Kevin Coleman, Writer

Dispatch #7 -- Standing on the 10 Yard line.

Writing is going well, despite not having provided any of you with any dispatches.

It's been exactly a week since I started my current project, Working Title, and I am close to finishing. Perhaps today. The goal was to write a piece that was at least 6,000 words, and I'm up to over 8400 now, and will probably be close to 10,000 by the time the work is complete. During revision, there will be some things I might want to trim, some other things I might want to add, but all in all this should be about the length of the completed piece.

I've noticed a few gaps that I will definitely need to fill. For instance, Walter Burback, the main character, is a professional burglar and while the story doesn't feature a burglary, I need to somehow suggest that he's an honourable character in a shady and disreputable line of work.

Dispatch #6 -- "Working Title"

Man, writing these daily dispatches is hard sometimes. I sat here for ten minutes typing, deleting, typing, deleting, over and over. It's like trying to start a lawn mower with a gummed up spark plug. But here I am, again. Please excuse the terrible writing. We writerly types call this "raw". ;)

"Working Title" is close to being done. Yes, that's what I'm calling it for now. The story I started last weekend from a random memory of noisy neighbours, is 9/10 complete and I still don't have a proper title for it.

But I don't care. It doesn't matter right now because, for the first time in over two years, I am close to finishing a piece of writing. It's an amazing feeling to see this thing grow and develop and take on all its form. Ordinarily, I like to sit down and plan things out but that wasn't necessary with "Working Title". It's come out of the ground with force, nearly all on its own.

This is not to say that it won't need refining, editing, and polishing. Parts of it most certainly will, but that doesn't matter right now either. Getting the "shit draft" across the finish line is what matters, and that should happen today. Tomorrow at the latest.

Dispatch #5 -- The Need to Generate a Following

I read in several places that aspiring authors should have a web presence, a platform to share their work. I don't doubt that that's valuable, and I have a couple places where I started sharing my work, but my plan so far has been vague and without focus.

I have a Wattpad account, a Buy Me a Coffee account, a Medium account, and this account. I have posted a bunch of stuff to the Medium, BMAC, and Tumblr platforms, but there's nothing up on Wattpad anymore. Ignoring the fact that I'm not posting enough, I feel like I am spread too thin, that my energy is too diffused.

I don't know much about how all this stuff works. My Brazilian girlfriend used to work at a branding company and she had taken some marketing courses. She would have lots to say about this, and has already given me some pointers to try, but that fell by the wayside when my father passed away and I had to get my mother settled in new digs.

I'm essentially starting over, so should I start with a new plan?

My goal for this year, as stated earlier, is to get a manuscript that is fit for submission to a literary agent complete by the end of this year. That is still the goal, but I should have something else online for said agent to read. Hence, Goldfinch and this new thing I started working on last weekend which as yet has no title, but is really good and really close to draft completion.

My primary job as a writer is to plot and craft a compelling story, not choose the right filter and hash tags for an IG post. One thing I never enjoyed about promoting myself on IG, Twitter, or any of these platforms was how it took up so much of my creative energy. Time spent coming up with the "perfect post" could have been better spent on my actual writing.

In light of that, some reorganization is in order. Some of the writing platforms need to be pruned away, so I can focus better. I like Tumblr and Medium, but at the moment I am posting everything in both places. I think it would serve me better if each platform served a single purpose: Tumblr for long-form blogging and Medium for posting fiction. Buy Me a Coffee and Wattpad will get dropped.

What am I going to do with my other social media platforms? I have already dropped Twitter, but am I going to keep Instagram and Threads? I think it might be worthwhile. Threads is conversational, so it might be a good place to quickly broadcast updates. IG is intensely visual, but with Canva and AI, it's easier than ever to generate quick visual content, so it makes sense to hang onto that one, too.

Dispatch #4 - Flight of the Goldcrest

Yesterday slipped away, hence no update. Full of what? Work, of course—the biggest rock in the jar—but the morning, before the grind, belonged to Goldcrest. I managed 800, maybe 900 words--not great, not terrible.

