The SoapBoxers

Writing is a terrible thing to neglect. Without practice, writing becomes just a tool of communication rather than a gateway to expression. If you allow the everyday pressure of life interfere with your literary efforts and only write in response to ideas or events that push your basic beliefs too far, you become a whiner with a pen (or keyboard).

Many of my most recent posts have been about politics and natural disasters. My motivation came from the immediacy of the events. They were easy topics, and ones in which I had a great deal of interest. I have reviewed these posts and feel that I too fell into the whiner format, especially when addressing political issues. I will not apologize for the opinions stated, as I still maintain them. I will, however try to be more of a writer and advocate for writing than a commentator.

Realize that I am not criticizing the use of current events or controversial topics to inspire your writing effort. Rather, I am questioning the effort put into creating a worthwhile transcript based on eloquence and style. The structure of the piece at times establishes the major feeling of the article. The word choice prepares the reader to accept or deny the premise based to the perceived intelligence of the author.

When reading the classics, remember that the masters were not so much more educated, as exercising a wider vocabulary. The modern has provided ease in every area of life. We have food in abundance so that even the poorest people in the United States suffer from obesity. We have entertainment at our fingertips, in many cases for no cost. We are healthiest of any recorded generation, even with our self-destructive habits; from sexual promiscuity, to gluttony, to drug and alcohol abuse. We have even been provided with a reduced instruction set for communications; from tweeting, to instant message acronyms, to the use of a single word as noun, verb, adjective, advert and injunctive.

I am not complaining about the ease with which we live. It is an opportunity for every one of us to make incredible strides in all of our endeavors. Our error is taking these benefits of modern life to relax or even become dormant. In past postings, I have complained about global warming alarmist, who seem to think that they can save the world by redistributing wealth. I may disagree with them, but at least they are doing something. They are attempting to use the scientific advancements of the last few hundred years to explain and prepare for a concern that they feel deeply in their inner selves.

It is exactly these types of people I want to address when encouraging the practice of writing. Passion is a powerful driving force. With practice, that passion can be used to develop writing skills that do not simple express a view point, but take that expression away from bludgeoning to persuasion and continuous productive discourse.

I asked what inspires you (to write) as the title of this post. I was inspired to re-evaluate my writing from several sources over the last few weeks. I have been heavily loaded with my actual paying job, and this has restricted my time for creative composition. I found that my writing at work was also suffering; I was not conveying instructions, progress, problems or accomplishments clearly and concisely as is required when working with a large team of people with varying talents. I then saw a report on the difficulty in fighting obesity. The struggles that I have with my weight (as the topic of some of my posts) are not as extreme as those featured in the report, but I had empathy for those people and could see myself in their place. Finally, I watched the most recent version of Pride and Prejudice. I was struck by the vocabulary and ease with which all of the characters conversed. I reflected on all of these stimuli to evaluate what I felt was lacking, not just in communication in general, but in my writing specifically and why I felt the lack existed. The result of this introspection is presented to you here. As with anything you want to do well, you must practice. Therefore, I offer to you the same advice I have prepared for myself; keep writing.

Suggested viewing: Pride and Prejudice:



Sales of Mountains, Meadows, and Chasms continue at a pace best described as workmanlike.  It’s certainly not enough to retire on, but enough to satisfy my ego.  Of course, if you want to help me retire early, you can plunk down three and a half bucks and buy a copy 🙂

As a way to boost sales for the book, I am going to partner with some other bloggers.  I will write a short story starring the blogger in exchange for free publicity.  The blogger can post the story on their site as a change-on-pace from the typical fare, including a plug for my book at the end.  For an example of the type of story that might result, here is one I did for Adam at Man Vs. Debt last year.  I’m looking for bloggers with a strong, engaged audience.  (In other words, people who are likely to buy my book).  There will also be a bit of a referral bonus.  Send me a note at kosmo@ObservingCasually.com if you are interested.  If I’m not familiar with you, it make take a while for me to understand what makes you tick enough to write a story – it won’t be overnight.

I’ll be out of town on a business trip in the near future, and will be scheduling some marathon writing sessions for my upcoming novel, Casting Stones.  The main concepts have been in place for a while now, but it has been pushed to the back burner.  My word output goal for the trip is probably very optimistic … I’ll give a report of my progress upon my return.  The book is a murder mystery (but of course!) and also features a romance between a detective and a college professor.  If you like my other crime stories, your should really enjoy Casting Stones.

