In solidarity, as I said earlier, quoting John Westermann, to all my writing friends out there, and anyone, really, who struggles with their sense of creativity, whatever it may be, however it manifests.
I have two aged, wrinkled and frail pieces of paper taped to my printer. They have travelled with me from my old farm in Maryland, to my farm in Colorado, where SKULL COUNTY, USA transpires, and back to Maryland at our latest farm. We have lived here 13 years next month, so these scraps are probably 20 years old.
I don't see them any more, curled in on themselves as they are, but I saw them just now, because a literary agent has just asked to read the entirety of SKULL COUNTY, a great day for me, whether it goes on to be represented and sold, or not. If this agent does not bite, another will, and I know that now.
The little scraps read as follows, and if they help you in any way, if they cement your resolve to go on and keep fighting for what you want to lay by the road some days and never return to, well, I have helped you, as so many in recent times have helped me, and, in older times, like John Westermann, people helped me but I was not ready to accept that help. Take what you can from these simple words. They have helped me to keep pushing when I wanted to rest:
"If a man has talent and cannot use it, he has failed. If he has a talent and uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he has talent and learns somehow to use the whole of it, he has gloriously succeeded and won a satisfaction and a triumph few men ever know." Thomas Wolfe
"Do what you love,
Know your own bone;
gnaw at it, bury it,
unearth it, and
gnaw it still."
-Henry Thoreau
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Friday, October 30, 2009
longjaw
Just a word to writers who may visit. I've been at this for years, throwing ideas at the wall, scraping off most of what sticks, adding it to what fell on the floor, oozing down in gobs and piles, until ninety nine percent of what I thought was great goes out the back door, forever gone.
I'm not just talking about story ideas. I have written plenty of non fiction in the form of letters for business, to government agencies for endless reasons, to every day people in my life who need to be alerted or beseiged, prevailed upon. Writing is writing, and, like Noah Lukeman, a successful agent, says, it is a muscle. Use it or lose it.
I did some of the things he talks about in his blog for writers. I sent stories out and I waited too long for a reply from an agent or publisher. I got too wrapped up in a single story, putting my soul into it until I became a major turd to live with. Ask my family.
As the old adage says, 'do as I say, not as I do'. Don't be like me. Get over your fears, your hesitations, be your own advocate. That takes two forms. As Noah says, query hell out of agents, send to magazines, do whatever it is that you do. Remember that you must market yourself and that is often harder than writing the novel or non fic book, the treatise that has consumed you since you were young and pretty.
The other must do is where I led in with this little advice column for the forlorn and weary writers. Shovel it out in the backyard and forget it. I'm talking about words you created that don't work. Don't be married to them. You can make more and they don't cost anything, they aren't worth anything until you sell them. They don't even smell, as they lay on the back lawn, mouldering, melting away in the rain, cooking up into dust that flies away on a windy, sunny day. Let 'em go.
I have one more, and this one is hard. I've travelled the gamut, from doing exactly as I please, believing that if I like my writing, some agent will stick a gold star on my forehead and hand me a million bucks, to becoming a slave to fashion. I have lost all confidence in my own mind, my own ability to tell a story, believing that I must conform, I must produce copies of what is in the marketplace at the moment. Doing that was painful, it made me despise myself.
There is a middle ground and it is the right battlefield upon which to launch one's attack on the world of publishing. To understand yourself, what makes you tick, and how a story develops inside your chest until you must get it out, kind of like Ridley's Alien. Poor Sigourney Weaver. She didn't know that by series' end, she and Big Mamma Alien would be bonding, would be the same.
Blend that with what the market is telling you, apply as I did, everything you know from other business, and see that publishing is that first and last, a big business that needs fuel from us writers and must see that the fuel meets the market specs. Do that and you have a sale.
When I owned gas stations over 20 years, I could not put my regular gas in the hi test tank and sell it to people on the sly. I could not put kerosene in your gas tank, or even diesel. The fuel had to match the vehicle, simple.
