Category: Writing

Editor’s Note: This post was taken from one on Sept. 21, 2010 and revised. The message about what it means to be a writer seems as timely as ever. In 2010, it was a revelation.

A writer in the 21st Century writes at every opportunity. Spending a life writing a dozen novels has become a thing of the past. The interaction with readers is more intimate, direct, and often. An email, a book review on Amazon.com or Goodreads, a blog post, a letter to the editor, an opinion piece in the newspaper, a technical article, a poem, or a work of fiction, all carry equal weight in how they take up a reader’s attention. Add in social media, and there opportunities aplenty to write.

Readers have plenty of material in which to engage. The diversity and abundance of available writing is a proximate cause of the low number of books Americans read each year. We are using our eyes and ears to take in information constantly, just not reading books.

As the number of writing venues exploded, the ability to generate revenue was diminished. There are a few folks who capitalize on this multitude of writing opportunities. However, constructing a view of where they fit into the life of a writer who writes for wages is both customizable and unlikely. Earning a living wage primarily from writing is as difficult as it has ever been.

Yet the writer’s life is something to which to aspire. The quiet of morning and a few hours typing at the keyboard is important: an organized effort to bring order to a chaotic world with words. In a world where corporate media reminds us constantly that in order for our consumer society to maintain growth, we need to get out there and start buying things: consume the consumables.

A 21st Century writer lives close to the means of production. The idea of buying anything that does not serve our indigenous subsistence or our writing is outside the ken. Many contemporary writers don’t fit well into a consumer society.

Unawares, I have been developing an approach to writing that includes many media. I hope to refine my approach and continue my writing voyage, hoping it produces recognition for what it is among readers, if not a living wage. That this approach is uncertain is accepted. Inherent uncertainty is a risk worth taking.

In search of a decent cup of coffee, we turn from Thanksgiving Day leftovers to the promise of a happy end of year holiday season. This has been a special time since I spent a lonely few weeks after arriving in Mainz, Germany in mid-December 1976. Through the years the loneliness diminished. Part of this month is reflection on the immediate year past and planning for the next 12 months. It is a time to slow down and enter into a tribal time.

20 of 25 copies of my book are out among early readers. I need to conserve financial resources, so that will be it for now. The next decisions are what to do next: print more, publish it on various on-demand platforms, or take another whack at editing. I need to reserve a few copies until I make a decision. Finishing the book was the major accomplishment, so I am in no hurry to take next steps.

I cleared off a 42″ x 31″ space for a memoir writing table. On here, I will go through boxes of artifacts and store items in immediate use in the writing project. It may not be enough space, yet it will serve the purpose for now. The next memoir task is to re-write my outline and go through the manuscript. I sense many of the 65,000 words already written need revision. If I’m lucky, I can finish some of that work before the new year.

Our family is scattered about this December. My spouse is helping her sister recover from surgery, our child has their own life in Illinois, and I am in the Grove holding down the fort: conserving energy, eating out of the pantry, and doing things to improve my health.

I ordered tomato and cucumber seeds. The best varieties sell out, so I want to get them delivered early. There are plenty of cruciferous vegetable seeds leftover from last year. I’m not sure what else I need. Because 2024 was a punk year for gardening, there is more prep work than usual to get ready for spring planting in the ground. I’ll place another seed order once my December pension payment hits the bank account the fourth week of the month.

The rest of today is going through files, papers, and magazines stacked in my physical inbox. I suspect some things were missed. That’s par for the course with so much going on in this life. The snow makes it feel like winter, yet it is not that. The lake is freezing over, yet tomorrow ambient temperatures are forecast in the 40s. One day at a time while living in Big Grove Township.

2024 was transformational. I feel like a different person today than I did a year ago. It is hard to describe, yet I feel more engaged in life than I have been, with a different attitude toward creative projects and mundane household chores. Four big things happened this year.

In August I published An Iowa Life: A Memoir. It brought closure to the autobiography process in a way that encourages me to finish the second volume. I have more confidence with part one finished. I had no expectation of that.

My spouse has been gone helping her sister for much of the year. Besides earlier extended trips, I delivered her in late August, and except for coming home to vote, she has been there since. My sister-in-law has been recovering from surgery and is not ready to live on her own. Neither am I, but I take stock in the fact that the situation is temporary. That commonplace “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is true in my case.

The coronavirus found me in August and on the 29th I tested positive for COVID-19. I wrote about this. While I’m much better, some aspects of my health remain affected. Specifically, my glucose level spiked and my liver function is out of the normal range. I am privileged to get great medical treatment. We’ll see how it is going next check in with the physician. Whatever permanence there may be to the condition, I hope to able to live with it. I didn’t think I would ever die, until I got COVID.