I’ve been keeping my newest venture close to the vest.  Now that it’s underway, I’ll share.  I have decided to launch an online fiction coaching school.  Courses will run for five weeks, with four students to a classes.  Each student will write four stories, which will be analyzed by me and peer reviewed by the other students.  I’ve been struggling to find a price point that made sense – a price that would properly compensate my for the work (analyzing sixteen stories as well as guiding the class and performing some administrative tasks) while making it affordable enough for anyone.  I finally gave up … I’m going to run 2-3 classes each year, and they will be free.  The goal is to bring together diverse groups and have them learn from each other.  If you’re interested in the next class, you can email me at kosmo@observingcasually.com.  The next class will probably take place in September, with subsequent classes beginning every 4-6 months.

I am making Mountains, Meadows, and Chasms available to the public.  The book contains more than 70 of my short stories – more than 80,000 words.  Most of them have appear on The Soap Boxers, but the book also contains the full versions of The Cell Window, Key Relationships, and Tip of the Iceberg.  This is the largest collection I have released to date.

I’m setting the price at just $3.49 – that’s 5 cents per story.  I hope you get a nickel’s worth of enjoyment out of my stories.

Mountains, Meadows, and Chasms is available in two formats – in PDF format from the Hyrax Publications store and in Kindle format at Amazon.

You can also check out my author page at Amazon

I also chatted with the guys at the Card Corner Radio show last night about the sports card book.  You can listen to it here – I jump in around the 10 minute mark.

	PDF Version
	Kindle Version

Yesterday, I mentioned that I will be seeking a publisher for Mountains, Meadows, and Chasms, my collection of short stories.  While the market for short stories is not nearly as large as it was a generation or two ago, I believe that the current focus on bite-sized nuggets of information (Twitter, for example) may have a spillover effect into the literary world.

Today, I’m going to take you down the road to publication – a road that I am still navigating myself.

Write – sounds, simple, doesn’t it?  You can’t have something published unless you first write it.  It can be hard to get into the habit of writing, though.  My first taste of writing glory came when I was picked to attend a writer’s conference in 6th grade.  I still wonder if I was picked because I was the only boy who expressed interest … but I enjoyed the experience.  I wrote stories off and on until I graduated college, and then quite abruptly quit writing fiction for ten years.  I never intended to stop writing – it just happened.

Ego – You need a bit of an ego to write fiction.  You’re making up stuff out of thin air and expecting people to be interested in it.  This is different from non-fiction, where you’re adding to an existing information base (and an accompanying reader base).  This was a bit difficult for me, as I’m really not an ego-driven person in real life (or, at least, I think I am not).  I got around this by creating the persona of Kosmo.  Kosmo can have his own personality and ego, and I can check the ego and the door when I drop back into real life.

Editing -Without a doubt, my least favorite aspect of the writing process is editing.  When I was preparing the initial version of Mountains, Meadows, and Chasms for entry into the Iowa Short Fiction Awards contest, I was editing those stories for the third time.  First, I edited them for publication on The Soap Boxers.  When I prepared them for publication as eBook in the Hyrax Publications store, I edited them again.  While I enjoy reading my own stories, the thought of editing them yet a third time was not my idea of a fun time.  However, a few trips to Pizza Hut with my binder in tow helped make the process less painful.

Culling – This is an advanced form of editing, and most applicable to short story writers.  Since my resurgence as a fiction writer began in the spring of 2009, I have written 92 pieces of short fiction.  It would be tempting to cram all of them into a book in order to pad the length.  However, some of them just aren’t good fits.  The first cuts were easy – pieces like Manny Ramirez Signs With the Tigers were fun to write, but they were satire and not typical fiction stories.  I love Ferdinand the Turtle (especially part 2, Meeting Bob), but the couple of children’s stories didn’t fit in well with the others. Finally, I cut stories that just weren’t very good.  I originally started writing short stories as a way to refine my technique before beginning work on a novel, so while some early stories like Release Point are fairly good, there are also some stinkers like Puzzled (I really thought this idea would turn into a good story, but it didn’t).