When I began writing stories long ago, I forgot all that I knew of business. Over years, as I grew into real estate and mortgage lending (because I could not get my stories sold) I forgot this old lesson, biz and writing all same-same.
Believe it or not, the current mortgage related, real estate and banking mess we are in, I won't say the big D word, though it drives my new novel, SKULL COUNTY,USA, taught me this business lesson all over again. I exited the bad credit lending part of the industry two years before the big bust, because I saw it coming. When I did, I realized I was seeing a business model begin to fail. That failure made me examine my methods in trying to write and sell fiction. That got me to where I am today, pitching my books, using self publishing as a vehicle to an agent and publisher, a movie deal(s), not as an end.
I'm back in business, baby, using every bit of biz savvy I have to sell myself and my books. You can do this. My way won't be your way, but when it feels right, it will be for you.
So, go kick yourself a bit, shovel all that mess out back and start again if you need to. When you need to take a break, read some of my stuff and tell me what you think. Pay attention to the blurbs on my novel SISTERBABY'S MONKEY. They only took me a year to collect and in that same year, I wrote another novel, SKULL COUNTY,USA.
See? I'm not waiting anymore. Now go get yours, my fellow writer.
Years ago, John Westermann, a great police book novelist, whose EXIT WOUNDS became a big movie and video smash with Eric Segal, wrote to me a few times in response to my compliment for his article in WRITER'S DIGEST. He signed his letters, "In Solidarity'" and then his name. I didn't get it back then, but I do now.
We writers are of the same cloth, prick us and, yes, we all bleed blue ink. My biggest supporter right now is Tom Monteleone, NY Times bestseller and 4 time Bram Stoker award winner. How did I become his friend and why is he nice to me?
That is for another day. Point is, go find some friends, some reviews and blurbs for your work, think outside the box. Do not be afraid of anything or anybody, y'all.
Thanks for the long jaw, Charlie
I'm not just talking about story ideas. I have written plenty of non fiction in the form of letters for business, to government agencies for endless reasons, to every day people in my life who need to be alerted or beseiged, prevailed upon. Writing is writing, and, like Noah Lukeman, a successful agent, says, it is a muscle. Use it or lose it.
I did some of the things he talks about in his blog for writers. I sent stories out and I waited too long for a reply from an agent or publisher. I got too wrapped up in a single story, putting my soul into it until I became a major turd to live with. Ask my family.
As the old adage says, 'do as I say, not as I do'. Don't be like me. Get over your fears, your hesitations, be your own advocate. That takes two forms. As Noah says, query hell out of agents, send to magazines, do whatever it is that you do. Remember that you must market yourself and that is often harder than writing the novel or non fic book, the treatise that has consumed you since you were young and pretty.
The other must do is where I led in with this little advice column for the forlorn and weary writers. Shovel it out in the backyard and forget it. I'm talking about words you created that don't work. Don't be married to them. You can make more and they don't cost anything, they aren't worth anything until you sell them. They don't even smell, as they lay on the back lawn, mouldering, melting away in the rain, cooking up into dust that flies away on a windy, sunny day. Let 'em go.
I have one more, and this one is hard. I've travelled the gamut, from doing exactly as I please, believing that if I like my writing, some agent will stick a gold star on my forehead and hand me a million bucks, to becoming a slave to fashion. I have lost all confidence in my own mind, my own ability to tell a story, believing that I must conform, I must produce copies of what is in the marketplace at the moment. Doing that was painful, it made me despise myself.
There is a middle ground and it is the right battlefield upon which to launch one's attack on the world of publishing. To understand yourself, what makes you tick, and how a story develops inside your chest until you must get it out, kind of like Ridley's Alien. Poor Sigourney Weaver. She didn't know that by series' end, she and Big Mamma Alien would be bonding, would be the same.
