Standing up for literature

Back sometime around the time of Charlemagne, I remember reading a bio of Hemingway and being struck by the idea that he wrote standing up. That, I thought, was about the dumbest thing a person could do. After all, being comfortable let the mind flow around in all that creative space.

Somewhere along the line, that idea went out along with the one that smoking a pipe and wearing jackets with leather elbow patches improved my writing. Not that I snub anything that would improve my writing, but I had come to realize that looking like I thought a writer should look didn't really help me get better prose on paper.

I came, somehow (I really don't recall) to embrace the idea of writing standing up, at least part of the time. In Cambodia, Dagny made me a standing desk and a local carpenter made a stool exactly to my dimensions. (I do wish I could have brought that stool back -- I modeled it after one I saw in a bar in Koh Kong). So my writing station looked like this.

The motorcyle didn't improve my writing either, but this was Cambodia, and the office was in what had been a bar (and a church and a brothel) before we rented it.

This set up worked pretty well, although standing on concrete limited my stints at the computer. And yes, the little notebook was all I had for quite some time. Worked okay, but slow.

Then, coming back to the US, I knew I wanted something different. Dagny and I both spent a lot of time looking at office designs that were aesthetically pleasing and ergonomic (and finding out what that meant to various folks). We found lots of high-tech solutions like the one below but that seemed too expensive and overkill. I am not that high tech anymore.

Then we found a nice solution. And it looks like this.

It's an adjustable stand up desk (Focal Upright Furniture) and works better than the one in Cambodia. This is just a recent incarnation of the setup and I am getting used it, but I think it is working great. The light (optional) is fantastic. Good friend and coauthor, Jim Beckett, loaned me a monitor and printer and keyboard so that my laptop thinks its a tower. Life is good.

And there go my excuses for not writing.

Traveling and writing

Travel and writing seem to go hand in hand for me. Maybe that is simply because I seem to travel all the time and write all time and so they are a forced fit and I could just as well say that traveling and breathing go hand in hand. True, but a rather useless connection to make.

But I don't think so. I get inspired by travel. We just drove a few hundred miles along the Old West Highway in Arizona, turning up to Pumpkin Junction and down to Scottsdale and then back. There is a lot of beautiful country along that route and it ranges from desert to mountainous. We've made the trip quite a few times and I can't help but imagine crossing the country I am seeing in a Conestoga wagon or on horse. I shudder when I see how far away the next bit of green is or the arroyos that need crossing. It's the kind of thing I want to have in mind if I ever write a Western, or even a story about someone crossing beautiful but rather inhospitable terrain.

None of that has much to do with the current works in progress, but that's okay. I took photos and my memories are synched to the sights and sounds and smells (the dog coaches me on the last two). It is all good stuff to store away.

A weekend at a writing festival

This weekend is the Southwest Festival of the Written Word here in Silver City, NM. It is the first time this has been tried and I returned just in time. I hope it becomes a regular event. It is still on, but already I have had a chance to hear, and talk with, people in the business of getting words sold. Peter Riva, a literary agent, gave an information-packed talk on the state of the market. I wish he had been given twice the time, as he had much to say. Mark Medoff talked about screen and play writing from both conceptual and lifestyle perspectives. His talk was both entertaining and informative.

I also spent some valuable time with Diana and Jaime Andrade, the owners of Brook Forest Voices in Colorado, who make audio books and enhanced ebooks. You can learn a great deal online, but it is more fun when you can interact, asking questions and watching body language. Besides, they are likeable people and it was an enjoyable talk. Like most of the people I've been encountering, they seem to get excited about what they do. 

As I look at the things I want to accomplish this year and into the next, all this information provides food for thought, as well as ballpark ideas for the cost of doing things. And it is fun to see the other authors who are at the festival trying to do exactly what I want to do -- sell books.

The organizers have done a great job with this inaugural event and my hat is off to them.

A single focus for an eclectic person

I read the blogs of other writers and I am often impressed that they seem able to write a book, just one book, and stay with it to the end before starting another. If that is the sign of a writing discipline, then it is one I lack.

Not that I lack focus, exactly. I can sit down at my desk and work on a story, one story, until I look up and notice that the say disappeared somewhere (days do that to me a lot). I can even be interrupted, stopping to answer the door or make lunch or play with the dog, and get back to the task.

