So it goes...

It has been a week of reconnecting with friends. On Tuesday I got together with a group of friends I used to work alongside in a writing workshop. We keep in touch on Facebook, and it's been six months or so since we all got together that someone mentioned we should get together over a beer and see what each other is up to. We gathered at a local microbrewery and talked and laughed about our writing projects, failures and successes and where we were at with our works in progress. The answers ranged from people who had not written since we'd been together last, to those with books coming out or in progress. We respected those who'd gone different directions and praised those who'd stuck with it. Writing is hard work and you can't force it. It comes and goes. The reason I appreciate this group of friends and love getting together with them is because we can all talk like a bunch of writing geeks and none of us tires of hearing about the others' struggles. We...

A couple of nights ago was the quarterly AllWriters ' Friday Night Free For All event at Cafe De Arts in Waukesha. The event features students of the writing studio reading their work in front of an audience. They read from a bunch of different genres and styles including, Poetry, Memoir, Fiction, Short Story and Novel. And while I live the reading part, sometimes I get as much enjoyment out of the half hour before and half hour afterward talking to other writers. It's the closet extrovert in me. I enjoyed talking to Lila about her soon to be released book about her brother that she wrote using HIS point of view - something I've never seen too much before in memoir. She conducted interviews with him for much of it and it sounded like a fascinating way to write a book. She has worked hard getting her book finished and published and I am super excited to see it come to fruition. And I loved talking to Jocelyn, the newest member of the Mighty Monday Nighters group that I...

Every Monday night I have my writing workshop at AllWriters Workplace and Workshop . Now, most people would wonder why anyone would take a class on a Monday night. Monday's are typically the hardest day of the week to get through and to tack on a two hour class at the end of it would seem like a form of torture. (And because it's a writing class, it would probably be a special kind of torture for some people.) But it's actually the best part of my Mondays. I'm in with a great group of people, and we've built quite a rapport between us. We've even developed a nickname of the Mighty Monday Nighters. Part of what makes our group so cool is the unique style, subject and genres of everyone in the group. Listening to their stories from week to week is great fun. In some ways we get to know their story characters as much as we get to know the writer writing them. The group is made up of: ( using Aliases ) Alice -  is currently writing a story about a woman who ...

Lots going on at the moment and lots pending too, so I'll try and hit the high points. My wife left for Las Vegas today, so I am Mr. Mom'ing it for the next four days. In a little known tidbit, that is precisely how this blog started so many years ago. When Donna went to Guatemala on a mission trip for church I started blogging about the trials and tribulations of single parenting. My domain was actually mrmomforaweek.blogspot.com The domain was renamed to writerjimlandwehr.com but the original posts are still there from those days. With the absence of my wife, comes the requisite eating of meals over the sink, often from the pot they were cooked in or wrapped in a napkin. (Actually, I made Spiede sandwiches tonight and they turned out quite tasty, thanks in large part to my wife who had everything ready.) Also the running of the dishwasher every third day, and making of the bed only the day she returns. (Maybe Saturday too, because that's cleaning day and, well, I ha...

Well, it has been a good weekend to be a writer. Lots of good things going on these past few days. Life as a writer seems to have ebbs and flows of activity, and right now things are flowing. The thing is, they're not just flowing for me, but for many of my friends as well. In some ways this makes me happier than my own isolated successes. Like any party, it's always fun when everyone is having fun along with you. The weekend kicked off with my author interview at the studios of Milwaukee Public Radio's WUWM 89.7 FM . I went into the interview not knowing what questions would be asked with the expectation that this would make my spontaneous answers more, well, spontaneous. At the advice of a couple of writers, I had prepared in my head some answers to a couple of questions that were supposedly always asked at interviews, namely, who are your favorite authors and what inspired you to write this book? Of course those direct questions never came up, but if they had, well, I...

I was joking about how yesterday was my Dirty Shirt Travelling Road Show. I had two book events in a single day and likened it to being in a band and touring around the country. A few of the comparisons were: Like Kiss without the face makeup and pyrotechnics. On the road without Kerouac. That's me. Like Springsteen without Clarence, Little Stevie and triple encores. On tour like The Who, without groupies and guitar smashing. Like Woodstock, without the mud, VW buses and Joe Cocker. Like the Grateful dead, without beach balls, Jerry Garcia solos and the stoned naked guy running around. It was like all of that and way more. It was a GREAT day. Perhaps I should clarify and say it was a GREAT afternoon. Because the morning was so incredibly underwhelming I can hardly describe it. The morning event at Threshold Inc. was an "Author Showcase". Twenty authors were there signing books to no one but themselves, apparently. I managed to sell four books, three of the...