They say that writing is like a muscle--if it's not exercised, it atrophies. I can attest to that. Those 800 or so words didn't come easy. When I'm consistent, 1500 or even 2000 words is an achievable goal, but this was an uphill climb over steep, rocky terrain, and I'm not at the summit yet--barely off the foot of the mountain. And yet, it still feels like an accomplishment.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer—a real writer. The kind whose name is on the spine of a book, sitting on a shelf in a bookstore. But at 52, I realize dreams don’t wait forever. That’s why "The James Whitfield Matter" feels like my last, best chance.

I've started working on the backstory for this Walter Burback project. Emma Whitfield's husband James has gone missing but it is low on the list of priorities for the police because there is no evidence of foul play. Emma reluctantly turns to Walter for help. As an upright and honest woman, she has little regard for men of the criminal fraternity like Walter, but she needs him because her own husband, a reformed criminal, used to associate with Walter.

I had started thinking of it as a short story: get in, find the man alive (or dead), explain his whereabouts (and find the killer), sprinkle in some burglary and a gun fight, then get out. Easy-peasy, right?

All my life I've wanted to be a published writer--a real published writer, through a proper publisher--and I've been learning what it takes to land an agent. The more I learn, the more I rethink the scope of the project. This isn’t just about telling a good story. It’s about proving to myself—and to the publishing world—that I can do this.

One of the things I've discovered is that most literary agents won't look at you unless you come to them with a couple things: a compelling premise, a complete outline, and a (nearly) complete manuscript. This was new information I never had access to before. Somehow I got it into my head that I could get in the door if I had a few good opening chapters and a dazzling cover letter, but now I know that so much more is expected.

Agents want a compelling premise, a strong outline, and a nearly finished manuscript. Fair enough—it’s their name on the line, too. But for me, this isn’t just about telling a good story. It’s about proving to myself—and to the publishing world—that I can do this.

"The James Whitfield Matter" could take on larger dimensions and be that story that gets me an agent. Maybe it doesn't have to be a full-length novel, but perhaps I could develop it close to something the length of Block's "Sins of the Fathers". That is the first Matthew Scudder novel--seventeen chapters of straight detection with no subplots.

As much as I love my day job, I don't want to abandon this lifelong dream that germinated in elementary school. It has developed and stalled, and developed and stalled, ever since. Now that I am 52, this is the time to make that dream come true--now more than ever because I'm running out of runway.

How a cover of an iconic Peter Gabriel song by Bon Iver renewed my faith in writing great literature

It's 5am on a Thursday morning. I'm sitting in my thinking chair by the bedroom window and gazing out at the dark street below, when I'm not fixated on filling blank this screen with text. It's November.

Last night's sleep was decent, but I'm still tired. Probably has a lot to do with work. We are very busy at the moment, my attention is divided between three major initiatives, but I won't go into that here. I think I want to keep work out of this blog as much as possible, for obvious reasons.

It's 2024 and almost anything can get you fired.

Have you heard the Bon Iver version of "Come Talk To Me"? Last night it came up in my music feed and I didn't realize what it was until the lyrics started, but the opening transfixed me. A mandolin first, then a banjo (maybe), and those receded to make room for keyboards. The whole thing really moved me, to the point that I felt tears burning my eyes.

Things are getting real for my project. I'm talking about my work project, the new application that I'm heading up. My VP is talking about forming a team this month to commence development, and even though I have a bunch of development stories already in the backlog, I need to stay ahead of the team--especially if we end up with 3-4 developers. They will eat through those stories pretty quickly and then they'll be scrounging for work.

It's exciting, but also terrifying to be heading up a piece of work like this.

The project is part of the future of the company, one of the stepping stones on the path to becoming a "cloud company". I've mentioned this more than once to my director and my VP and they are confident that I'll be fine. They both believe that I am set up for success, as long as I keep driving things forward.

In spite of their reassurances, it's still terrifying because I've been an "individual contributor" all my working life and now I'm in a leadership position building a new piece of software. If one must step outside the comfort zone to grow, then consider me growing like a weed.

“We have overstretched our personal boundaries and forgotten that true happiness comes from living an authentic life fueled with a sense of purpose and balance.” – Dr.Kathleen Hall

Now and then a man has to rethink how he's approaching his life and his vocation then make some adjustments.

