Greenback Blues

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

While many of my songs are about Best Beloved, this one is not.

Although the lyrics reference any number of U.S. Presidents, the astute observer will note that it is not even remotely about politicians.

Without boring you with musicological details, the intro to this song is a challenge when we perform it live. While many of my other songs can be shifted up or down as much as a full key, those where I play the harmonica don’t have that luxury. Mostly because I don’t own enough harmonicas.

Someone called Ireland the land of happy wars and sad love songs. This song always feels like a little of both.

Greenback Blues

You should have married Andrew Jackson
I know that you think more of him than me
I’ll bet Ben Franklin would be fine with you
And that’s fine with me as far as I can see

Alexander Hamilton is only half as much
As Andrew Jackson in your twisted mind
George Washington‘s just peanuts; Abe Lincoln‘s not much more
But Grover Cleveland would be quite a find

Too bad Woodrow Wilson don’t circulate no more
Got your hands on him he’d never leave
But gimme just one Roosevelt to call a cab
And I’ll be gone for good you’d best believe

Katherine Hepburn: How I Went to Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston, and Almost Lost My Mind

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

Just as musicians don’t always make great actors, as any music video will show you, actors don’t always make great writers. Here’s an exception: The Making of the African Queen.

Katherine Hepburn’s account of the making of The African Queen is priceless, not just because of the story it tells, but because it is memoir done right. It doesn’t attempt to tell her life story as if it were an autobiography. It is simply a memoir of a particular event.

… more … “Katherine Hepburn: How I Went to Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston, and Almost Lost My Mind”

Making Progress on My Marketing Book

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

[image: photo http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1016743 by Hazel Bregazzi http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Hbregazzi” width=”187″ height=”274″ class=”alignright size-full wp-image-2741]In two days we have transmogrified three-quarters of a page of notes into nearly nine-thousand words, making up the first two chapters of Commonsense Zero-Cost DIY Marketing for Authors.

It’s going to be a real push to launch the book on January 1st as I had hoped.

I’m not certain I’m going to make it. I am certain I’m still going to try.

I Don’t Write My Best Writing

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

[image: original photo http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1406545 by Caesantana http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Caesantana” width=”128″ height=”512″ class=”alignright size-full wp-image-2738]I dictate it.

Many of the authors I work with are concerned about whether or not their typing, spelling and grammar skills will get them through a 70,000 word book. It just doesn’t matter. “Writing” doesn’t have to mean writing.

The surest way to get your book or blog post finished is to use the method that’s easiest for you. If you type a thousand words a minute like Best Beloved does, you should type — if you enjoy it. If you prefer scribbling longhand in a notebook, do it. The extra step of having your work transcribed, whether by you or someone else, will probably take less time than struggling to use tools and methods that feel unnatural to you. Even if that’s not the case, using tools and methods that make you struggle diminishes your art.

When Best Beloved was too ill to work with me, writing was excruciating. I’ve been a writer and a coder most of my life. Just because I type 50 wpm doesn’t mean I like it.

… more … “I Don’t Write My Best Writing”

Books are 99% Commodity — Sell the Other 1%

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

There are more books than you could read in a hundred years, even if that’s all you ever did. In a way, books are a commodity.

The firehose-stream of new books, both independent and traditionally published, makes individual books even harder to distinguish. Your only hope of being found is to focus relentlessly on the 1% which makes your book unique.

I’m not suggesting that you find a way to convince people that your book is unlike anything which has ever come before. If you’ve written a murder mystery, your book is 99% like every murder mystery since Poe invented the genre. If your book is a historical romance, ditto.

[image: photo http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1115981 by meral akbulut http://www.sxc.hu/profile/merala” width=”440″ height=”158″ class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-2710]

… more … “Books are 99% Commodity — Sell the Other 1%”

Archie and Saul and Fritz and Fred and even Orrie: Nero Wolfe’s Family

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

[image: photo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rex_Stout_1975.jpg by Jill Krementz” width=”200″ height=”200″ class=”alignright size-full wp-image-2665]Just as Rex Stout became a writer late in life, I became a fan of his writing late in life. Though I was already a teenager by the time A Family Affair was published as Stout’s last Nero Wolfe novel, I didn’t discover the books until I was in my fifties.

I have no interest in writing the definitive treatise on Stout or Wolfe. You can find ten times as many words as Stout ever wrote written about his writings with even a superficial search.

What fascinates me, what draws me to Stout, is my belief that he would have recognized some of himself in me. … more … “Archie and Saul and Fritz and Fred and even Orrie: Nero Wolfe’s Family”

Marketing Strategy: No Budget? No Time? The One Thing I Would Do Is . . .

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

[image: photo http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1379787 by Jan Willem Geertsma http://www.sxc.hu/profile/jan-willem” width=”222″ height=”222″ class=”alignright size-full wp-image-2706]. . . blog.

If I had to choose one marketing strategy to fit into an incredibly busy life and didn’t cost a penny, it would be my blog.

This blog automatically feeds every post to Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In. As soon as I sort the technical details, it will automatically post to Google+ and Pinterest.

(Update #1: … more … “Marketing Strategy: No Budget? No Time? The One Thing I Would Do Is . . .”

beautiful carelessly sultry: the song with no nouns

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

My buddy Charlie Cheney stuffs his songs full of nouns. Every time I’d send him a set of lyrics and say hey, wanna put this to music? he’d respond “Where are all the nouns?” Yes, I tend to write ethereal touchy feely stuff. (You should note that Charlie has shared the stage with Jackson Browne and I have not. I know which of us is the better songwriter. Still, I soldier on.)

Charlie and some folks once put together a song made entirely of nouns. It was fun, but it didn’t make as much sense as Charlie’s Palmer Johnson Yacht.

I responded with this song: beautiful carelessly sultry.

It has no nouns. Zero. (You’re writers. You know what that means.)

… more … “beautiful carelessly sultry: the song with no nouns”

Isaac Asimov: Foundation

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

I am a fan of the more cerebral, less action-oriented science fiction. If we separate out fantasy as a separate genre, where Tolkien can be Lord High Master, the King of the Mountain in cerebral sci-fi for the half century of my lifetime has been Isaac Asimov.

[image: Foundation” width=”168″ height=”250″ class=”alignright size-full wp-image-2696]A novelist, even his short stories are brilliant. His humor is generally quite humorous. His mysteries intrigue and confuse. His novels, wherever they fall on the science fiction/fantasy continuum, are fulfilling and fascinating.

And when he wrote his epic Foundation Trilogy, not content with simply creating an epic, he created an entire universe.

… more … “Isaac Asimov: Foundation”

How Do I Know if I’m a Real Writer or Not?

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

[image: ?]In another of my newsletter signup welcome email conversations, Michael asked,

As an old guy, my only real question about publishing in general is: am I considered to be a writer, for real, if I’m not published by a traditional publisher?

By you, or by traditional publishers, or by your readers, or by your family, or by other self-published authors?

You might guess that some folks will look down on you, and some won’t.

I think the answer that matters is what it feels like to you.

I’ve self-published 10 books. Anyone who thinks I’m not an author, a real writer, can take a flying leap. I know what I am.

You probably do, too.

You don’t need anyone’s permission to be who you are and do what you do.