Tom Kepler's Blog, page 15

My Short Story Morphs: "A Murmuration of Dragons"

Photo source: The Cornell Lab of Ornithology Creative writing is not only cognition: seeing from the inside out; it is also synthesis, seeing possibilities
from the outside in. This has happened with the short story I'm currently working on, "Magic Comes to Half Street."

It's new title is "A Murmuration of Dragons," and here's how the title and story change happened.

I ran across the video embedded below while goofing off on Facebook. My short story was lively in my awareness, even if in the background at that moment, and I thought, "What if the starlings were dragons?" A vision filled my mind, thousands of dragons afire with the setting sun, swirling around and above the main character of the story, a foreshadowing of future events and a visual representation of hidden forces at work.

How could I deny such a serendipitous gift?

A murmuration is the combining of "thousands of tiny starlings coming together to swoop and twist across the sky – morphing into one three-dimensional pattern after another; an aerial ballet performed with an amazing synchronicity as the tiny birds move like one huge shape-shifting organism," according to Ecology Global Network writer Penny Stalling's article "Mind-Blowing Starling Murmuration."

We'll see how the new wrinkle to my story works out. I'm optimistic.

Murmuration from Islands & Rivers on Vimeo.

Rough Draft Finished of "Magic Comes to Half Street"

Well, I've been writing mornings, and I just finished the rough draft of the fantasy story "Magic Comes to Half Street." It takes place in the Dragons of Blood and Stone universe, the same universe as my novel The Stone Dragon and the short stories in Who Listened to Dragons.

Here are some fragments from the end:

A door opened, a hoof clacked upon pavement, life stirred. Fire was behind the veil, gone, yet not quite veiled on the knoll.

Cobb looked to the sky, to the west, and a second sun winged its way to the mountains, already small with distance.
“In the mountains the dragon will not be bound. There is a veil between magic and the world, one we see or make. It is stronger here in the Empire, but now not so strong at Dragon’s Head, I think.” 

All dawns are the first day of creation. We are sunlight, we are aware. We are consciousness, meant to fly.

And now to make the short story better, to burn away the veil of lesser words until the right words burn brightly, accurately. Or at least to try.

The Secrets of a Regular Writing Schedule

When I decided to stop working a Monday-Friday job and work for myself, it was a big change for me, and the biggest change was my schedule.

As a teacher, I knew in advance every work day and off day a year in advance. Furthermore, I knew my Monday-Friday schedule to the hour and had bells (and students) to remind me should I forget. I was on the clock and free time or self-time was obvious.

After retiring from that schedule of 34 years into a schedule much more open, rather than finding more time to write, I found less. This might sound counter-intuitive, but the more fluid schedule was soon filled up with things I had never gotten to, or filled with "finally having a chance to do it right" activities now that I wasn't away from home in a classroom or office every day. I had to adjust to that, to come to terms with a sudden lack of tardy bells in my life.

Here are my "secrets":
Writing priorities begins with other priorities: rest, food, exercise, time with family. If I ignore these priorities, they whisper to me all the time, distracting me.What worked earlier still works. I found writing in the early morning (time between 5 and 6 AM) effective when I taught, and that time still works well for me now. I'm an early-morning person and find the wee hours a time of creativity and clarity.Building momentum is important. This is something that worked well for me before I retired from working as a teacher. I write every morning, the story builds momentum, and then more time is easy to find. My writing time later in the day will vary from morning to afternoon, depending on exercise, grandkids, and the time of year.Creation is not work. I need to remember this and to allow the joy of creation to be in my life. Now, finishing a publication is work. A good work, but still a task. However, I find joy in creating a story, and I have to allow myself the option of wandering, starting over, getting lost, or just camping out for a while at some place along the path that is especially beautiful. I guess Joseph Campbell would say that it's not enough to follow the path if there is no bliss.Honesty. I need to separate the above four points with just plain laziness. At some point, non-writing can become a habit, non-writing can be a part of a daily routine that is filled with other activities, all of them perhaps good and meaningful, but not writing. The most fundamental definition of "writer" is one who writes. I need to remember that and not lie to myself.I stepped out of a regular work schedule at the end of last May, so I suppose six months isn't to long to lollygag and flounder. I've been writing early mornings this last week, though, and am enjoying the progress I'm making on my short story. I've allowed myself the freedom to begin the story several times, and just this morning while waking up I found the ending unfolding with details I hadn't envisioned before.

Dragonfire and consciousness. Flames and cognition. A new beginning all over again. What joy!

Starting a Story, the Process

I'm not sure how others start a story, whether it's a short story, a novel, or a saga. Different Dragon's Head, Bjorn Baklien, Flickrways, I suppose.

I know from my experience that I tend to start writing, whether with some outline or notes or not, and then I rewrite the beginning over and over until it feels right.

