Karen GoatKeeper's Blog, page 18
August 28, 2019
Playing With Words
English lends itself to playing with words. It has thousands of words. It has homonyms and synonyms. Alliteration and tongue twisters aren't hard to do.
Standing around watching my goats eat over the winter is boring. Most of them are dry and only there to eat. It's cold. The mind wanders.
Somehow I came up with Dandy wether debating whether or not that wether wanted to go out in rainy weather. What about another letter? Say A. Alpines align alertly. Why? The genesis of an alliterative story.
One by one I've managed to find goat topics for all the letters of the alphabet except one. Yes, I even managed J, Q and Z. But not R. I'm stymied. Ruminant and rumen just don't seem to have a light side. What else is there?
These are fun. Even with illustrations there are only 60 pages or so. Goats lead on to short fiction, ten pieces about a kid. Throw in some funny memories and there's a book.
All I need now is to finish the illustrations and find a title. Goat Alphabet Book won't do. There must be a good one if I can only think of it.
Standing around watching my goats eat over the winter is boring. Most of them are dry and only there to eat. It's cold. The mind wanders.
Somehow I came up with Dandy wether debating whether or not that wether wanted to go out in rainy weather. What about another letter? Say A. Alpines align alertly. Why? The genesis of an alliterative story.
One by one I've managed to find goat topics for all the letters of the alphabet except one. Yes, I even managed J, Q and Z. But not R. I'm stymied. Ruminant and rumen just don't seem to have a light side. What else is there?
These are fun. Even with illustrations there are only 60 pages or so. Goats lead on to short fiction, ten pieces about a kid. Throw in some funny memories and there's a book.
All I need now is to finish the illustrations and find a title. Goat Alphabet Book won't do. There must be a good one if I can only think of it.
July 24, 2019
What Is Trivia?
In my town one of the annual fund raising nights is a trivia night. In the dictionary trivia is defined as unimportant matters. Each of us accumulates a store of trivia as we go about our lives. Is it all unimportant?
One of the things I include in “The City Water Project” is trivia about water. I don’t find all of it unimportant.
Unsafe water kills 200 children an hour around the world.
About 80% of illness in the developing countries is related to water.
In the U.S. 36 states expect water shortages in the near future.
No scientific study supports drinking 8 glasses of water a day. In fact, drinking too much water can kill you as surely as not drinking enough.
As much as 50% of municipal water is lost through leaky pipes.
A leaky faucet dropping one drop per second wastes 3000 gallons of water in a year.
There is a store of interesting, but what might be considered unimportant details as well.
The first municipal water system was in Paisley, Scotland in 1832. The U.S. now has over 161,000 public water systems.
Chlorine was first used to disinfect drinking water in 1908.
A gallon of water weighs 8.33 pounds. It expands 9% when it freezes.
Why do we find trivia fascinating? I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s because we are curious and these are curious facts. We accumulate trivia to occupy ourselves, to have something interesting to say talking to other people. Perhaps trivia is a way to mask our uneasiness talking to other people in a social setting.
Why do I include trivia in a science book? Perhaps it started as a way to fill out pages where the puzzles or investigations ended part way down the page. Then I found trivia could be a way to encourage children to think about the subject and its implications to their world.
And that is the purpose of my little science book for 9 to 14 year olds. Yes, the range is large as most of the investigations, activities and puzzles are adaptable for a range of ages. No, it isn’t tied to any artificial educational standards except mine.
What is my purpose? To give children facts both by doing and by reading about a subject and encouraging them to think about, adapt and use those facts. Science doesn’t live in a text book. It lives in the real world.
And, like it or not, our world depends on science more now than ever.
One of the things I include in “The City Water Project” is trivia about water. I don’t find all of it unimportant.
Unsafe water kills 200 children an hour around the world.
About 80% of illness in the developing countries is related to water.
In the U.S. 36 states expect water shortages in the near future.
No scientific study supports drinking 8 glasses of water a day. In fact, drinking too much water can kill you as surely as not drinking enough.
As much as 50% of municipal water is lost through leaky pipes.
A leaky faucet dropping one drop per second wastes 3000 gallons of water in a year.
There is a store of interesting, but what might be considered unimportant details as well.
The first municipal water system was in Paisley, Scotland in 1832. The U.S. now has over 161,000 public water systems.
Chlorine was first used to disinfect drinking water in 1908.
A gallon of water weighs 8.33 pounds. It expands 9% when it freezes.
