Just Another Writer's Journal

  Paul Simon talks about writing " Bridge Over Troubled Water " and how he got stuck. Dick Cavett asked him "What makes you stuck?"  To which he replied, "Well, everywhere I went, led me where I didn't wanna be. So I was stuck."

Recently, someone in a forum wrote: " For me, I feel like a piece of writing is never really finished; I feel like there's always ideas I can add, connections I can make more explicit, etc. But sometimes I nail it the first time, too. I guess for me it comes down to whether I have changed my mind about what I've written. " This prompted someone to reply with a quote: " A movie is never finished, just released. " ―  Orson Welles That quote reminded me of one of my favorite quotes, so I posted it: " Art is never finished, only abandoned. " ―  Leonardo da Vinci This is where things got interesting, because someone then posted this quote: " You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. " ―  Michael Scott What? It's a great quote, sure, but what does it have to do with the topic being discussed? Yeah, maybe it relates to " sometimes I nail it the first time, " but that wasn't really what the original post was about, or what ...

Someone asked what format I used to layout my books. Both Chasing Dante and They're Watching You are 6 x 9in, set in 12pt Minion Pro on 14.4pt leading. The inside and outside margins are 0.875 inch, the top margin is 1.125 inch, and the bottom margin is .875 inch.

 My new book, Chasing Dante , is now available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon. It's a gay romance, and here's the blurb. College student Owen meets Dante at a supermarket and falls in love. There's only one problem; Dante already has a boyfriend. Things get even more complicated when Dante's sister disappears, and Owen finds himself being dragged into the mystery. Owen has to work out what happened to Dante's sister, why the FBI is after her, and whether he can trust Dante. And why is he driving Dante to Pittsburgh?  

When is a book done? When is any artwork finished? It’s something I’ve been thinking about lately. Two of my favorite quotes are: Art is never finished, only abandoned - Leonardo da Vinci The show (SNL) doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30 - Lorne Michaels I think about those quotes a lot as my latest book moves slowly but relentlessly towards publication. I really thought the book, Chasing Dante , would be completed about two months ago. The book was written, and was—for all intent and purposes— complete, two months ago, but the final editing process has been excruciating. A ‘one last review’ resulted in hundreds of minor corrections and changes. Those changes unintentionally introduced all sorts of minor errors. Talk about best intentions going badly—I think I made it worse after I ‘tidied it up!’ It’s ironic how just minor changes can unintentionally introduce tiny additional errors.  One of my mistakes is that I didn’t completely finish reviewing the ...

 Next month—November—is the annual National Novel Writing Month. People are signing up, or pledging—or just thinking about—writing a novel in one month. I’ve thought about doing it before, but never actually managed to make the target (which is to write 50,000 words in a month.) Do you want to write a book that’s only 50,000 words? Do you think you can write that much in one month? All good questions, and personally, I’m not going to take part because I want to end up with a completed novel in one month. But  I’m pretty sure I can meet that goal (it’s 1,600 words a day) and I feel like it could be a fun exercise. And if it takes more than a month to finish, that’s okay too.
 Anyone else thinking of taking part? Even if you aren’t, you might want to check out the website for NaNoWriMo. It has some interesting resources for writers covering plot and characters. Things that are important whether you are writing a 50,000 word novel, or something more or less ambitious. 
 https://n...

I’ve been setting up my next book in Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP.) This is the second book I have published through KDP, and it’s a reasonably straightforward process.   I first uploaded a draft of the book and cover months ago to check that I had the formatting right. This is something I recommend doing; if your text layout goes into the trim area, or has some other problem, the upload will be rejected. You want to make sure your design is right before you finish the layout of your whole book.     Anyway, I just finished the manuscript and went to upload it and the updated cover. When I did, I got an Internal Error for both the cover and the book. That confused me, as I hadn't made significant changes to the formatting. I tried uploading the previous version of the text and cover—the ones that had uploaded successfully some months ago—and got errors on those too!     I tried some different things uploading different versions and managed at one point to g...