Finding a publisher – There are three ways to get your work published.  Martin Kelly already walked us through the self-publishing route, and I’m not going to reinvent the wheel.  The second route is taking your work directly to the publishers.  However, some publishers don’t take direct submissions, preferring to work through literary agents.  Obviously, the third route is to use a literary agents.  Literary agents are typically paid a commission based on a percentage of your royalties.  This means that you don’t need to pay the agent up front.  Naturally, this means that the agents are selective, since they don’t want to waste their time peddling crap.  I’ve only been seeking an agent for a few days, so I’m not an expert at this point.  However, I did stumble across Editors and Preditors.  I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the information on the site, but the gist of the site is to let writers know which people are legit and which ones are not.

remember that ego you stroked a bit earlier?  You’ll need to trim it down a bit when you’re searching for a publisher or editor.  Odds are good that you’ll receive several rejections before getting accepted.  Good luck!

My web consulting business, Sparks by Kosmo, is off to a solid start, buoyed by reviews on The Digerati Life and Out of Debt Again.  It’s throwing some chunks of revenue my way without consuming a huge amount of time.  That’s a win.  In celebration, I’ve launched a super-secret fiction coaching academy that will kick off with the first class in March.  The first class is already full, but I’ll be advertising spots in subsequent classes at a later time.

I’m going to make an attempt to push Mountains, Meadows, and Chasms into the world of literature.  The compiled edition of stories is now 80,000+ words – featuring more than 70 of your favorite stories (I’ve cut out some of the chaff).  I’m looking for a literary agent – I’ll keep you up to speed on things.

My baseball card book has been getting a bit of traction, and we’ll be ramping up publicity a bit in the coming months, including a media appearance.  ESPN?  Er, well, no.

I had a pretty lousy Super Bowl Sunday.  In my early years, I was a Bears fan.  In my early teens, I became a Vikings fan.  For the past two years, I’ve have been Favrecotting the NFL until my least favorite player (any guesses who he is?) resigns.  During that entire span of time – a quarter of a century – I have hated the Green Bay Packers.  Imagine my disgust when they won.  To make the spectacle even worse, the Fox “dream team” broadcasting the game was Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, and the stupid robot (a/k/a/ nepotism, pretty boy former QB, and stupid robot).  Excuse me while I make my way to the vomitorium.

Four hundred fans with tickets to the game were left out in the cold when temporary seating could not be deemed safe prior to the game.  After being herded like cattle while a decision about their fate was made, they were eventually given the option of watching from standing room only areas or viewing on TVs within the stadium.  The fans will be given triple refunds (triple the face value, not triple what they paid to scalpers) and tickets to next year’s Super Bowl … but watching a Lions – Brown Super Bowl next year probably wouldn’t be as much fun to a Packers or Steelers fan as watching this game would have been – not to mention the expenses they incurred for travel and lodging to attend an event that they really didn’t “attend”.

The NFL announced the 2011 Hall of Fame class.  While all of the inductees are deserving, the complaint is that a lot of deserving players are not getting in.  Indeed, you could make a case for all fifteen of this year’s finalists.  However, no matter how great they are, only five of them were ging to be inducted, per the rules.  In other words, if the all time best quarterback, running back, receiver, linebacker, defensive end, and defensive back all retired at the same time, it would be an absolute certainty that one of them would not be a first ballot hall of famer.  Contrast this to baseball, where a writer can list as many players as they wish – the only issue is whether they are named on 75% of the ballots.

Longtime Texas Ranger Michael Young is on the trading block.  In recent years, the Rangers have bounced Young around the infield like a ping pong ball as they wedge other players (Elvis Andrus, Adrian Beltre) into the lineup.  Now they want Young to play DH.  One of the teams reportedly interested in Young – and his $16 million salary – are my Colorado Rockies.  Young slumped in the second half of 2010, and is in his mid 30s … but if he can put up number similar to what he had a few years back, he’d be an interesting guy to have in the lineup.

LeBron’s former team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, recently lost their 25th consecutive game.  That’s very impressive to me.  Regardless of how bad a team is, you’d think at some point they’d have a night where luck went their way and every close shot went in.

Sometimes you get the opportunity to help a young writer.  If you have a child, those opportunities can arise just because of curiosity, other times to respond to class assignments.  The most tempting error that you can commit is “giving” the young writer the story.  You have to restrain yourself to just suggestions.  I have an example that actually occurred this weekend.

My son is a freshman in high school.  His assignment is a short story that includes a protagonist, antagonist, conflict, climax and message.  The first step was to establish an environment.  Since we were driving around in the mid-west, with single digit temperatures and snow, I suggested a cold location, possibly a creek bed frozen over.  My son changed that to the main character’s back yard playing foot ball with his buddies.