Why do we find trivia fascinating? I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s because we are curious and these are curious facts. We accumulate trivia to occupy ourselves, to have something interesting to say talking to other people. Perhaps trivia is a way to mask our uneasiness talking to other people in a social setting.
Why do I include trivia in a science book? Perhaps it started as a way to fill out pages where the puzzles or investigations ended part way down the page. Then I found trivia could be a way to encourage children to think about the subject and its implications to their world.
And that is the purpose of my little science book for 9 to 14 year olds. Yes, the range is large as most of the investigations, activities and puzzles are adaptable for a range of ages. No, it isn’t tied to any artificial educational standards except mine.
What is my purpose? To give children facts both by doing and by reading about a subject and encouraging them to think about, adapt and use those facts. Science doesn’t live in a text book. It lives in the real world.
And, like it or not, our world depends on science more now than ever.
June 26, 2019
Writing the End of the Earth
My writers group is working on an anthology with several stories and poems about the end of the Earth. Each pictures a devastated Earth devoid of life. So many stories and movies are like this. Would the end of humanity bring a lifeless Earth? What a bunch of human-centered rubbish!
Long ago I saw a science documentary in some science class where plots had been set out and irradiated with gamma rays to simulate nuclear fallout. Were they lifeless after years of this bombardment? No. The mammals and amphibians died away. Reptiles and plants survived. If the plants survived, the insects survived.
A college course dropped the information that blue green algae, now called cyanobacteria, can survive the radiation, but not the heat of an atomic explosion. It would begin to carpet everything about five miles from such an explosion given a bit of rain.
In the book “Weeds” the aftermath of the Blitz in London is described. In the midst of and over the rubble grew the weeds. They were lush. Weeds need insects to pollinate them.
Even in New York City trees and other plants take root in and on the skyscrapers.
In discussing the end of the dinosaurs reference is made to a huge meteor. It devastated life on Earth for a time. Not everything died. Small mammals, birds, insects and plants survived to repopulate and cover the Earth.
One theory tells of an asteroid striking the Earth knocking out a chunk to form the moon. If something as massive as an asteroid can strike the Earth and leave life to repopulate, how can man’s puny weapons hope to compete?
Writing about a devastated Earth devoid of life may sound good. It may look good in movies. But it is human-centered rubbish.
Nothing man can do can totally destroy life on Earth. Mankind, yes. Life, no.
Perhaps a better description of Earth’s ending is as a jungle of triumphant weeds. And, of course, the insects shall rule!
Long ago I saw a science documentary in some science class where plots had been set out and irradiated with gamma rays to simulate nuclear fallout. Were they lifeless after years of this bombardment? No. The mammals and amphibians died away. Reptiles and plants survived. If the plants survived, the insects survived.
A college course dropped the information that blue green algae, now called cyanobacteria, can survive the radiation, but not the heat of an atomic explosion. It would begin to carpet everything about five miles from such an explosion given a bit of rain.
In the book “Weeds” the aftermath of the Blitz in London is described. In the midst of and over the rubble grew the weeds. They were lush. Weeds need insects to pollinate them.
Even in New York City trees and other plants take root in and on the skyscrapers.
In discussing the end of the dinosaurs reference is made to a huge meteor. It devastated life on Earth for a time. Not everything died. Small mammals, birds, insects and plants survived to repopulate and cover the Earth.
One theory tells of an asteroid striking the Earth knocking out a chunk to form the moon. If something as massive as an asteroid can strike the Earth and leave life to repopulate, how can man’s puny weapons hope to compete?
Writing about a devastated Earth devoid of life may sound good. It may look good in movies. But it is human-centered rubbish.
Nothing man can do can totally destroy life on Earth. Mankind, yes. Life, no.
Perhaps a better description of Earth’s ending is as a jungle of triumphant weeds. And, of course, the insects shall rule!
June 12, 2019
Changes In Finding Books
Before the internet, before Amazon, finding a new book to read was different in many ways. I remember going to the library or a bookstore to look for one.
First I sought out the genre sections I preferred. Next I stood in front of shelves of books reading over the titles until one sounded interesting enough to pull off the shelf. If the book had a dust jacket, the book summary was read. If there was no dust jacket, perhaps a couple of pages were looked at, if no one was looking. Such reading was discouraged in book stores.
There was no cover art on hard copy books except on a dust jacket. There were no sample pages. There were no lists of reviews unless it was being touted by the store in a big display.