  I’m really excited to share that my next book is almost ready for publication. Chasing Dante was supposed to be finished last year, and then…stuff happened. First health issues intervened, and then a succession of other things followed—what a weird year this has been—and so it was delayed. And delayed again. But now the book is on track to be published in October, which will be almost a year late. Doesn’t time slip away? Right now I have nothing to share but the title, and the cover, but I’m excited about it, so here’s the cover: Stand by for more news.

The longest novel, according to The Guinness Book of Records , is Proust's " Remembrance of Things Past ." (Also called “ In Search of Lost Time .”) It weighs in at 9,609,000 characters, including spaces. I immediately thought; ' here's my chance to get in the Guinness Book of Records. ' Then I did a little math. Let's say your typical novel is 70,000 words. And lets say that's about 371,000 characters. Then Remembrance of Things Past is the equivalent of 25 regular books. Unless you used VERY small type, I'm not sure you could even get that printed in one edition. I don't think I'm going to try and beat that record. Note:  Remembrance of Things Past  was published in seven volumes.

Alex Edelman is an American comedian who seems to be doing quite well in Britain. I came across him in an episode of As Yet Untitled (an English chat show) and then stumbled upon a comedy bit he did about coming out. He's not gay, but it's a funny bit. The premise is that he comes out every year at Thanksgiving to annoy his uncle, who hates gay people. It's become a tradition such that; "The turkey come out, the potatoes come out, I come out." No doubt about it, he's cute too...and some of the comments talk about that, one reading "I kept staring at his butt." Hey, if he's gonna do a routine about Coming Out, that's what's gonna happen! But let's not objectify him too quickly. I next stumbled on a radio series on the BBC (you can hear it online) called Alex Edelman's Special Relationships . It's a chat show with a variety of guests discussing a topic. Actually, it's sort of like As Yet Untitled . The episode on F...

This week, an article appeared hyping an audio tape of one of the last meetings of The Beatles during their final days, and the article makes the claim : 'This tape rewrites everything we knew about the Beatles." Before I go into full beast mode, let me note that no transcription or audio recording of the tape is provided, so maybe it does change 'everything we knew' about the end of The Beatles, but what is presented, does not change everything we know. Not by a long shot. Synopsis: The article makes the claim that it's accepted history that The Beatles knew that Abbey Road was going to be their final album ( Abbey Road is regarded by fans as their final album as it was recorded after Let It Be , even though Let It Be was released after Abbey Road .) The article goes on to talk about a recording of a business meeting just prior to the release of Abbey Road , where John and George are talking about continuing after Abbey Road , while Paul seems less than ...

It’s always interesting where ideas for stories come from. Even I don’t always understand—or remember—where an idea for a story came from. Often, an idea will come to me, and I start writing, and half an hour later, I can’t remember exactly what the original idea was. It’s already changed dramatically from the original concept. Some stories are based on people I see, and I try to imagine a back story for them. Other stories are based on situational ideas that come to me after reading something. Sometimes a story comes to you pretty whole, and sometimes it comes in parts. You have an initial idea, you write it, but then you need more. And more. And you slog away at it. And sometimes you get really lucky, and you encounter something that fits perfectly into your story. I'm currently working on a story about a guy that falls in love with a footballer. (English football.) I’ve already written a few thousand words of the story, but at the moment it is really ...

I was just reading about the latest conservative representative to be caught in a gay[1] scandal—it seems to happen every six months or so—and it made me wonder why. But it’s not; 'why do these people find themselves in this position?'—because being in the closet is likely to force them into these situations. And it’s not; 'why are there gay conservatives'?—that’s a topic for another day. The question I wonder is; 'why did these gay conservative legislators vote or promote anti-gay legislation?' Because, inevitably, these people turn out to have voted against the interests of LGBTQ+ people. Do they lack empathy, and think they have a get-out-of-jail-free card for themselves? Are they so full of self loathing that they do it to punish themselves? Do they think that if they pass one more piece of legislation, it might frighten themselves straight? Or are they using it as a beard? To hide the fact that they are gay? “ You know, that guy Jim, he see...