I've got this sense of the story, this feeling, and somehow I have to manage the words so that they flow in accord with that feeling. That sounds kind of mysterious, and maybe it is, I don't know. I do know that there's a point when I feel (that word, again!) that the tone created by word choice is what I want. Then I just blaze away, getting the piece written one time through.

Then comes the fun part--and I mean that. I get to rewrite. That's like cleaning the window. The first part, the beginning, is like busting a hole in the wall and installing the window. OK, the window's in, but all that dust and fingerprints and sales stickers . . . clean that off, make it disappear!

What remains is the view, and a wonderful one, I hope.

Right now I'm working on a short story, a fantasy set in the same reality as my novel The Stone Dragon. The story takes place on Half Street, an area on a hill above Oldtown, the hill spined with rocks called Dragon's Head. I've rewritten the beginning three or four times. I think now maybe the tone of the beginning is what I want, what I need.

Who knows, though? I guess I should know, but I'm going to have to let some time pass before I'm sure. I can keep pecking away at the story, though, in the meantime.

To be alone on Half Street was not easy, even for a boy of ten familiar with its nooks and crannies. Too many guildspeople hurried the pathways, shouldering tools or cloth samples or even newly tooled shoes, as Cobb's father would. Too many wagons or barrows stirred dust or mud or dirty snow, depending on the season, for someone always needed a chimney cleaned, a door squared, a cracked tile replaced. Someone always needed a son to deliver a pair of evenngi slippers to an impatient lady, or a boy to feed the fire beneath the dye pot.

 That's the current beginning of the short story that's had the following titles: "A Dragon's Scale," "Dragon Dreams," and "Magic Comes to Half Street."

Now I feel I can write Cobb's story. I've managed to break through the best wall for the right view.

As for Cobb? Right now he's at Dragon's Head:

An odd place it was, a knob of stone still shaped by wild, what the builders and masons should have considered a challenge or an affront" . . . but the stones have not been cleared, "apparently never occurred to some greedy guildsman or ambitious matron of the crafts. Leave Dragon's Head alone, and it will leave you alone, Cobb thought, and he didn't even consider the oddity of the thought. How and why would a tangle of rock at the crest of a hill leave you alone?

What fun!

Amtrak and Colorado River Rafting

It seems to be a tradition for Colorado River rafters to amuse Amtrak travelers. While on the train traveling east, I saw many folks floating down the Colorado--and one woman chose to pull up her top for the travelers, and one man chose to moon us.

This, of course, was from some distance, so it wasn't a case of too much information.

I did videotape the rafters and made a short visual chronicle of the observation car's perspective. In the car, a couple of musicians did some pickin', which added to the relaxed and celebratory atmosphere. I was also provided the opportunity to rip the sound from the video and to just lay down the sound for the project.

Here is the video. It even includes the exhibitionist woman--tiny rafts beached and tinier humans.


I have more YouTube videos on my channel.

Writing with a Touchphone Keyboard

When I wrote poetry regularly, I always wrote in a notebook using a pencil. There was something so tactile about the experience, the lead sliding across the paper. First draft and later drafts were copied into the notebook. Eventually I would move to the typewriter, type the draft, mark it up with pencil, retype, and grab the pencil again.

I had a similar experience while working on a short story, using my iPhone 6+.

Even with the 6+'s larger screen, composition was still slower with the smaller touchscreen keyboard, more deliberate. The flow of ideas was more contemplative--more a process of thinking the sentence and then tapping it out, rather than having the thought and transcription more simultaneous.

Is the slower and more deliberate experience better or worse?

I'd say better or worse is the wrong evaluation rubric. The experience of writing was definitely different than traditional keyboarding, though. I am reminded of when Milton was blind, he would dictate verses of Paradise Lost to his daughter.

I believe it is possible to compose using a touchscreen keyboard. A more deliberate pace of composition is not bad; it might even result in the need for lesser revision. My experience was almost metacognitive--composing and being aware of the process of composing while in the experience.

I've written this contemplative piece about writing while using my laptop's keyboard, though. That frictionless flow of ideas from mind to fingertips to screen is awfully nice.

I wonder how it will be in the future when writers just speak to the computer. In the "old days," there were a few writers who dictated their work and then handed the recordings over to a typist to transcribe. And today, of course, we have the dictation software that is becoming more common. And those who have grown up with smartphones and touchscreens--prodigies who can touch-type with the phone in the pocket--I find that quite remarkable.

Has or does anyone else using the smartphone as a creative writing device? What has been your experience?

An Amtrak Zephyr Video for My Grandson

After making an Amtrak video of the Rockies Mountains with fall colors, my wife told me that my grandson had really liked the video. The next morning, I decided to make another, more tailored for a child three years old.

How did I do that? Why, I put in images and clips of as many trucks, trains, and earth movers as possible. Not a case of less is more but of more is more!

