The Josie Pages

Field Notes In/On Transition Collected Parties, and Crushes So, here is a blog post written in the middle of my writing my memoir day, today. I have been wanting to post these poems as a throwback thursday thing on FB, or something. They are included in my last poetry book, which is also a memoir, my poetic memoir of the poet that Joe was, and I don't seem to be, at least yet. the poetic urge has dwindled the more prose that I write, the less poetically inclined I have become in the last six or eight years. Right now in writing my memoir, I am knee deep in the 80's when I became a poet. One of the themes that has dominated my life is my desire for romantic love, and this youthful area has been both a joy and a pain to rediscover, through old journals, and my own very particular memories. This suite has always been too long to perform, so I don't think I ever have, maybe just one or two, performed singly with other work. Also too, go easy on me, as this is ...

Field Notes In/On Transition Happy whether I 'pass' or not? All My Empty Dresses So, I have been working pretty diligently on my memoir, writing writing writing. As this is the just get it all down 1st draft, my average number of words per day is way up. When working on a novel, often I average 1500-2000 words a day. So far working on this memoir, I have been averaging from 3000-3500 words a day, a number that is steadily trending upwards. I don’t know if everything I write is usable, I am just getting it down, the next step is to refine it all. I am hoping to do that in October, November if need be. There are enough pages from this blog alone, to winnow into a book, it’s a bigger project than I realized, but in a good way. Once I have a readable draft, I will be submitting to a publisher who after seeing my campaign, has asked me to submit the manuscript. Hopefully they say yes, and publish it, which means either I do a private unedited/less professionally edit...

Field Notes in/On Transition Tales Of The Giant Teacher and other stories As I have been working so hard on my crowd funding for my memoir, I haven’t been working quite as hard on the old memoir as possible. Which I need to be doing as much as I need to be working on crowd funding publicity ideas, and getting the word out. my crowd funder Update! Definitely my team (my friend Kate MacDonald, and myself) have done pretty good so far at getting the word out, in fact. About 12 days in I guess, and so far there is over $1400 dollars in the indiegogo kitty, books and calendars chosen as perks. So about 14% funded already. we’ve had big days, and low days, and weekends seem to be plateaus, as we get less hits, less contributions. It really is true that you get more exposure in the early parts of the week, but Friday has also been a big day, because I think it’s payday for many folks. So any day of the week I think has potential to be a good day, especially if you get a lo...

Field Notes In/On Transition “All My Empty Dresses: Memoir Of a Strawgirl” Is Live! So, if you have been following this blog, you know I was nervously preparing my Indiegogo campaign to raise some money to help me live while finish writing and editing my memoir. Well, as of Wednesday, June 24th, I am doing just that. The first day was really successful, and a nice trickle since. I don’t have a big publicity machine, nor am I going to hire one or any of the really sketchy looking companies that say they will magically reach 100,000 people if you give them a couple hundred bucks. Here's the link below, to my campaign. I made what I think is a fun dorky ‘pitch video.’ I have gotten tons of shares of my campaign as well as what I think is a decent start for someone with no fame to speak of, but lots of good friends. All My Empty Dresses: Memoirs Of A Strawgirl This was not easy for me to do, nor keep doing. I am so nervous about asking people to help m...

Field Notes In/On Transition Kludging through life one clump at a time I completely missed doing a transition blog post in May. I don’t think I have gone so long without posting something. I did do a few movie and comic book reviews on my media review blog. I guess I was constantly saying, ‘tomorrow’, or after this certain event happens, then i will have more to write about, etc, et al. All the things that I detailed as coming up, in my end of april entry, about getting my crowd funded memoir going have happened, except I haven’t quite launched yet. the budget is pretty much worked out, and I think pretty reasonable, even if it seems like a lot of money, it’s actually not. One of the biggest upsides of self publishing in the 21st century and using the print on demand model is that you don’t have to do a humongous print run, and thus can save a lot of cash.You only print as many books as you need to fulfill the orders from the crowd funding perks. All my items for perks, ...

Field Notes In/On Transition Not Just Another Transgender Memoir? So, the job hunt thing, is morphing into something a bit more in line with what I actually want to do with my life, which is to become more committed to my own projects and try and still try to make a bit of money on the side to support doing that, until hopefully, the writing and the art come to something more than covering the costs of self publishing, or submitting to anthologies, and contests. I was doing a one day a week clerical job, but once I cleared up a lot of stuff that was late getting done, it turned into less than one day a week, and eventually just petered out. It was all very amicable though. So I feel good about it, as right after posting about this event on Facebook last week, a friend sent me a link to a local extras, or as they say, these days ‘background performer’. It does sound more professional than extra, and some people do pretty good at it.  So why not, it has the flexibil...

Field Notes In/On Transition Pushing Forward, Not Against I am trying to get more blogging done, and the easiest way for me to do so has been to set myself some movies to watch, and some reviews to write. So, all this week I have been watching quirky/obscure/not so obscure 1970’s Sci Fi films. You can read all the reviews from my ongoing solo blog film fest that I am calling “Everything Is Coming Up Zardoz!” But since I had choir last night, I wasn’t up to staying up late again and squeezing in a movie. I will come back to choir, which as you know is one of my anchors right now. I am so thankful I took that out of my comfort zone step of joining The Femme City Choir in the fall last year. In my last few posts, I talked about my struggles looking for work, and the things that keep me from going off the deep end of depression: my friends & family, my supports, my community. I have been trying to not go out for dinner quite as often and cook more at home. Even though...