Amazon UK is running a “Kindle Storyteller” competition, open to new books published between May 1st and August 31st. It seems any author can enter, as long as they publish their book in the Amazon UK store. I’d seen a post about the competition before, but I hadn’t done anything because I didn’t think that my book would exactly capture their attention.  But they just sent me an email to remind me about it…the only problem is that the email read: Thank you for recently publishing your book 'GPS to Joy' Ahh, that’s not my book! I guess my book really didn’t capture their attention. For a moment I did wonder if there had been a mix up in their database, and maybe I would be getting someone else’s royalties! Unfortunately, no, they don’t seem to have done that. The disappointment is crushing.

Just after I paid for a year long subscription to Grammarly, Microsoft went and announced their own AI-powered grammar and style checker for Word Online: Ideas In Word .  According to the article, "Ideas for Word might propose swapping 'society as a whole' for the more concise 'society.'"  Oh come on, really? We're getting rid of all filler verbiage?! That's going to make things very short and concise and boring. Meanwhile, Google has announced it's own AI-powered grammar suggestions feature coming in Google Docs. Microsoft getting into AI-powered grammar checking reminds me of a certain utility that Microsoft offered a long time ago; Clippit, commonly referred to as Mr Clippy. Mr Clippy got a lot of—probably deserved—bad press. One of my favorite pieces about Mr Clippy was in an episode of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me  when the panel was imagining Mr Clippy being taken out and shot.  

I used Amazon's application Kindle Create to make the electronic version of my book They're Watching You . The tool is very easy to use and compared to creating the printed version, creating the electronic edition was simple. It was almost as simple as copying and pasting the text, and adding the index. I did, however, encounter one major problem.  In a couple of chapters, there were a few emojis in the text. As I was working through the text, I was pleased to see that the app had an emoji's menu, and I carefully added the emoji's into the right places in the text. Things were looking great! But after I exported the book, and went to upload it, the upload wouldn't work (and Amazon gave a very unhelpful error message why it wouldn't accept the file!) After Googling and finding nothing about why an upload might not work, I tried deleting the front matter and the index, and it still didn't work. I tried deleting some other stuff, and still had no joy. A...

To celebrate the release of " They're Watching You ," and the July 4th holiday, I'm holding a book giveaway. Send me an email before Monday July 8th, and I will randomly pick one winner of a copy of the book. And if you haven't read anything else on this blog, the book is a gay romance/thriller. To enter, just send an email to gabrielcaldwell@gmail.com , Subject: Book Giveaway.

They’re Watching You is a gay romance about two musicians, Ed and Aleck. Ed is out, and Aleck—who is much more successful—isn’t. This story is about the dynamics in their budding relationship, and also about some external issues they face. Like a lot of my stories, They’re Watching You started with a real person. I saw an interview with a musician, and something about his character appealed to me. He was shy and didn’t like talking about himself—or anything really—and I found it so endearing that I ‘cast’ him into a story idea. Or should I say, I had an idea for a story based loosely on my impressions of him. That story begins with the initial meeting between Ed and Aleck, and I knew that the story was primarily about how they met and whether they ended up together. The character in the book is not the real person or even meant to be a portrayal of that person (which is why I’m not going to say who it is.) Instead, I sort of see it like they’re an actor I used in this st...

I'm really excited that my book, They're Watching You is finally published on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle versions. It's finally finished! I'm not sure what I'm more excited about; the fact that's it's there, or the fact that I don't have to go back and edit it again! A brief synopsis; it's a gay romance about a struggling musician who meets another musician, but their first meeting results in a misunderstanding, and then problems, and they dance around each other for a while before starting to date, and then their problems really begin. I'll be writing a bit more about the book shortly, but I just wanted to say; it's done! They're Watching You

I think that using a grammar checker can make you a bit self-conscious. You start noticing things about your writing: words and phrases you use a lot. For example, really. I seem to really like really. An interesting thing about English is how you can construct a sentence in several different word orders, and the results can virtually say the same thing, and be acceptable English. I had a sentence: I didn’t really even care about him. It wasn't actually flagged by the grammar checker, but I'd noticed my predilection for really—or more accurately, it had been pointed out that the word appeared frequently in another paragraph—and I went on a bit of an excise exercise. When I got to that sentence, something about it stood out. I realized that I could come up with different variations of the sentence that were virtually identical, but with different word orders: I didn’t really even care about him. I really didn’t even care about him. I didn’t even really care ab...