Next came the conflict.  We talked about finding a puppy in distress.  The hero should obviously show compassion and try to help the puppy, but his parent have a strict no pets policy (similar to our family policy).  This established several conflicts that he will follow, doing the right thing while defying his parents, leading to a climax of direct conflict with his mother.  Then my son added his own twist, the friend will encourage him to continue hiding the dog.

With just a few ideas back and forth, he had the basic story in place.  He already had several stories that he had worked on in the past, but he chose to create something completely new.  His goal was to address all of the elements suggested by his teacher.  The assignment itself provided the stimulus to even start, bouncing ideas with me drove him to more creativity, and I hope a complete story. 

I am excited at my son’s commitment to writing well.  I truly believe that all creativity helps young minds develop and keep poor habits from developing instead.  We have spent many idle hours (driving during vacations, evenings before bedtime when the internet was down) developing ideas.  My son has thought about game themes, stories, even possible movies and actually worked on many of the ideas.  The more he worked, the more he wanted to try and think about.    This is the type of positive feedback that will help him grow into a fine young man.  With that in mind, I encourage every young person to write down their ideas and develop them.  Keep writing!

A few weeks ago, my writing was rejected.  I had submitted a manuscript to the Iowa Short Fiction Awards and was notified that I was not among the finalists (there were more than 400 entries).  Mountains, Meadows, and Chasms had been rejected.  The 63 stories, encompassing more than 70,000 words, had taken countless hours to write edit.  One of the stories (The Cell Window) by itself had taken nearly six weeks to write.  Sales of my eBooks at the Hyrax Publications store have been lackluster, but there was still the chance for critical acclaim, right?  Now, too, that hope was dashed.

This was actually a bit of a new experience for me.  In my years as a writer, I have generally had good luck when submitting stories and articles to publications and sites.  Almost without fail, I have managed to find a home for every piece of writing.  Now, someone was telling me that my writing wasn’t good enough.

How do I – and other writers – handle this rejection?

First, realize that much of the joy is in the journey itself, rather than the destination.  For many writers, the process is cathartic.  If there is value in the writing process itself, then you don’t necessarily need commercial or critical success in order to “win”.  It would be great if people like your work, but it’s just frosting on the cake.

Next, take a closer look at your goals.  Do you need to have your work praised by experts?  Do you strive to place your books at the top of the best seller lists?  Or perhaps you want to make a small difference, one life at a time.  Several months ago, I wrote a little story called Safe at Home.  Like many of my stories, it’s a sports story – but with a big sentimental tug at the end.  I shared it with a friend of mine.  This short little story that took only a few minutes to read jerked heavily at his heartstrings.  Mission accomplished.

Look also at your audience.  Perhaps you’re submitting things to publishers that simply “don’t get you”.  Very few people strike a chord with everyone.  Regardless of how good your writing is, you’re going to strike out occasionally.  Try a different publisher – or even sit on the work for a year or so.  A writing style that is unpopular today may be all the rage in the future.

Finally, think of your writing as your legacy.  Writing is something that can be passed down from generation to generation.  A hundred years from now, if my descendents wonder what sort of person I was, they’ll be able to read my stories to gain some insight.  Of course, they may come away from the experience thinking that I am a serial killer, what is most untrue.  (I devour Lucky Charms, but am generally pretty nice to cereal).

On that note, The Crunchy Conservative uncovered some journals that her grandfather wrote at the beginning of the 2oth century.  His words will jump onto the information superhighway this year.  Crunchy will be posting each day’s 1902 entry on the corresponding date in 2011.  Already this year there is information about a funeral and the unpleasant task of dehorning cattle.  Check it out at LeanderBolton.com

I am at the point in my effort to write a novel in 30 days where I must admit defeat. The goal was 50,000 words during the month of November, I have only made it to just over 25,000 words. So why did I “fail”? I let other activities occupy my time. Some of these were unavoidable; family, work, and home. Others were just my lack of drive. I could probably analyze the amount of time I wasted on on-line games, watching TV and sleeping in. That kind of analysis is self defeating if you are writing for pleasure. I plan on continuing to work on my novel, hoping to have something for review in the spring. When writing, that is all you can do. Set goals for yourself, but keep going even if you do not meet those goals.