I’m reconnecting with old friends. My high school class decided to have a reunion this year, so I spent time organizing attendance. It also seems like we are getting the band of social activism back together. We need to mount resistance with conservatives taking over our governance. Politics in this election affirmed what I saw in 2022: the old way of running a campaign is obsolete. No one I know identified the new paradigm… yet.

These four things combined made 2024 a very different year. No more of the commonplace issues of finance, gardening, reading, and cooking in plain sight. I found the end point for my autobiography in my infection with the virus. While a number of normal concerns fell off the radar, I like where this post-COVID life is going. It is a great place from which to enter 2025.

Listed below, in descending order by number of views, are my top ten posts thus far in 2024. Statistics from Blog for Iowa and Journey Home were combined in the tally. Each item has a link to the original post.

My review of Nancy Pelosi’s memoir of her time as Speaker of the House was most viewed. Click here.

My review of Barbara McQuade’s Attack from Within. Click here.

House District 92 candidate Ana Banowsky’s story of being a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Click here.

Reporting on Julie Persons’ campaign to become Johnson County, Iowa auditor. Click here.

Interview with Iowa House Democratic Leader Jennifer Konfrst. Click here.

Reporting on the poorly attended 2024 Iowa Precinct Caucuses. Click here.

I bought a three-quart saucier and wrote about it. Click here.

In the face of insurmountable pressure to withdraw from his presidential campaign, I wrote “Progressives Stand By Biden.” Click here.

“Nuclear Power Isn’t It” provides an update on the lack of progress with regard to nuclear power generation. We should look elsewhere for power. Click here.

I wrote a remembrance of childhood friend and neighbor Katie Tritt. Click here.

I spaded the garlic patch on Saturday. It was too wet to till. I’m not in a hurry, yet I’d like to finish planting garlic soon. Rain is forecast all day today.

On Sunday, someone who helped edit my memoir pointed out the whole book was an origin story. Upon reflection, that seems accurate. It takes my story from the earliest times up until my beginnings as a married person in society. After that point, I drew on the origin story, and still do. However, what happened afterward was built on the foundation of my origin story, and is much different from the earlier period.

Last week I visited the new, multi-story University of Iowa clinic at Iowa River Landing for the first time. My physician and attending staff seemed competent. The facility is very nice. I noticed the presence of double-wide chairs in the waiting room and in the examination room. That furnishing is making a statement about the obesity epidemic in the United States. It’s not subtle. It did feel like I was smaller than I am when sitting in those.

I have been visiting various clinics a lot the last 3 months since I had COVID. It took me 2-1/2 hours to read everything that documented my visits and make a plan to heal. With that kind of time commitment, no wonder folks don’t always follow doctor’s orders. It’s a long and complicated process if done right. I noticed physicians often pointed to me as the decision maker. I mean, what do I know about whether I should take a medication or not? I ended up asking a lot of questions.

If you are an Iowa Democrat, Sunday’s front page article in the Cedar Rapids Gazette is worth reading. I believe much of what was said is wrong, especially the assumptions about how messaging functions in politics. All the same, one has to understand the establishment viewpoints if we want to change our politics to regain the majority. The authors rounded up the establishment for us. Here’s a link to a printed copy of the article.

On Sunday I called my Aunt who lives in Southwestern Virginia. According to my phone, the call lasted 37 minutes and 51 seconds. We had a good talk. The last time we visited in person was more than 40 years ago. We shed the preliminary pleasantries and got right into the conversation. That’s how we did it back in 1983. Unfortunately, I couldn’t answer some of the questions she asked me about my grandparents. What she asked was never discussed.

She refreshed my memory on some of the old stories, like the “Dude Hole” where the three boys (my father and his two brothers) would swim in a creek next to the railroad tracks, then hop on the train as it passed to ride through town. They found it to be fun, she said. We recounted the story of my grandmother’s death in Summer 1947. My grandfather was away in prison so they split the three boys up among grandmother’s siblings. “You can imagine, three boys! There was not enough food (to keep them together).” My great aunt and uncle adopted my aunt, who was much younger than the other three.

We retold the story of the coal mining company that strip mined the valley near my great aunt’s home. They augured out the coal from the high wall and spoiled the well. The family got no money from the mining company for ruining the water. For years my aunt hauled jugs of water out to my great aunt so she wouldn’t have to use the “sulfur water.” She updated me during the call that she had paid the fee to run clean water out to the property. Her daughter now lives there.

We discussed a number of other topics of a kind that is best left within a family. At the end of the call she said “this call isn’t over.” I agreed and made a note to call again before the end of the year.

