William Rossoto, Artist, Author, Residential Designer, Photgrapher,

Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Creating a Book

Self Publishing & You

A book of short story fiction, poems, and photographs
    These days just about anyone can publish a book, have it listed with the Library of Congress, and have it for sale on several of the most popular bookstore websites. Of course this doesn't mean that you will be a famous author that sells over a million copies and is on the New York Times Best Seller List, though you may get lucky if you keep at it. What creating a book does mean, is that you have taken the time to produce a book, learned something along the way, hopefully had fun creating it, and have something that might be worthy of sharing with your friends and relatives. Now, this might sound a bit discouraging at first, but let's not get mired in the muck of doing something creative because you want to be famous. Generally, the reason a creative person produces a work of art is because they are compelled to create by an invisible force that speaks louder than their rational mind, overriding all circuits of logic to create something tangible in the three dimensional world no matter what circumstances may be occurring. Are all creative people simply crazy?

   
    The best self publishing company I have found on my journey of self publishing is www.lulu.com. I researched many sites that made a lot of promises, cost a considerable amount of money, and had poorly explained procedures to create a book. I'm not trying to sell you on LuLu, only to say that I really liked there site even though it was a lot of information to wade through in order to create a book (it's free!). They do have a few templates that you can use for some books, but they are very limited in the scope of aesthetics and choices for book sizes. In order to create my most recent book, "Viewpoints" I had to learn the Adobe InDesign program, read through a fair amount of information on all the specifics of formatting for major distribution, copyright, and of course, do the writing. It has been almost a year since the inception of this book, and I have just finished the final edits, and will hopefully have it on the market in a week or so. Instant gratification does not bide well with making/writing books, as most books take anywhere from a year to five or ten years to create.

    One of the biggest learning curves for me was when I had to work with a professional editor. I had never done this before and knew almost nothing about the process. To find an editor I made a list of criteria I thought important and went on line to review the different types of editors. Specifically I was looking for someone who edits fiction, had worked in a major publishing house, possibly a writer them-self, had a wide variety of references, well educated with a masters in creative writing, listed their fees directly on the website, and someone I could easily communicate with. As a novice writer I felt quite apprehensive about approaching a professional editor. I finally found someone I wanted to work with and sent them my short stories and poetry thinking that they would look at my work and wonder why in the world was I choosing to be a writer. When I spoke with the editor, she said that all writers, whether professional or amateur feel a great deal of insecurity when handing over their work to an editor. As a writer I feel much more vulnerable, naked, and insecure than I do with any other creative endeavors I take part in. The editor made a gazillion red marks on my transcript, mostly grammatical errors of which I'm famous for, and a few content revisions. We went back and forth on the content revisions, and finally after three months of exchange, I had a finished manuscript that I felt confident about and wanted to publish.

    This journey of writing, creating a book, working with an editor, and learning the ins and outs of the InDesign program, has taught me that with a bit of fortitude, perseverance, and an open mind, a crazy idea like writing a book isn't so crazy after all. Now, if someone actually purchases the book and enjoys it...this would be a gift.

William Rossoto
www.rossotoart.com






Tuesday, March 12, 2013

The Writing of Art

Art can propel you to think and reflect, to draw upon associated memories and elicit responses of humor, horror or invite mythological imagery, associate pictorial memories or simply  to find a place of peace and relaxation, but generally one does not see a story directly produced in their mind in response to visual art. Let's see if this premise holds true when examined in context to the creator of art and writing and that of the observer.
 
Do art and writing have anything in common with each other? The written word generally creates a picture in ones mind almost automatically, but can visual art directly elicit the creation of a story or a poem in an instantaneous way (like seeing the words in your mind)? Visual art can inspire one to write commentary about the art such as the aesthetics, conceptual and or historical context, but when it comes to a direct translation of visual art forming words in ones mind it seems quite a distant possibility unlike the written word automatically creating a picture in your mind, though some people may access this differently.

I've had this quandary many times about the response of the reader and that of the viewer of visual art. I create visual art and I also write poetry and short stories and have wanted to understand if there are similarities in response to either mediums as well as to question if my mind works the same way in the creation both writing and art.

bit of my history. Upon furthering my intention to be a visual artist I set upon the academic route and attained a BFA in painting while also managing to take a few courses in writing and poetry. I am quite confident of my skills as a visual artist and have no trouble doing shows and commissions, but I tend to think of myself as a "folk writer" such as are non-academically trained artist being referred to as "folk artist". As a writer I tend to have a certain disdain for all the rules of writing and pay very little attention to Strunk and White as well as any other "supposed to do things" in the world of writing including punctuation. After thirty years of writing short stories and poetry I finally decided to bypass my fears about publishing my work and created a book of my poetry and art called, "Moments Without Time". Fortunately I have many friends that have given me positive feedback regardless of what they may really think about my poetry, and so I continue to write and contemplate what I want to do for my next book. Have no fear, there a point to made here as I wax on my insecurities about writing.


There is something about writing that I find considerably more personal and revealing about my mental and spiritual interiors than that of my visual art when presented to the general public. I can always make up a story in the aftermath of creating a work of art, a justification, making it allegorical or not, autobiographical, or purely meaningless dribble, etc., but with a poem or a short story the reader is always directly inserted into the interpretation, crawling into my printed words, creating pictures from the words, stripping me naked with every sentence read. With writing I feel vulnerable and unable to defend myself, maybe because I don't feel qualified to be writing words on a page for all to see, or maybe because writing is simply a more intimate medium than visual art, or maybe because I feel substantiated by the societal right of passage called a college degree that I have in art, but not in writing. Regardless, the creation of art and writing does have some similar and dissimilar qualities, for me each one does influence the other to some extent.  Most often I think in pictures when I write or do art, conjuring up memories or making up new mental images and concepts, but I don't generally translate a set of written words into a work of visual art. When writing I use both picture memory and word concepts to create, and I feel more like a scribe taking notation than being the originator of a poem or short story. Both mediums encompass listening to my muse and working intuitively, but I don't paint the words I hear when painting, the words are simply directing me as to color, composition, contrast, etc., a sort of complimentary set of verbal cues from my academically trained mind and my muse. Maybe this cutting a fine line between the two processes, but I see them as quite a distance apart. Onward to the point of this article.

Everyone's creative process is different, but we arrive at the same place in a work of art or a work of the written word, the finished product. What the observer or reader feels and interprets from a work of art or a piece of writing is generally as varied as the creators process of the work, and the way someone's mind functions in the process of interpretation can be verbal or imagery based. I am curious to know what your perspective and process of creation is in art and or writing.


Sunday, January 20, 2013

Book of Poetry & Art

 


If you like to read poetry, I just self published this book of poetry with a few art works from the "Nature Series". With over thirty years of writing short stories and poetry I thought it might be interesting to present some of it in conjunction with my art, testing the waters of what it not only takes to create a book, but also to get some feedback on my writing. I don't think of myself as a word smith as might a seasoned writer, but I do enjoy painting my thoughts with words.

http://www.blurb.com/books/4001033-moments-without-time

Click on the link above and it will take you to the preview of the book. I would appreciate any commentary you may have to offer about the book.