Some of that changed when paperback books became more popular. Then as now the cover art did not necessarily fit the book. The book summaries usually did.
One other clue to a book was found in newspapers. They had book reviewers who wrote columns about new books.
Otherwise you bought or checked out a book pretty much in the dark about what the book was about or how the author wrote. Established authors ruled supreme. New authors were risky.
Amazon and ebooks changed that. Now an author is supposed to get lots of reviews even before the book is officially available. The first part of the book is available for reading.
And I am left with a dilemma.
My botanist friend has four very serious botany books. One might be an interesting botanical tale. He has the books printed and would like to sell them to other botanists who might find them useful.
Serious publishers of such books turned him down. He has all the degrees and the background to write these books. He doesn’t have a university affiliation.
That leaves me.
He doesn’t understand how Amazon has changed the book world and I need sample pages from his books. The Table of Contents should suffice.
So I am left scanning pages from the books. My scanner isn’t set up to scan from a book so the pages come out with a dusty grey coloring in the background. This makes them difficult to read. I spend the hours to change the background back to white.
Three books are done. I’m working on the fourth.
Why bother? One short one is how a misleading name was given to an American milkweed. One is about the milkweed species of the United States. It gives the history, the biology and his personal research and photographs of each drawn from years of work and thousands of miles of travel. Two others are translations of important botanical papers written in German and previously unavailable to those not fluent in botanical German which is very different from conversational German so internet translations don’t work.
These are important works. So I keep working on the sample pages. And wishing the Table of Contents was sufficient.
First I sought out the genre sections I preferred. Next I stood in front of shelves of books reading over the titles until one sounded interesting enough to pull off the shelf. If the book had a dust jacket, the book summary was read. If there was no dust jacket, perhaps a couple of pages were looked at, if no one was looking. Such reading was discouraged in book stores.
There was no cover art on hard copy books except on a dust jacket. There were no sample pages. There were no lists of reviews unless it was being touted by the store in a big display.
Some of that changed when paperback books became more popular. Then as now the cover art did not necessarily fit the book. The book summaries usually did.
One other clue to a book was found in newspapers. They had book reviewers who wrote columns about new books.
Otherwise you bought or checked out a book pretty much in the dark about what the book was about or how the author wrote. Established authors ruled supreme. New authors were risky.
Amazon and ebooks changed that. Now an author is supposed to get lots of reviews even before the book is officially available. The first part of the book is available for reading.
And I am left with a dilemma.
My botanist friend has four very serious botany books. One might be an interesting botanical tale. He has the books printed and would like to sell them to other botanists who might find them useful.
Serious publishers of such books turned him down. He has all the degrees and the background to write these books. He doesn’t have a university affiliation.
That leaves me.
He doesn’t understand how Amazon has changed the book world and I need sample pages from his books. The Table of Contents should suffice.
So I am left scanning pages from the books. My scanner isn’t set up to scan from a book so the pages come out with a dusty grey coloring in the background. This makes them difficult to read. I spend the hours to change the background back to white.
Three books are done. I’m working on the fourth.
Why bother? One short one is how a misleading name was given to an American milkweed. One is about the milkweed species of the United States. It gives the history, the biology and his personal research and photographs of each drawn from years of work and thousands of miles of travel. Two others are translations of important botanical papers written in German and previously unavailable to those not fluent in botanical German which is very different from conversational German so internet translations don’t work.
These are important works. So I keep working on the sample pages. And wishing the Table of Contents was sufficient.
May 25, 2019
Why Write a Memoir?
I remember my grandfather. As far as I know I am one of five people who do. When we are gone, his memory, his stories are gone with us.
Perhaps this is why writing memoirs is so popular. At some level we know that, no matter what religious or other beliefs we have, our memory here is fleeting and we want someone to remember we existed.
Before writing a memoir we need to have something worth writing about. No one is interested in a book about humdrum what-I ate-for-breakfast tweets. Some people are interested in how a wildlife preserve got started as is central to “Unexpected Treasure” by Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci or the many books by Gerald Durrell. Perhaps people travel or have some other interesting aspect to their lives. Most memoirs are written by older people who’ve had time to experience life.
Even factory work can be a good subject as such jobs have changed a lot over the years. I know a woman whose father was involved with the beginnings of the labor unions. She knows the stories. They are not written down. Another woman grew up when going to town was with horses for all day. Her stories too are now gone.
