update

In the rush to market books I've lost sight of my creative juices, which would have me perhaps writing a short story even when I'm busy. I wrote this one, but it's true, and I don't consider that creative so much as just documenting. Life is crazy and worth documenting, but I need also to be cranking out things I can put out there.

I am definitely finding that the more I market, the less I write. I market primarily by exchange - I read others' books, they read mine. I do this as a layover so that I can gradually build an audience of pure readers - I am doing that slowly as well. People are finding out about my writing. It's not easy - in fact it's tedious - but it's what I'm doing.

The main reason writing has gone a little by the wayside is that we're moving in about two weeks. Two adults, four dogs, two cats, three teens, and a crapload of furniture, good and bad, new and old, clothes, genealogy, musical instruments, stamps and coins, you name it, it's going. An old doll case & dolls. Packing is on my mind. And the route, through about six states.

Be patient, I will come out of this a better writer.

One Woman's Voice

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One Woman's Voice:
Biography of Elizabeth Mansfield Irving (1852-1939), elocutionist, patriot, women's rights pioneer

Available on Amazon, Kindle and Kindle Unlimited
paperback %5.95 + shipping
Kindle $3.99
free on Kindle Unlimited
ACX version coming
Non-zons (people who refuse to use Amazon), contact me & we'll work something out


This is a story of a woman who wanted to be an elocutionist, on the cusp of the nation's Centennial (1876), when women were not permitted to speak on important topics of the day. A gifted reader and orator, with a beautiful voice, she went into reading war poetry to reunions and encampments of Civil War veterans. She also inherited an insurance business when her husband got sick and died, becoming one of Toledo (Ohio)'s first women business owners. It's the story of using one's voice when one can, and getting one's voice when one is able. Her life corresponed with the rise of elocutionists as a united group, and the rise of the woman's suffrage movement, which ultimately gave women their voice in the political arena also.

Pile of Leaves: Stories of a Rake

KINDLE SPECIAL - personal favorite - Pile of Leaves: Stories of a Rake - short stories from an inspired era FREE on kindle TUE & WED Mar. 22 & 23 https://www.amazon.com/Pile-Leaves-Stories-Thomas-Leverett-ebook/dp/B004IK948M/

new blog

Of all my writing blogs, this is the one where I have a lot of stories, and speak freely about being a writer. It is not available to google, so I figure it gets its hits from people who know it's here or who connect up from one of my main blogs. It will probably stay that way.

I find that writing on blogs is easier than other ways, and now that I'm doing stories again, I've been using this one to just write stories on. There was a time when I did that here. I may go back to that, but for some reason I've been more comfortable using the novel idea site to just put things up. It could be that they are somewhat experimental when I do that.

So there's this new blog, best of indie, that I hope to use to unite all these blogs together. There are of course my press blog and my blatant self-promo site and I will include them in my reckoning. Since these last two require me to keep publishing things and I've faltered lately, they are looking a little desolate. But if I keep them all connected to each other and keep the ball rolling like a good basketball team does, I should find an opening somewhere.

Look way back in the archives of this blog. You will find some of my best stories here. My plan is to fix up all the writing blogs - make them a set - keep their functions distinct - and allow you to have a good look at my whole mind as a writer.

This one has the best name.

This site is a place where I've always talked about writing freely. Looking back over my writing situation I once noticed that the first stories I did were actually more inspired than the later ones, or it could have been that they struck people more because I was somewhat wilder when I started out. Most of those stories are on this blog somewhere, free, and in some cases linked from the template.

This blog is somewhat hidden though, as it never comes up on Google (I told Google "hands off"), so it gets its views from people who know it's here and have come here often over the years. Many of those people are my former students. But I like the character of it and want to keep it to some degree the way it is.

Another blog, A Novel Idea, has gotten a lot of those spontaneous stories these days. That blog is kind of like this one - relatively unknown, not really linked from anywhere, and originally I was using it just to collect possibilities for novels or things that had caught my fancy. Why did I start putting random stories on it? Not sure. I also don't know where I want this to go. In a sense I feel like I should have an author's page, or some place to really show off. On the other hand, I'm much more comfortable with just casually flinging around stories.

So where is this going? Not sure. Change is in the winds, though.

balance

I'm using this blog to write about my experiences and feelings about becoming a writer. I've become somewhat obsessive about it, but frankly, I'm doing much more marketing, and much less writing. It could be that I need to muse about the way things are going in order to deal with it effectively.

In marketing, I've chosen to go with the read-for-reads method for several reasons. I read entire books in order to get other people to read mine, and I can see visually when they have and haven't. One at a time I gain readers and a reputation; in other words, now when I lay out a short-story book, people will read it, because they've already read a few of them. This makes it easier - I don't always set them out for days at a time, and when I want something I get it - and it also keeps my kindle rating generally, or at least occasionally, below a million. I have limited success, in other words - I have a good reputation among a single group of people, writers who are desperate like me - but it comes at a cost.

The cost is, briefly, time. I love reading what I'm reading, even when it's fantasy or a genre I'm not particularly interested in. The reading itself is relaxing and profitable. But I spent the entire morning catching up - briefly, I've taken on three or four books in my quest to keep my ratings good - and sometimes there's no way out of it besides sitting down and just plowing through them. But what isn't getting done is the research and the harder parts of writing my own book. My own book is a little bogged down at the quotes I have to copy over into it, and just simply not knowing enough about several eras that it passes through.

But more than that, my imagination has dampened a little bit, partly in response to grappling with others' imaginations. I don't get to night time wanting to push out a creative story, but rather get to night time totally exhausted and falling asleep while reading someone else's fantasy.

How to balance? It occurs to me to simply put down the reading for longer spells, or at least in the morning. Don't lay out so much of it that I have to finish by some deadline. Do my creative stuff in the morning, while I'm still up for it. I'm not sure how this is going to work out.

One problem is that night is when I get really uninterrupted time. Now, in the days, I'm in good shape, but all kinds of things are demanding my attention - dogs, cats, laundry, kids, whatever. Even this - keeping the blogs going - is a kind of marketing, and I'm trying to not let them slip. I have about thirty, but some, like Tall Corn State, need attention urgently. This one, I'm just musing. You the reader are watching me wade through the stream of life as a writer, and find the way that will get me where I'm going.

Proud to be included in Livi Brooks' site which appears to be very well done, very classy. She liked my book and wrote an excellent review, but it's not posted yet - when it is I will spread the review and hold my feathers in the sun, so to speak. Thank you Livi!