When I first started my writing class at AllWriters' , the last thing I ever expected was to write poetry. I went in with the purpose of writing nonfiction and pretty much nothing else. Well, people like Mario Medina and a couple other classmates inspired me with their poetry, and I decided to start writing it myself. I didn't know where it would lead, but thought what the heck? It's just like a really, really short story. "I tell you we are here on earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." - Kurt Vonnegut So, I started farting around with poetry. I didn't really know what I was doing, but it was a nice diversion. Before long, I submitted the poem below to Verse Wisconsin and, lo and behold, they accepted it. It was a great feeling and I daresay was the inspiration to my "push to publish." Writing is one thing, but I started submitting because it is a really cool to have someone say, "this is good; I like thi...

Needless to say, it has been kind of a crazy week for me. A week ago yesterday was one of the best days in a long, long time, and it kind of threw this week on its head. After talking to the publisher on Friday, I received my publishing book contract last Sunday night and returned it on Wednesday. The rest of this week involved a lot of cloud-walking and inability to focus. I've got a million things I'm thinking about with regards to what a book release involves, and am trying to work out what precedes what. I've got a great set of friends, peers, and mentors around me to help, which is nice, but it's still overwhelming. Now, Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir doesn't come out for another five months, but my immediate reaction is to get everything setup and ready in the first week. It goes without saying that this is not a healthy approach. It leads to sleep deprivation, as my mind refuses to shut off when I go to bed. On the couple of nights I was a...

In the writing world, much of our time is spent waiting. Waiting on inspiration, waiting on clarity, waiting on edits, waiting on submission responses. When I took my first adult education writing course called Writing from your life , I was thrilled to be writing and getting feedback. So, what did I do right after that? Waited almost two years to take my second class - the AllWriters' Wednesday Night Workshop . Sometimes waiting is put on us, other times we put it on ourselves. These past couple of months I was waiting to find out if my latest article submission on muskie fishing was accepted to MidWest Outdoors Magazine . They don't really reply if you are accepted or not, a check just shows up in your mailbox one day. When my article wasn't in the December issue, I assumed if I waited another month, it would be in January issue. Of course, it wasn't, so now I wait again to see if it will be placed in February or maybe even later in the year, where it fits the open ...

I've been actively writing since about the fourth grade. Of course, it has been an on again/off again affair over my lifetime, but if I had to pin down when I first realized my love for writing, it would have to be in fourth grade. It was then that I wrote some stories that were not even required for class. I did them just because I enjoyed creating them. Each of the stories were written on 1/2 sheets of paper which were then cut in 2 and put together like a short book. I still have the stories, Mom saved them over the years, and there are some common themes to them, namely disaster, some sort of resolution to the disaster and a moral to the story. I remember a nun teacher of mine asked if she could put one or more of the stories in a special box for the class and I really wasn't keen on the idea. (Author's rights at a young age, I guess.) She got the drift and backed off, but it was really kind of cool to be acknowledged for something I just thought was fun. Through high...

I finished my BWCA book on Monday night. Well, I should qualify that statement. I finished "writing" the book on Monday. Maybe I should qualify the qualifier, I finished writing the last chapter of my book. What remains is another 45 pages of "final editing" with my Thursday workshop group, whom I am growing to really appreciate. The book as it stands now is about 255 pages long and about 70,000 words. I started writing it in "concept" in 2005 during a class offered through the City of Waukesha titled "Writing from your life." What came out of that class was a seven-page piece that was the kindling for the bonfire that has become my book. As it turns out, it was written badly enough to be used for kindling, but that's a different story. In looking back through the piece, I cover a little bit of everything from a camping standpoint. I talk a little about the characters, a little about the shopping, fishing, portaging and the rest. It was l...

Some notes and thoughts about life in the writing lane.  I continue to work through what I'd like to call the "final unprofessional edit" of my BWCA book with my Thursday night colleagues at AllWriters . We have one week left in this session and then another starts up on May 30th and runs 12 weeks. As I've mentioned before, this run-through has been really good. It is giving a (somewhat) objective audience a start-to-finish look at the book. At the same time, this group is probably the most critical group the book will ever see, from a reader's standpoint. This gives the book a thorough check for facts, timelines, content, clarity and structure. In the class we've actually had a couple of students (there's 5 of us) finish their "final unprofessional edit." One has moved on to her next book and another has decided to run through the start again. We writers are nothing if not thorough. We're like compulsive fire-pokers, we just keep futzin...

As part of my 2013 New Year's resolutions, I've decided to put a serious push on finishing my BWCA memoir. Part of doing that required switching from my Wednesday Night writing workshop at AllWriters' Workplace and Workshop to a Thursday Night Book Writing class. Because I've grown to love my Wednesday Night colleagues, this will be a difficult transition. The upside to it all is that two or three former Wednesday-nighters will be in the Thursday night class, so I won't be among total strangers. What's the difference between the two classes? The Wednesday class is a setting where students read and then get critiqued by their peers. Because the reading takes place in class, not everyone gets a chance to be read every week. The Thursday reading takes place on your own time and you just bring your critique to class. It's like Wednesday, just more concentrated, or compressed. So, in preparation for the Thursday transition, I have been going through my manus...

