July 26, 2011

Why read or write memoir?

It’s probably easier to explain why it’s important to write memoirs than it is to explain why it’s important to read them.  Writing one’s own story helps to pull together the parts of one’s life that are significant enough to validate that life, at least in the writer’s mind.  Writing our own stories helps us to believe that we are preserving something about our lives that has meaning and which we want to share.

Every life is significant, and everyone has a story to tell.  If we could all convey our stories, the ones from deep in the heart, the world would be a different place if only because we would all know ourselves and each other better, and our levels of understanding would increase exponentially.

Writing and reading memoirs help us to know who we are, who we have been, and who we want to be.  We certainly continue to seek truth through science, but truth reveals itself also, often in profound ways, through poetry, drama, fiction, and essays by people of all ages, all races, and in all languages. Memoirs include all of those types of writing.

Reading other people’s memoirs connects us more strongly to the human family to which we all belong, and that need to create and share our own stories and read those of others goes all the way back to the caves of Lascaux and those smoky drawings about hunting.  We as writers and readers are still hunters in a way, and we want those stories of emotional quest and discovery to be known.

--John Bolinger

July 23, 2011

WHEN "13" IS A LUCKY NUMBER FOR WRITERS (reasons to publish your work as an eBook)

Writer John Bolinger Explains Why Writers Should Publish eBooks

 
1.  The price of cover art work, printing, and publicity make most publishers stingy in the benefits they offer the very few unknown authors whose work they even accept.

2.  Contracts from traditional publishers offer very small percentages of the profits from sales unless you're Stephen King, Anne Rice, Dan Brown, or John Grisham.

3.   Hiring an agent and other people to market your book can be very expensive and can often provide minimal benefit to the author.

4.   Publishing an eBook through places like Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble is an easy way to get your book "out there" with no cost to you.

5.   One of the greatest benefits to authors doing an eBook on  Amazon.com is that instead of 10% you reap 35% to 70%.

6.   Because Amazon.com is the single largest seller of books on the planet and will publish and display your work at no cost to you, there is a huge and immediate benefit to you the author.

7.   Key words are used to advertise your work to the world of readers out there.  Google is your friend in this too.  

8.   You decide the price you want to ask for your book.

9.   There are blog sites that are free for your creating further publicity for your book.

10.  Publishing the traditional way, you can wait months for your book to be on shelves (that is if the publisher even accepts your work).

11.  Publishing your eBook means that it will be available in 24 hours if it is in English.  Other languages take up to three days.

12.  You can monitor ebook sales and profits daily on line through your free account with the publisher.

13.   eBooks are more and more available through free app devices to help download books on Mac and PC's, and other common equipment, and Kindles and NookBook devices are becoming more and more popular as well.

July 20, 2011

Welcome to this blog, inspired by Indiana-born John E. Bolinger, writer and teacher. John and I were both born and raised, in northwest Indiana, diverging when he went to Ball State, David Letterman's school, and I went to Purdue, my dad's alma mater,a guy who won a Nobel, for discovering, or creating high-lysiene corn.  

John went on to get graduate degrees, in Indiana universities, and teach English, and French at a high school, in Hammond, Indiana. He only left Indiana, about 5 years ago, for the love of his life. Even though liberal, Democrat, creative Chicago, was on the other side of the Indiana border, I expatriated myself from Indiana, in 1970s, to Washington, DC returning only once, in 1984, and for only two days. Sometimes I long for Indiana, but I think it's more like my youth, and my long-estranged family. My family left Indiana, when I was in college. Washington, DC is truly my home. My heart is Indiana. I'm divorced. One son in grad school, in DC. Two white dogs. Still looking for the love of my life, like what John went to Colorado, to find.

I found John, after all those years, through the first volume of his memoirs, All My Lazy Rivers... Discovered his little blue-covered book while googling Indiana rivers, and emailed him...

Entre nous:  I won't tell you much about John's life, because he will tell you about it, in his memoirs... He is a good man... generous, sensitive, thoughtful, a great cook, a good housekeeper, dog-owner-lover, empathetic... He's taken. What can I tell you.

I'm not sure how this blog will evolve... Indiana, John, writing, life, Indiana in our hearts. If you stumble upon this blog, and you are Indiana, please suggest. I want this to introduce and showcase John's writings, and let him tell you about himself. 

I am constantly uplifted by John's optimism and hope, despite his share of adversity. 

Annie