"Confidential Donation" is no longer for sale in Amazon KDP. I've taken it down. The thing didn't sell many copies anyway, in spite of me doing my best to market it through X and IG. Admittedly, I am no digital marketing guru, but I did go through the motions for several months and was rewarded with mere nibbles.

I still believe in Walter Burback and the stories I want to tell about him, but I have been getting more traction on Medium with just random articles, so I want to see how well my fiction can do there if I focus my efforts for a full year. If it does well, then maybe I can make a little extra scratch.

The one challenge with Medium will be its supposed shorter format--5-10 minute reads. "Confidential Donation" is a beefy boy at 6000 words compared to a short piece like that, coming in at almost 30 minutes. "Perish By Night", the follow-up I had been working on prior to Dad getting sick, was almost 20,000 words. I may have to find a way to break that story up into standalone "episodes" so that they're easier to read.

Mom called this morning in tears.

Her 10 year old computer wouldn't start. It wasn't the computer dying that had upset her, it was that she couldn't get at her banking and other online services. Actually, she has a pretty limited understanding of how all that works and I suspect that, in her frustration and grief-induced confusion, she assumed that all her banking and life insurance information was gone forever.

All of this can be fixed, of course, but when you're in the thick of grief as an elderly person, you don't think about that. You don't see that something that's broken can be fixed or replaced. All you see is one more frustration, one more challenge in a life increasingly full of steeper and steeper challenges.

Now is the time I wish I could push the clock back a few years, before Dad got sick and passed. These last few years have been pretty awful. Seeing her like this only reminds me how easily the road can turn rough. More important, how with each passing year my sister and I are slowly trading places with our mother, having to assume more and more the role of "the parent".

This is an odd, haunting place to be in life. She will be 80 in December and there is not as much time left as I want there to be, and after a few short decades I will be in my mother's place--confused and angry about an uncaring world that takes my friends and family and moves along without me.

You don't want to know.

2023 was not a great year for me or my family. It was the aftermath of my father's passing and was occupied with the clearing out of the family home, securing my mother's future, and extensive work travel. It feels like a whirlwind and in some ways it was, but I'm glad it's over and I can wind down the end of the year in relative peace and quiet.

It's been ages since I wrote anything here and part of me wondered if I should even bother to restart this blog given it has so few followers, but I think I can grow it if I persist. Besides, the Interweb Gurus of Writing tell me that a "real writer" has to have a web presence, so instead of shutting this thing down and rebirthing it on Wordpress or some such site, I'll just double-down on Tumblr and work harder at being more consistent.

Speaking of web presence, I have resumed posting on my Medium account for the last few weeks and have a backlog of articles and stories that should cover me for about a month or so. It's a nice platform, simple enough for simpleton like me.

SIDEBAR: The nice thing about Medium is that, given recent changes in Canada/US tax treaties, it's worthwhile monetizing my writing on that platform now. I completed the tax form last week and I should start getting a (small) share of the Medium Partner Program pool starting in December. So...if you want to support your friendly neighbourhood indie-writer and you have a Medium account, head on over to @Kevin.M.Coleman at Medium.com. 😉

My lunch hour is rapidly drawing to a close so I will have to wrap this thing up soon, but I wanted to close on a hopeful note.

In spite of all the hardship the passing of a loved one brings, it's healthier by far to focus on the good things they brought into your life. It's easy to mope around and bemoan what we've lost, and believe me, there is a place for that, but the longer we remain in that frame of mind, the harder it is to get out, until we find ourselves trapped.

I was seeing a therapist for a year leading up to Dad's passing and I saw him for another year after. It helped in innumerable ways and I'm convinced that had I not had that help I would be in rough shape. I still miss Dad. Every day I think of something or see something that puts me in mind of him, but the therapy helped to smooth the transition so that I can remember him fondly and still deal with the trauma of his illness and death.

If you have recently lost someone and you're struggling to cope, don't be a hero and tough it out on your own. Find a friend or a family member to talk to. If there's no one like that, then look to your community's resources in grief counselling to help you. It's no good to isolate yourself with something so difficult when your loved one would want you to remember them in a happy life.