Blend that with what the market is telling you, apply as I did, everything you know from other business, and see that publishing is that first and last, a big business that needs fuel from us writers and must see that the fuel meets the market specs. Do that and you have a sale.
When I owned gas stations over 20 years, I could not put my regular gas in the hi test tank and sell it to people on the sly. I could not put kerosene in your gas tank, or even diesel. The fuel had to match the vehicle, simple.
When I began writing stories long ago, I forgot all that I knew of business. Over years, as I grew into real estate and mortgage lending (because I could not get my stories sold) I forgot this old lesson, biz and writing all same-same.
Believe it or not, the current mortgage related, real estate and banking mess we are in, I won't say the big D word, though it drives my new novel, SKULL COUNTY,USA, taught me this business lesson all over again. I exited the bad credit lending part of the industry two years before the big bust, because I saw it coming. When I did, I realized I was seeing a business model begin to fail. That failure made me examine my methods in trying to write and sell fiction. That got me to where I am today, pitching my books, using self publishing as a vehicle to an agent and publisher, a movie deal(s), not as an end.
I'm back in business, baby, using every bit of biz savvy I have to sell myself and my books. You can do this. My way won't be your way, but when it feels right, it will be for you.
So, go kick yourself a bit, shovel all that mess out back and start again if you need to. When you need to take a break, read some of my stuff and tell me what you think. Pay attention to the blurbs on my novel SISTERBABY'S MONKEY. They only took me a year to collect and in that same year, I wrote another novel, SKULL COUNTY,USA.
See? I'm not waiting anymore. Now go get yours, my fellow writer.
Years ago, John Westermann, a great police book novelist, whose EXIT WOUNDS became a big movie and video smash with Eric Segal, wrote to me a few times in response to my compliment for his article in WRITER'S DIGEST. He signed his letters, "In Solidarity'" and then his name. I didn't get it back then, but I do now.
We writers are of the same cloth, prick us and, yes, we all bleed blue ink. My biggest supporter right now is Tom Monteleone, NY Times bestseller and 4 time Bram Stoker award winner. How did I become his friend and why is he nice to me?
That is for another day. Point is, go find some friends, some reviews and blurbs for your work, think outside the box. Do not be afraid of anything or anybody, y'all.
Thanks for the long jaw, Charlie
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Mysterious Ways
10/22/09 I just wrote to Denise Whiting the other day. She owns Cafe Hon in Hampden, where SISTERBABY'S MONKEY transpires, and where, in 2008, she sold me the last table for Honfest so I could sell my brand new from the printer books. I talk about it on my website.
I wrote to her to say thanks, and that I had a link to her restaurant's site and the one for Honfest on mine. In the ABOUT section of my site, I talk about an old charity effort that my son and I were involved in with Eunice Shriver and Special Olympics. He participated in it back then.
Today, here comes an email from Lynn, who helps run the Honfest, saying she is tied now with Special Olympics and the PLUNGAPALOOZA 2010. The crazies that risk heart attack by cold water shock are tied to giving to Special Olympics, now, it seems, and one of the teams that do this crazy stuff is called the PLUNGING HONS, at www.plunginghons.com. If that is not a name with a double entendre, I don't know what is! You can write to them with ideas, to be a vendor in their heated tent etc, at ldbemore@verizon.net or call Melissa Tracy at 410-789-6677 x 113.
Anyway, I wrote to her with some ideas, including reading on my site how we did our old promo, us gas station guys, Pepsi, the local radio and tv.
If you are interested, in just watching the crazies jump in the frigid water, or if you want to be crazy with them, check it all out, offer ideas about helping them make the money for the kids. Thanks, Bawlmer!
I wrote to her to say thanks, and that I had a link to her restaurant's site and the one for Honfest on mine. In the ABOUT section of my site, I talk about an old charity effort that my son and I were involved in with Eunice Shriver and Special Olympics. He participated in it back then.