I come to a breaking point in the narrative of the United States. When we married, Ronald Reagan was in the second year of his first term in office. He was a popular president, garnering the electoral votes of 49 states during his 1984 re-election campaign. Reagan won 58.8 percent of the popular votes that year. What he and his minions did to our country is unforgivable. This year, Donald Trump won re-election. Votes are still being counted, yet it appears he will win the popular vote at or slightly below 50 percent of those cast. Trump is expected to change American society even more than Reagan did, if that’s possible. My chosen role is to write about something other than the decline of the United States. I’ll need to write about other topics. Here is what’s on deck for 2025.

My main 2025 writing is continuing with my autobiography. This involves a daily writing and editing commitment. Sometimes I post chapters here to get feedback or to work with the language. In addition, sometimes I learn more than is needed in a chapter. The excess material can often make a solid blog post.

News not reported in other media is always popular. There will be a school board election next fall. Information I gather locally about national issues is another source for posts. Likewise, issues about Lake Macbride, public lands, extreme weather, and such are also potential topics.

I sense another transition in my views about local food, gardening, foraging, cooking, and food shopping. Cooking is a constant learning process, so there will be posts about that. I set a goal to redesign our garden and grow one again in 2025. This has been and will continue to be a rich topic.

Book reviews, rites of passage within my circle (mostly deaths of friends), travel reports, and reports on local activities of significance beyond the region are all likely subjects.

Aging in America has become an important personal topic. I will have a few things to say about health, medicine, chronic illness, Medicare, Social Security, and adjusting to getting older.

Few people in Iowa are reporting on nuclear weapons and nuclear power issues. A group is advocating for the Duane Arnold Energy Center near Palo to reopen their nuclear power plant to generate electricity for data centers. It is an important issue where I can add to the public discussion.

When I finished my graduate degree in 1981 I was increasingly aware of racism in America. It seems evident that issue is not going away. The protections of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution remain the centerpiece of our lives. In Iowa, racism isn’t talked about enough, even though it runs right below the surface of what used to be called “Iowa nice.”

2024 was a presidential election year and 2025 is not. I hope to decrease my posts about politics unless it impacts one of the other topics listed above.

Lastly, I will write about the craft of writing and what I am learning about it.

These topics seem like a lot. Hopefully they will organize my thinking for the coming year and help produce a blog worth reading.

Why are there no more geniuses?

That’s an easy one to answer. Our culture no longer recognizes people as being geniuses. But, you might say, what about Einstein, or Leonardo, or others? Weren’t they geniuses? The answer, of course, is yes they were, but we now call them geniuses only in hindsight.

Today we see people as people, innately of potential equality, with various forces at work which inhibit the realization of that potential.The case of women artists is one, there are others. There is a dangerous assumption here: that genius is a goal or state of being to which a person aspires. An individual begins a human like other humans and develops to become a genius. They go through a process, they progress. I reject this.

Genius becomes a function of being recognized as such. If a genius is “ahead of their time,” then they will not be recognized in their own time for their accomplishments. In short, genius, like all other words, is defined in a cultural context. As the culture changes, today’s geniuses might be tomorrow’s buffoons. We need a new word to describe genius. That word will not appear in the current American milieu.

~ This post was written in the author’s journal on June 14, 1981.

Rain and wind are blowing leaves from most deciduous trees, revealing squirrel nests in the canopy. Some, like the Pin Oak, hang on to their leaves until next year’s growth pushes them out. Most everything that’s coming down before winter has come down on the third day of stormy weather in Big Grove Township.

I set the election aside to focus on writing.

I’ve written about 60,000 words of the second part of my memoir. I feel I should start over. Writing the first part changed the way I look at writing memoir. I should incorporate what I learned, and will. That means a complete re-write of the outline and a chapter by chapter re-writing of the story. It will be a different book than what I first envisioned and hopefully more readable and engaging.

I left the story in Iowa City during the summer of 1981 just before President Ronald Reagan fired the PATCO air traffic controllers to break their strike. Reagan and his conservative progeny’s deconstruction of the world in which I grew up became a constant theme during my life. During summer 1981, they were just getting started.

There was a brief window of about a year before I proposed to my now spouse on Aug. 18, 1982. In that year, I lived in the Iowa City of which we’ve heard tell as a writer’s haven. I moved from my high school friend’s home to an apartment on Market Street. I found a job with the University to pay my bills. I sought to be a writer and did what many would be writers do near but not part of the writer’s workshop. It was something of a plan. It is important to recapture that time because in several ways, it is archetypal of what creative Iowans do to cope with this barren agricultural state which is increasingly devoid of creativity.

Because my focus was on writing, I have plenty of journal entries from that time to re-read. That summer, I compiled a number of my essays into a book called Institutional Writings. I printed 15 copies and distributed them to friends. I was determined to be a writer even though I wasn’t sure what that meant in 1981. Iowa City wasn’t a solution for me. It was more a transitional place.

I accomplished something significant today. I got started writing Part II. There is much to be done yet I’m moving, hopefully in the right direction.