What I am talking about is lacking the kind of focus that means every day I sit down and work on the same story. I can go days in that mode, but then wake from a lucid dream (or something) with another idea in my head. It could be an idea on how to fix a story I previously shelved, or a new story altogether.

And I, of course, feel compelled to get it down. Some of it, at least.

It isn't that I think this is the best way to work, but it seems to be part of me. And not an occasional part, either. I almost always have several stories in the works. So when people ask, "What are you writing?" my answer tends to be more of a catalog than it ought to be.

I have no idea if this tendency makes my writing better or worse, but I do know that it plays hell with my "to-do" list. It ebbs and flows like some erratic tidal system. But the writing is enjoyable, and that is the important thing.

Book stores and readers

We are in the process of scheduling some book signings and readings (aka "events") for THE INVENTION OF CLAY MCKENZIE. The people who have read it are few, but have been enthusiastic and we are determined to help it find more readers.

 

 This is the story of a reclusive New Mexican author (whose name is not Clay McKenzie) and a brilliant first novel. It is about an ambitious (and young) New York editor who wants to prove herself; and mostly of her well-intended attempt to make things appear as they are not, and the consequences of putting that in motion.

As an avid reader and a fan of bookstores (real bookstores, where the people who work in them know and love books), logic dictated working through bookstores to encounter the elusive reader. 

The attitudes of stores toward author events prooved mixed... some enjoy them and see their value (authors and readers in the same place and maybe some sales), and some do not. Fair enough. We work with the willing.

COAS Books in Las Cruces, New Mexico is one that does work with authors willingly, and we have scheduled a book signing there on Saturday October 26th from 10 am to noon (during the Farmer's Market!). Jim Beckett and I will be there to chat with readers and sign books. It should be fun.

On January 4th we will travel to Albuquerque's North Valley, north of Griegos, in the Flying Star Plaza, for an 3pm event at Bookworks.

We hope to do a few more, perhaps in Tucson or elsewhere in the Eastern part of Arizona.  Our intent is to try and convey some of our excitement about the book and meet readers. If you are in the area, we'd love to meet you. If your favorite bookstore is open to such things and not too far from New Mexico, let us know and we will see what is possible.

A Day at the (Duck) Races

I finally made it to the Deming (New Mexico) annual duck races this weekend. We writer types have to immerse ourselves in all sorts of things to have material to put into our books, right? Well, this has been going on for 34 years and I had never made it.

So we went. As you can see in the picture they actually do race ducks there. Live, quacking ducks. There is lots of enthusisasm. What there wasn't a lot of was duck iconography. There were no duck hats. No duck balloons. No windup ducks (that I saw, at least--I might have missed them).

But there were the races. Two days of them. The outhouse race, however, was unfortunately cancelled for unknown reasons. You can't have everything.

The dark side of writing

Now that we've made the transition back to New Mexico and I am settling in to a work routine, I am confronting that demon all writers face. No, not writer's block. I love the act of writing and seldom have trouble getting into a writing mode. I speak of the unspeakable--marketing.

I know some people who work in marketing, and I will confess that all of them are not demonic villains. Some are nice people. The ones who have been doing it a long time are all competent. I even know how they spend their days. It gives me shivers.

Oh, I have done it, will do it (and wash my hands after), but it is an excruciatingly difficult task for me to wax eloquent on or to drum up enthusiasm for. The problem is that marketing reminds me of busking. I was never that good at busking. I liked performing too much. Sometimes I forgot to put out the tip jar.

Yes. Pathetic.

So I look for the less embarrassing ways to beg (and isn't that what the "please buy my book" line boils down to?). I look for ways that project my books. Ways to make it seem cool to own and read (God forbid) them.

Not many come to mind. A few lovely reviews have appeared for UNDER LOW SKIES and THE INVENTION OF CLAY MCKENZIE on Amazon, and I am happy for that. I'd love to get more. For all the books. But it takes a certain kind of person to be willing to buy the book, read it and then comment on it publicly. And it takes all three steps for a review to matter.

Meantime I can dream of hiring a publicist who does it all, while I sit writing the next book.