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 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!"

by author of THE LEGEND OF JIMMY GOLLIHUE

Surging with the hot, sensual blood-pressure of another incisive stab of punditry, Jonathan moved toward the washing machine (a brand-new Spellmaster from the United States, complete with a voltage converter that enabled it to run on the British-flavoured 220V, always smoother and more refined than the American counterpart, thought Jonathan), lifted the lid, and peered inside.

Wrapped round the inner drum of the American machine (which Jonathan had long preferred over the more commonly-available front-loading machines, which he'd always found had forced him to hunker painfully thus stretching his knees, or to kneel as he would before a literary lion, or to sit in a half-lotus position in front of the machine as though about to stack his notes in chapter piles, as he had been wont to do previous to the advent of the modern word processor,which enabled Jonathan to carry an entire office around with him in the form of a notebook computer, so convenient he could prance confidently into the Waterstone's bookshop cafe, his full writerly arsenal just a few keystrokes away) was the waterlogged carcass of a nude man.

The face stared up at Jonathan from the drum of the top-loading washer, but the staring face was unseeing though full of accusation (and what a strange miracle that the man's old-fashioned mustache wax has perfectly preserved the delicate, manly handlebar curves of his masculine mustachio! gushed Jonathan within, as he wondered where he'd left the oil for the chainsaw (both of which, chainsaw and oil, he'd had to order special from a lumberjack's journal, to which he subscribed).