Robert Priest's Blog: Blogging not logging, page 3

Your peace and my peace

I Try to do at least an hour of work a day on my fantasy novel, second kiss, book 2 of my paper sword series but yesterday because I want to enter a song of mine into the John Lennon song contest I had to head out to Georgetown to do a new vocal. More than 2 Hours Each Way on the various buses involved so I didn't get my minimal in on the book. Sometimes though a little lag is good for brewing. Meanwhile I got a decent vocal on the song. The lyric is from my new book Rosa Rose so I'll probably post the new mix of the song here when it's done. Meanwhile a little over two weeks before I go to the UK. And tonight I get my copy edits on the paper sword, book one of the spell cross series. Where nexus meets nexus.

my advice to young writers

my advice to young writers? Get yourself a good ergonomic writing set up. I've been going at keyboards like a frenzied octopus in a jetstream for over fifty years and as much as I loved the way keyboarding rescued me from the tedium of handwriting it does after many years begin to wear away your musculature. A few sentences of rapid keyboarding now and I get a pain in my neck. So I use a voice to text device for a lot of my data entry these days. It's not great for doing any kind of neo-speak poetry—for instance if like me you compose neologisms—it will just come up with whatever is sonically close to what you've said. You have to type neologisms! But for blogging—it's the new orality and once you've gotten used to it a bit can actually increase your productivity. Sometimes for instance when I'm writing my fantasy series (spell crossed) I'll go on late into the night. When it gets to that point where as a typist I would be unable to continue I can now put on my headset and with my head bowed down like some old court storyteller trying to get an insomniac king off to bed dictate away almost at a mumble. Almost at a whisper and get the job done. This all comes up because I spent a lot of time today trying to figure out how to work goodreads. Unfortunately mouse work is the thing that a voice to text device is worst at. entering your own books seriously requires mouse work. So here I am at 211 in the afternoon and my neck is already creaking. Thankfully I am now being helped by the gracious and patient staff at good reads. so expect more of my books to show up under my profile in the near future.

October 23, 2013

In the past few months two books, Rosa Rose, a book of verses for children about inspirational people and things and a book of adult poetry previously feared darkness have come out. In the midst of touring and publicizing these I've been working with Dundurn press on my epic fantasy series spell crossed. Book 1 the paper sword will be published in July. I'll get the copy edits in a few days and that will be that. Concurrently I've been working on the first two or three chapters of the re-write of book 2, second kiss, in preparation for a deadline in March when I turn it in. Plus I'm going on tour in Ireland the UK and to Paris during the second week of November as a poet and singer-songwriter. (I had a CD out about a year ago called feeling the pinch. You can get it on iTunes.). So I really am at a bit of a nexus. Something that occurs a lot in spell crossed. I'm under one spell for poetry and another for prose and another for songs and I live in the three-way flow. Also I'm a reader of course. The latest book being David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. Here's my latest Facebook post about it.

During the past couple of years I've been working on the poem for children about the children's March in Birmingham. It's hard to get a lot of information on it. I decided I'm going to have to go there and visit the center. But I just read the most stirring account of it in Malcolm Gladwell's new book David and Goliath. I I'm still writing the poem but in the meantime check out the story as he tells it.