my (ahem) early 30s, with big pecs (chest muscles) and arms, few if any tattoos, the kind of dude for whom high-performance vitamins are made. The women thank me for it, believe me. But that's a whole nother barrel of monkeys.

In all seriousness, though. Your body needs the stuff, all the vitamins and minerals...but so does your brain. It's all part of the same package. And writers (at least in theory) need full use of their brains. For many of us, this process of rough-sketching and early drafting and outlining and first drafts and structural edits and revisions, and draft after draft thereafter, require vitamins like the B-complex group, E, etc. It helps you think, and helps keep you stable.

Now, usually, I don't start off my day with just coffee and two rotten bananas. Around 5AM, for example, I ate a two-egg omelette with low-fat cheese and a bran muffin (yes really). You have to keep the nutrition coming in. But vitamins, particularly B-complex, help you think, help your body metabolize energy, and keep your heart ticking as it should.

Garbage in, garbage out. Think you're up for the competition on a diet of soft drinks and chips? Think again. Chances are your fiction sucks even worse than your diet.

In this world, you MUST take care of yourself, and Wielders of the Pen are no exception. So pour in the good stuff, and good stuff comes out. At least you'll have more energy to work on it.

The Courage to Write

You wouldn’t necessarily think courage has much to do with writing, would you? Seems like writing has more to do with intellect, introspection, imagination and storytelling. All true… but what about courage?

Courage, and its opposite discouragement, are two ends of a continuum that is very much a part of the writing process. In fact the argument could be made that courage is the engine that drives the writing process, as the heartbeat drives the heart and makes the blood flow. Personally, I’d have to agree with such an argument, and not only because I’m the guy who’s making it right now.

Courage, simply put, can mean the difference between getting words down on paper… and not.

How? you may ask. Don’t you just hold a pen, or sit at the computer, and write? Yes… and no. Sometimes we writers sit and stare at a blank page, or the blinking cursor, and we are afraid of what will come out. We might fear that it will sound too stupid, or clumsy, or self-revealing. We may be afraid of writing badly.

The whole point here is that discouragement and fear can prevent us from putting words on the page. Fear may disguise itself as procrastination.

My solution: just slap something down on paper. As my old Physiology prof used to say, “Don’t get it right, get it written.” That is one of the most profound lessons I took away from the university. It’s one well worth remembering, as a mantra against fear.

The Making of a Book: THE REVIEW

http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/2009/03/25/the-legend-of-jimmy-gollihue-by-george-lacas/

Check out the above link to read a review of my book.

Lesson: you don't have to wait for traditional publishers to notice you to get your book reviewed! Believe in yourself!

Coming soon, my ham-fisted adventures in videos and podcasting.


THE REVIEW

George LaCas spent years playing pool in the Deep South as he wrote The Legend of Jimmy Gollihue, and it shows. The novel, about a young pool shark in the not-too-distant past who takes his game on the road to prove himself to the bewitching young woman he loves, reads like something straight out of local legend.

One of my pet literature peeves is the technique (or lack of technique) of plunging straight into a worst-case scenario without giving the reader a chance to get their bearings. LaCas avoids this problem admirably, coaching the reader through the intricacies of professional pool hustling without ever resorting to tedious exposition. By the time the more complicated situations kicked in, I was feeling the way I always do during James Bond gambling scenes—I’ve got no real understanding of the game, but I know plenty to appreciate the action.

The feel of a legend permeates every part of Jimmy Gollihue, right down to the array of different voices telling the story. The multiple narratives develop a dreamlike quality as it becomes apparent that none of the speakers is exactly trustworthy—all of them are just telling a tale. It’s to LaCas’s credit that this comes off as rich and fascinating rather than distracting or frustrating.

The narrative is a tall tale told by a crusty old pool shark, and a legend recounted in lowered voices by true believers in the back rooms of Louisiana bars. It’s a mythic parable of a hound dog running through the mist, hunting an evil prey whose scent it can’t always quite hold. And it’s the matter-of-fact truth in the sassy, adoring voice of Iris, the green-eyed, back-woods Irish witch who weaves magic tapestries in her clan’s trailer park while she waits for her man to come back home.

Jimmy Gollihue is a tapestry unto itself, weaving in traces of the Odyssey, the Paul Bunyan school of American tall tales, magical realism, and some gritty Delta-blues deals with the devil, without ever becoming derivative or muddying the brilliant colors of any of its influences. It’s a fun, absorbing read, with enough violence, humor, sex and magic to keep you on your toes, and enough depth to make you flip it right over when you’ve finished reading to start it all over again. -- Erin Stropes, SelfPublishingReview.com

The Legend of Jimmy Gollihue - making of a book

I did this with a digital camera that also shoots videos. Indie authors: use all available tools to improve your work and promote yourselves. You can post videos to You Tube that were done with digital cameras, cell phones and smart phones. You do not need a studio, or even an expensive camcorder, to make a promo video. Let your imagination take you to the stars!

The Legend of Jimmy Gollihue - making of a book

First you have to ensure that your manuscript is ready to BE a book. A lot of self-publishers skip this step, or do it badly. Yes, I'm talking about boring stuff: rewriting, getting people to proofread, running spell checks, making corrections... and that elusive term "Editing."

I'll say it again. Editing. This includes everything from correcting spelling, grammar and punctuation to rearranging the parts of your book to checking and correcting facts. And then some. It's one of the reasons self-publishers have earned themselves a bad name--that, and the underhanded tactics of some vanity publishers.

Let's face it. If your want your book to BE a book, and you've decided to self-publish, it's up to you to represent yourself well, and represent the entire Indie movement well. In other words you must take steps to bring your book up to industry standards.

Prove the world wrong, when the world says: "Self-published books are NEVER as good as traditionally-published books!"

Longhand

There's a school of thought that says real writing-- we might think of it as Writing-- is done longhand. I guess it goes back to when Truman Capote said of Kerouac's On the Road: "That's not writing, that's typing." Or maybe it goes back even further, when Writing was done with sharpened sticks on slabs of mud, blessed by priests.

I'd like some feedback on this, if anyone is reading this post. When you write, when the original ideas flow, or are finally forced out of you by caffeine or exhaustion, when you write with a capital W-- do you write it down longhand, or do you sit and type it into the word processing program?

As for myself, when I started my current novel, I admit I skipped a step: I used pen and paper. No pencils at all to start, and none since, for that matter. Now, when I feel a new paragraph coming on like a seizure, I go right to the computer.

But for me, true inspiration (and I do believe it exists, both within us and without) requires me to stop whatever I'm doing, reach for a pen, pencil, fragment of pencil lead, hunk of charcoal, anything you can use to write with, and write down whatever words or phrases the muses cause me to vomit forth. In other words, I reach for the pen and paper, get the idea down quick, and worry about form and clean-up later.

Those of you who know what I'm talking about know, too, that writing something down longhand is also tied up in the appearance of handwritten words on a page.

Once, some artist admired the look of his words that he scratched on a cave wall, with a rock or a charred stick, and he smiled because it felt good. He decided he'd do it again, even if the words didn't yet mean anything. He might have been a She, but the point is, that person was a Writer.