I also selected a more rambunctious sound track for the video. I've also tried to make all my videos around a minute, for sure no more than two minutes. I'd rather leave a viewer wishing for more than having to plod through till the end.


I have more videos at my YouTube site. I shot, edited, and shared this with my wife with my iPhone 6+.

An Amtrak Autumn Video Experience

Traveling the Amtrak Zephyr through the Rockies was especially beautiful this time with all the aspens yellowing.

With my new Apple 6+ iPhone, I wanted on this trip to not just watch movies on the phone (or phablet, as some say), but to also make some movies. I also wanted to do some writing, but I'll cover that in my next post.

The iPhone camera and video are easy to use, and I'm getting more and more familiar with the features of  iMovie, the smartphone's video editing app. I wouldn't call making movies writing, but the creative experience does seem to grease the wheels for writing.

The immediacy of the process was also satisfying--to be able to shoot video, create and edit the movie, and then send the finished video to my family was great fun.


I have found that it is easier to load audio music to the phone prior to traveling. Finding and downloading uses quite a bit of time and data usage on the phone, and receptivity can be spotty. It was much easier to just have possible tracks on my phone. I used audio from the YouTube site, and on this trip made sure all the possible tracks were ones not asking for attribution.

I also uploaded the videos to YouTube first prior to embedding on this blog or posting on Facebook.

Being in the Body

There's a certain joy in the functioning of the body.
Take a breath and feel the lungs inhale; in and out, the beautiful breathing of the body, oxygen for the flame of our living.
Turn the head and enjoy the give and take of the muscles, their stretch and pull. How wonderful to move, to have the desire to act and to fulfill it! To walk, to reach, to touch, to give and receive--these are acts of exquisite grace and depth, actions not merely utilitarian but possessing intrinsic value, the dance of the joy of being.
All the senses--sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell--are not just pathways for gathering information. No, they are our means of experiencing nuances of the joy of existence and our means of expressing the infinite aspects of who we are. Through our bodies and senses we sing the call and response of life. This is a joyous reality, a joyous moment, a joyous infinity--a joy unbounded.
Mind perceives, emotions feel, the self recognizes itself in experience. and experience in the self. Our cup runneth over with goodness and grace forever.
To have a body and to be alive, to have senses capable of such subtle discernment and a mind of such far-reaching inclusion is a most precious gift, the gift of our birth.
There is no act so small that it is not great, no experience so minute that it is not exquisite, nothing received that is not worthy of praise, nothing given that is not priceless.
This is our potential, our birthright, what we are because we have body and mind.
When we gain a body, we have an obligation to fully become ourselves and to celebrate life. The heart beats. In and out, we breathe the world, and it is good. 
(Note: These thoughts were written with an iPhone 6+ at 5 AM while on the Amtrak Zephyr, somewhere in Nebraska, heading home.)

All Writing Is Travelogue

When writers put down words, they take readers on a journey. In this sense, all writing falls into the "travelogue" genre, the chronicle of a journey, first the writer's journey of discovery and then the reader's.

About two years ago, I wrote a blog post about the characteristics of travel writing, using tips from Laurie Gough's blog The Travel Writing Life.

Travel Writing TipsFocus on interesting, different, and special qualities. "Usually this will be a combination of the place and the people."Concrete details: "not 'fruit' but 'rotting pomegranates.'""Stay true to who you are." Let the readers find out as you go along.Open your senses to the small things: oil-burning lamps, newly cut timber, cricket chirps . . .Characterization: "How human beings are acting on this planet never fails to enliven a story."Find the good, even in the lousy.Backstory: history, facts, past events."Read your work aloud to yourself."Tone/mood:"take in as much of a place as you can."This summer one of my activities has been to bicycle tour to state and county parks near my hometown, day rides and overnight camping. I've also been reading journals from the website Crazy Guy on a Bike, which hosts thousands of journals and photographs of bicycle tours.



These Crazy Guy journals written by so many people vary in quality, as one might expect. I plan to add some of my adventures to the site, having already added a few, and I'm realizing I have a chance to use my adventures and the bicycling platforms to improve my writing.

Right now on my blog, Tom Kepler Bicycling and with my YouTube biking videos, I think I'm spending a lot of time on "turn left here" descriptions, not the best way to fascinate readers.


I'm looking forward to the challenge of writing about actual journeys, rather than solely journeys of the mind and imagination. Four opportunities for publication are immediately available:
My blog Tom Kepler BicyclingYouTube bicycling videosCrazy Guy on a Bike, my journal and photos blogAdventure Cycling Association's Bike Overnight blogEach platform has a unique flavor and focus. You might sit down, look them over, and take a journey. Have fun! You can even subscribe to my bicycling blog to receive emails of my bike journeys.