I went to another writing event last Friday night. It's an event called the Friday Night Free For All and it takes place at the AllWriters' writing studio in downtown Waukesha. It features readings from four genres including poetry, memoir, fiction and novel excerpt. Usually a guest speaker is also featured, but this particular event used a panel of students who submitted their work to the Ampersand Review . These poems were supposed to be "Found Poems" which are poems compiled of other snippets. These could be literature quotes, movie titles, or in this case, email subject lines. I realize that these events are not for everyone. You have to appreciate books, stories and storytelling. It also helps to be familiar with the writing process, though that's not requirement. Many of my friends would not be caught dead at something like this, and I really don't hold that against them. As I said, it's not for everyone. The fact of the matter is that I rea...

Last night was the start of a new AllWriters ' Wednesday Semester. I call them semesters, but they're really 10 week sessions. It was a night of new personalities. There were four new students in this particular class. It looks like there's all levels of expertise as well. There are brand new writers who are taking their first formal class, established writers who have been published, a memoirist who is doing journalling in the hopes of turning it into a book, and a poet who's just looking to get involved in a new group. As much as I am an introvert, I find it fascinating to meet people who share interests that I do. My wife says I'm scaring her as I get older, the way I engage people who I don't know very well. It's very unlike me, actually, and frankly it's scaring me as well. I just have a hard time not talking to people about the whole writing process, their experiences, my experiences, etc. I think it's just a phase and I'll fall back into...

Last Friday night was an event called the AllWriters' Friday Night Free-For-All . It is an event held quarterly at the writing studio that is free to the public. It features short readings from 4 different students, namely poetry, memoir, short story and novel. There were also readings from Kathie and Michael Giorgio at this particular event in recognition of the studio's 7th anniversary. Kathie has done a wonderful job at building a successful creative writing business that has even weathered the current recession we're experiencing. I'm not one who particularly likes public speaking, but was asked by the Director to do a reading from my memoir I'm working on. I was honored to be asked, so picked a story about one of our foibles at a canoe launch in the BWCA. I was a bit nervous going in, but for some strange reason, not as nervous as I've been in the past. I got up and read my 12 minutes worth and it went off without a hitch. Judging from the crowd's rea...

An update on  my writing is in order, as it's been a while.  I continue to try and blog twice a week or so. This keeps my skills up and forces me to get something down at least twice a week. Without it, I would be left to my writing class only, and I think it's important to keep active in many areas to keep you sharp. Sometimes the blog feels forced and other times it rolls off readily. When it does that, it's almost visceral. I kind of get in a writing zone and things come easily. These are some of my best writings; funny and succinct. Usually they are driven by an event that happened that calls for a humorous post. I'm still in AllWriters' workshop on Wednesday nights. This has become one of my favorite nights of the week. I get the chance to rub elbows with other writers and just be "cerebral." As I told my wife many years ago when I was taking a continuing education class, it just makes me feel like I'm doing something with my life when I'm i...

I started back at my writing class last night. It was good to be back around heady writing types again. We're a motley bunch, but we all understand each other. We encourage each other, point out our redundancies, point out our redundancies, give each other hints and point out our redundancies. It is a great climate to work in. No one is overly critical in part because Kathie won't have it. She said we need to be critical, without tearing down. No one benefits when a person gets insulted to the point where they question their ability. We've got a little of everything in the class. Memoir, poetry, and lots of fiction. It is fascinating to follow the stories from week to week and see how they develop. It's a bit like I'm reading 10 books every week. (Or a chapter for 10 different books each week.) We listen as characters get killed, experience death and divorce, morph into zombies, grow old or die young. While we work hard, we have a lot of fun in class too. The c...

I spent last weekend at the AllWriters Retreat in Techny, Illinois. It was a great weekend, away from all distractions with large chunks of time where writing was the main focus. I got down there good and early and settled in to my room in the "Maria House" dormitory where most of the weekend was spent. It was actually what made up the convent of the entire complex, which is quite large. The grounds included an enormous, beautiful Catholic Church that brought back many memories of the church I grew up in in Minnesota, namely St. Lukes , which oddly enough has been renamed to St. Thomas More. I'm not sure how or why they renamed it. It's a little like the abolition of limbo . How does that happen, just all of the sudden?  You take something that people have believed in for years and say, well, it never really existed after all. What? I would think that St. Luke would be a little hacked off by the slight, myself. The grounds of the place were beautiful. There was a...

This was a strange week for me and my writing muse. I submitted a poem to verse wisconsin about the protests in Madison and they accepted it and published it online. It can be seen at: www.versewisconsin.org/#poems . It's not a huge deal, but kind of cool. They were asking for poems specifically about the Madison chaos, and having lived it firsthand, I thought it was a good chance to speak my piece. There's some really good poems there, and some clunkers. I've come to discover that that's just the nature of poetry. I can appreciate many different styles, but some are just like "what did they just say?" That's kind of a statement for life in general. Some people you get, some you don't. The downside of the writing thing happened the next day when I submitted my article to Musky Hunter magazine. This was an article I felt pretty good about. It had a good story to it, a decent amount of humor, and had been well reviewed by many of my fishing friends. W...