I am fortunate that I have a job that allows me enough actual relaxation time to write. If I had a job with a significant manual labor content, say, a longshoreman, I do not believe that I would have the opportunity to write very much; all of my relaxation time would be to recover my strength for the next shift. I hope each of you has an opportunity to write, it is such a great way to express your creativity with little or no cost.

My leisure time is sometimes augmented by job related travel. I am not much of a partier, so I have plenty of time after hours with no family responsibilities to dedicate to writing. That is the main reason I was able to make the 50,000 word contest last year. Next year I plan on trying again. My long term goal is to produce most of one novel every year as long as I can write. I am going to try to publish, eventually.

I hope at least some of you who were taking the Novel Writing Challenge were successful. Even if you were not, I hope that you had a good time trying. Remember to keep writing.

For those of you who have joined me in the adventure of writing a novel in one month, we are in the home stretch. Just 8 days left in November and the end of National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo.org). We are more that two thirds of the way through the month, so if you are to succeed, you need to be more that two thirds cone with your goal of 50,000 words or at about 36,500 words. I personally am well short of that mark, coming in at about 25,000 words.

My recovery plan is alone time over the next few days to really write. Remember to achieve the goal, you work does not have to be a complete novel, it just needs to be words written down towards your novel. Last year, when I actually succeeded, it took me an additional three months and independent reviewers to get my work to a point that I would consider “done”. I am currently working on cover art and saving money to actually publish my work on paper. I will release electronic and audio versions at the same time. So this year, I have to get back into that writing groove.

One of the things I did this year was to change my genre. This was to change my comfort zone and expand my field of ideas. Although it did help me with new ideas, it has not helped me actually capture words at any better rate. Last year I was traveling a lot, so I had idle time in the evenings. This year is filled with family (which is a good thing) so not so much time is available.

I have mentioned in previous postings the support of the sponsor of this writing event. Within the National Novel Writing community, there are groups that you can join. Perhaps next year, I along with other contributors to theSoapBoxers.com and our faithful readers could create and join a group. We could call Other:SoapBoxer. That is a plan for the future.

Right now, I am interested in how others are doing in their attempts at writing. Even if you are not taking on the challenge of writing a novel in a month, what are you working on? How is it going? Do you have any advice for people trying the same thing? What got you going on writing? What has prevented you from writing? The questions could fill a whole page. My interest is somewhat selfish. I have found that listening to others describing anything they are attempting will provide me with new fodder for stories. I do not steel ideas; I am just looking for triggers.

For instance, Kosmo wrote a piece earlier this month about a non-functioning speedometer in his car. The repair shop had to uncover a different problem before the speedometer could be fixed. Taking the idea of car troubles, specifically with a speedometer, you could have a so many different stories. In a mystery, you could explore who was responsible, and why. In an adventure, you could trace the hero’s actions as he is trapped with a broken vehicle in an unknown location. Make it science fiction, and you have alien technology causing the failure. Romance could be a who meets who because of the car. And so on…

Regardless of what you want to write or what you think your skills are, since you are reading this posting you have access to a computer and can capture any of your ideas. If you are concerned about someone reading your work, you do not have to publish. If you want criticism, there are plenty of people who can look at your work and provide insight. In the end, my advice is always, keep on writing.

What do you do when you hit a writing block?

Well actually, I haven’t run into a writing block, I have simply not been writing during the effort to write a novel during the month of November. For this article, let’s pretend that I am sharing the problems of not knowing what to write.

First you must find a trigger. It could be something as simple as standing up and looking out the window. Who knows what you will see. It could be your character walking past, or the exact weather you need to describe. Get up and have something to eat. Maybe the people in your story need to eat as well.

If that does not work, perhaps you need a longer break. Take a walk, go shopping or go see a movie. I would suggest avoiding TV or surfing the web as these activities really chew up valuable time, while a movie or walk have definite ending points.

If you are still stuck, try a different writing event. Throw together a quick blog of anything you are working on. If you don’t have anywhere else to post, paste it as a response to my posting.

There is always a topic that you like to talk about, convert that into writing, just to keep the words coming. Eventually, you will drift back to the story that you want to finish.

I still recommend establishing deadlines for yourself, both to keep yourself honest and to drive towards completion. You can use events line National Novel Writing Month, or a short story completion. You may want to make a holiday or birthday as the deadline, especially if you want you story to be a present to a friend or family member. All that we write provides insight and entertainment. Keep writing even if you do not want so show anyone else your work.