Family histories can pull a family together, remind members where they came from and who they are. They make relatives into real people who were once young with their lives stretching before them. Too often children are young and don’t listen. They are interested in what they are doing, not a distant past. Our culture too seems to not value the past, be it stories or heirlooms any more. And then the people are gone. It’s too late to listen to the stories or ask those questions.
The older I get, the more friends I lose, the more I wonder about writing down some of what I remember. Would anyone be interested? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
Memories don’t have to be in memoirs. As a writer I draw upon my memories in my writing. The books are definitely not memoirs, but they include adapted incidents and emotions from my life.
And maybe that’s enough.
Perhaps this is why writing memoirs is so popular. At some level we know that, no matter what religious or other beliefs we have, our memory here is fleeting and we want someone to remember we existed.
Before writing a memoir we need to have something worth writing about. No one is interested in a book about humdrum what-I ate-for-breakfast tweets. Some people are interested in how a wildlife preserve got started as is central to “Unexpected Treasure” by Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci or the many books by Gerald Durrell. Perhaps people travel or have some other interesting aspect to their lives. Most memoirs are written by older people who’ve had time to experience life.
Even factory work can be a good subject as such jobs have changed a lot over the years. I know a woman whose father was involved with the beginnings of the labor unions. She knows the stories. They are not written down. Another woman grew up when going to town was with horses for all day. Her stories too are now gone.
Family histories can pull a family together, remind members where they came from and who they are. They make relatives into real people who were once young with their lives stretching before them. Too often children are young and don’t listen. They are interested in what they are doing, not a distant past. Our culture too seems to not value the past, be it stories or heirlooms any more. And then the people are gone. It’s too late to listen to the stories or ask those questions.
The older I get, the more friends I lose, the more I wonder about writing down some of what I remember. Would anyone be interested? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
Memories don’t have to be in memoirs. As a writer I draw upon my memories in my writing. The books are definitely not memoirs, but they include adapted incidents and emotions from my life.
And maybe that’s enough.
April 27, 2019
Writing Dystopia
Every writer has a comfort zone. Whatever the writer is working on slides into an easy, comfortable prose that flows along.
My novels tend to have different, but similar characters. My underlying themes tend to run in the same ruts. Even my nonfiction has its comfort zones.
Then my writers group Missouri Authors Circle comes up with an underlying theme for its science fiction anthology totally different from what I write. Dystopia is not where I normally want to go.
This is not because I don’t see changes I don’t like all around me. The weather has gone erratic. Storms have changed bringing severe high water events and lots of erosion.
The places I remember from growing up are now wall-to-wall people. The media and the scientists keep talking about how the Earth can support ever growing numbers of people.
People have grown selfish. Even as the people living around me cry for fewer laws and regulations, the increasing population demands more of them. Money is the new god.
I see these and more. Yet, I don’t like to write about them. Perhaps I am hiding my head in the sand. I still find these themes don’t fit my writing style.
The anthology pieces will be different – are different. Writing them hasn’t been terribly difficult. Rough drafts are never much of a problem as the real writing, for me, is in the rewrites.
The four stories make me uncomfortable. I must force myself to put these feelings aside to honestly evaluate the stories for the revisions.
There is an additional problem with three of them. The stories are complete, yet they open the door to being much more than short stories.
The question then becomes: Do I want to go there?
My novels tend to have different, but similar characters. My underlying themes tend to run in the same ruts. Even my nonfiction has its comfort zones.
Then my writers group Missouri Authors Circle comes up with an underlying theme for its science fiction anthology totally different from what I write. Dystopia is not where I normally want to go.
This is not because I don’t see changes I don’t like all around me. The weather has gone erratic. Storms have changed bringing severe high water events and lots of erosion.
The places I remember from growing up are now wall-to-wall people. The media and the scientists keep talking about how the Earth can support ever growing numbers of people.
People have grown selfish. Even as the people living around me cry for fewer laws and regulations, the increasing population demands more of them. Money is the new god.
I see these and more. Yet, I don’t like to write about them. Perhaps I am hiding my head in the sand. I still find these themes don’t fit my writing style.
The anthology pieces will be different – are different. Writing them hasn’t been terribly difficult. Rough drafts are never much of a problem as the real writing, for me, is in the rewrites.
The four stories make me uncomfortable. I must force myself to put these feelings aside to honestly evaluate the stories for the revisions.