Today, here comes an email from Lynn, who helps run the Honfest, saying she is tied now with Special Olympics and the PLUNGAPALOOZA 2010. The crazies that risk heart attack by cold water shock are tied to giving to Special Olympics, now, it seems, and one of the teams that do this crazy stuff is called the PLUNGING HONS, at www.plunginghons.com. If that is not a name with a double entendre, I don't know what is! You can write to them with ideas, to be a vendor in their heated tent etc, at ldbemore@verizon.net or call Melissa Tracy at 410-789-6677 x 113.
Anyway, I wrote to her with some ideas, including reading on my site how we did our old promo, us gas station guys, Pepsi, the local radio and tv.
If you are interested, in just watching the crazies jump in the frigid water, or if you want to be crazy with them, check it all out, offer ideas about helping them make the money for the kids. Thanks, Bawlmer!
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Hey Bawlmer
Hi everyone. I used to send out email blasts about my novels under this heading, Hey Bawlmer! That's how we sez Baltimore, here in the Land of Pleasant Living. That phrase right there, came from the little guy with only one eyeball, the character for National Bohemian beer, back in the day, when I was little, cars had no seat belts, there was no Baltimore Beltway for that matter, and everything seemed slow and happy. The fabulous 50's.
We just changed the website around. Hope you like it. SISTERBABY'S MONKEY, as you know, now has 7 great testimonials in the new cover. We're using them to attract the attention of literary agents and perhaps movie producers, to work in a very backwards way toward a publishing deal with a "real" publisher.
I say real, because our little imprint, CHANA BOOKS, was created to get SISTERBABY into print, to showcase the blurbs it took us a year to collect, to capture the local, Baltimore and Maryland imagination with the monkey on the cover, and then use that as a springboard toward "the real deal", so to speak.
So, here we are, I say we purposefully, as my whole family has suffered through over twenty years of me re-writing, marketing and so forth, pitching one big, final time, to New York and to Hollywood.
The new thriller, SKULL COUNTY, USA, has not even seen the light of day yet. All finished, it sits ready to send to agents, perhaps the same ones that take a look at SISTERBABY.
I'll write from time to time as ideas fester and demand attention. Like a bur under the saddle, for those horse folk out there who know what I mean, things sometimes need to be spewed out, and not always in a negative way.
I'm happy as a clam, two clams, these days. Doing what you want to do, feeling like you are not only creating but provoking people to Feel. That is happy.
Thanks guys, See you inside one of my books, or at a bookstore, or in the movies! Say a prayer for us, babe! (that's another Bawlmerism- we just hafta call each other Hon or Babe allatime.)
We just changed the website around. Hope you like it. SISTERBABY'S MONKEY, as you know, now has 7 great testimonials in the new cover. We're using them to attract the attention of literary agents and perhaps movie producers, to work in a very backwards way toward a publishing deal with a "real" publisher.
I say real, because our little imprint, CHANA BOOKS, was created to get SISTERBABY into print, to showcase the blurbs it took us a year to collect, to capture the local, Baltimore and Maryland imagination with the monkey on the cover, and then use that as a springboard toward "the real deal", so to speak.
So, here we are, I say we purposefully, as my whole family has suffered through over twenty years of me re-writing, marketing and so forth, pitching one big, final time, to New York and to Hollywood.
The new thriller, SKULL COUNTY, USA, has not even seen the light of day yet. All finished, it sits ready to send to agents, perhaps the same ones that take a look at SISTERBABY.
I'll write from time to time as ideas fester and demand attention. Like a bur under the saddle, for those horse folk out there who know what I mean, things sometimes need to be spewed out, and not always in a negative way.
I'm happy as a clam, two clams, these days. Doing what you want to do, feeling like you are not only creating but provoking people to Feel. That is happy.
Thanks guys, See you inside one of my books, or at a bookstore, or in the movies! Say a prayer for us, babe! (that's another Bawlmerism- we just hafta call each other Hon or Babe allatime.)
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