There is an additional problem with three of them. The stories are complete, yet they open the door to being much more than short stories.
The question then becomes: Do I want to go there?
February 13, 2019
Creating Timelines
If you say the word timeline, a picture of a line of dates and events seems to appear. This is the common way to see timelines in newspaper and magazine articles. It isn’t the way writers use timelines, at least, not always.
When I wrote “Dora’s Story,” the story spanned a number of years with different people’s stories appearing and interweaving along the way. The time element was crucial. This was a standard timeline putting the years and people in order.
At the beginning I thought, naively, that I could keep track of the time as I wrote. The first two drafts were written with this belief. By the end of the second draft, I knew I hadn’t a prayer of writing this novel without a timeline.
It revealed a missing year, several missing events and some geography problems. Yes, geography problems. Dora, the goat holding the story together, moves several times. I had made a mess of where and how and when she moved. The timeline set me straight.
The Hazel Whitmore books use a calendar. Hazel is in school. School has a set schedule of attendance days, holidays and, in this part of the country, snow and high water days. The actions must fit into the school calendar.
Luckily I’ve kept a daily calendar for years. It’s a way of keeping track of the weather, goat happenings, the garden and other day to day activities. It makes notes of special occurrences such as the total solar eclipse a couple of years ago. I prefer the calendar to a diary.
My present project “The Carduan Chronicles” requires yet another kind of timeline. Originally there was only one space ship. No timeline was really needed, only a sense of the seasons as the story spanned winter into spring to early summer.
As I wrote the draft, I kept thinking about another ship, the one ahead of Ship Nineteen in the convoy. Ship Eighteen kept creeping into the plot. I gave up and wrote a draft for it.
The two ships are spanning the same fourteen weeks. The best way is to go back and forth between the two. Somehow this became a daily move. Ship Nineteen goes through a day. Ship Eighteen goes through the same day.
Perhaps it would make more sense to write about one and then the other. Except the two cross paths at several points. So I’m doing the rewrite going back and forth between the two.
Generally a timeline is set up before a story is written. Not for “The Carduan Chronicles.” I write a day for one ship, note the main events on the timeline. I write the day for the second ship and note the main events on the timeline. Day 1 for Ship Nineteen is across from Day 1 for Ship Eighteen.
The days are going by. I found I missed a day and had to go back and write it in. Then there are the changes in the story line due to having the space ship model so things that happened on a day in the draft are now moved to another day.
The other major change is for Ship Eighteen. Ship Nineteen is on the ground. The Carduans are out and about, exploring and finding trouble every day.
Ship Eighteen is in flight for fourteen weeks. The forty-two – not sixty as in the rough draft – passengers spend much of their time being bored. There are things going on, but they are at intervals. This is a challenge of trying to make boredom interesting.
Only the timeline will make sure the full time goes by. Only the timeline will put the action at the proper times.
Then I get to do another rewrite to make the voyages interesting.
When I wrote “Dora’s Story,” the story spanned a number of years with different people’s stories appearing and interweaving along the way. The time element was crucial. This was a standard timeline putting the years and people in order.
At the beginning I thought, naively, that I could keep track of the time as I wrote. The first two drafts were written with this belief. By the end of the second draft, I knew I hadn’t a prayer of writing this novel without a timeline.
It revealed a missing year, several missing events and some geography problems. Yes, geography problems. Dora, the goat holding the story together, moves several times. I had made a mess of where and how and when she moved. The timeline set me straight.
The Hazel Whitmore books use a calendar. Hazel is in school. School has a set schedule of attendance days, holidays and, in this part of the country, snow and high water days. The actions must fit into the school calendar.
Luckily I’ve kept a daily calendar for years. It’s a way of keeping track of the weather, goat happenings, the garden and other day to day activities. It makes notes of special occurrences such as the total solar eclipse a couple of years ago. I prefer the calendar to a diary.
My present project “The Carduan Chronicles” requires yet another kind of timeline. Originally there was only one space ship. No timeline was really needed, only a sense of the seasons as the story spanned winter into spring to early summer.
As I wrote the draft, I kept thinking about another ship, the one ahead of Ship Nineteen in the convoy. Ship Eighteen kept creeping into the plot. I gave up and wrote a draft for it.
The two ships are spanning the same fourteen weeks. The best way is to go back and forth between the two. Somehow this became a daily move. Ship Nineteen goes through a day. Ship Eighteen goes through the same day.
Perhaps it would make more sense to write about one and then the other. Except the two cross paths at several points. So I’m doing the rewrite going back and forth between the two.
Generally a timeline is set up before a story is written. Not for “The Carduan Chronicles.” I write a day for one ship, note the main events on the timeline. I write the day for the second ship and note the main events on the timeline. Day 1 for Ship Nineteen is across from Day 1 for Ship Eighteen.
The days are going by. I found I missed a day and had to go back and write it in. Then there are the changes in the story line due to having the space ship model so things that happened on a day in the draft are now moved to another day.
The other major change is for Ship Eighteen. Ship Nineteen is on the ground. The Carduans are out and about, exploring and finding trouble every day.
Ship Eighteen is in flight for fourteen weeks. The forty-two – not sixty as in the rough draft – passengers spend much of their time being bored. There are things going on, but they are at intervals. This is a challenge of trying to make boredom interesting.
Only the timeline will make sure the full time goes by. Only the timeline will put the action at the proper times.
Then I get to do another rewrite to make the voyages interesting.
February 1, 2019
Writing For Change
I was once asked if I wanted to move back to California where I grew up. My answer was that I couldn’t as my California no longer existed. This seemed to be confusing, but shouldn’t be.
My California had miles of open country and meadows between Los Angeles and San Diego. We could go to the beach and be the only ones there. We could go hiking in the mountains and meet no one.
There was a dairy with cows and a small bottling plant not ten miles from home where you could watch your milk put in a bottle and buy it. As children, we could play outside while our parents played canasta until midnight safely.
Time marches on. My California is now in the past. I can not go back except in memory.
As writers, authors have golden opportunities to bring that past to life for those who will never see it. Yet we should never present this as someplace we can return to. We can’t and we shouldn’t.
Why not return to those times? Because those times had ugly sides to them too. It was a time when people couldn’t use a rest room, a drinking fountain, be out after dark, live in a house they chose because of who they were. It was a time when many children couldn’t get a decent education or expect to get a decent job because of who they were.
As writers, authors can encourage people to look at the past honestly. We can encourage people to take a good look at themselves, their lives and see that some things need to change. We can show people ways to change by introducing them to people and places they might never otherwise encounter.
The hardest part is meeting those people and seeing those places ourselves. How can we ask others to change when we ourselves are unwilling to change?
My California had miles of open country and meadows between Los Angeles and San Diego. We could go to the beach and be the only ones there. We could go hiking in the mountains and meet no one.
There was a dairy with cows and a small bottling plant not ten miles from home where you could watch your milk put in a bottle and buy it. As children, we could play outside while our parents played canasta until midnight safely.
Time marches on. My California is now in the past. I can not go back except in memory.
As writers, authors have golden opportunities to bring that past to life for those who will never see it. Yet we should never present this as someplace we can return to. We can’t and we shouldn’t.
Why not return to those times? Because those times had ugly sides to them too. It was a time when people couldn’t use a rest room, a drinking fountain, be out after dark, live in a house they chose because of who they were. It was a time when many children couldn’t get a decent education or expect to get a decent job because of who they were.
As writers, authors can encourage people to look at the past honestly. We can encourage people to take a good look at themselves, their lives and see that some things need to change. We can show people ways to change by introducing them to people and places they might never otherwise encounter.
The hardest part is meeting those people and seeing those places ourselves. How can we ask others to change when we ourselves are unwilling to change?
January 8, 2019
New Year, Same Old Problem
Yes, I have plans for the new year: six books. This sounds great now, in January, before spring arrives. Realistically I’m looking at three.
But, who wants to be realistic in January?
Right now I have extra computer time every day because the days are short. Some have even been too cold or wet to lure me outside for time other than chore time. “The Carduan Chronicles,” “The City Water Project,” and my botany project are humming along.
Speed bumps loom. Seed catalogs have arrived. What will I attempt to grow in the garden this year? Time melts away working in the garden enjoying warm days.
And there are the baby chicks. I plan on twenty little pullets. Their house is rebuilt to discourage predators and keep them warmer during cold nights. Baby chicks are so cute and fun to watch.
Baby chicks are no competition for baby goats. March is kid month here. These cuties are time gluttons from the time they are born. And I grant it gladly for several months.
There are the usual time consumers: mucking out the barn, mulching the garden, spring cleaning in the house.
Write? When?
And this year I plan to spend one day a week out hiking to take pictures for the botany project. “The City Water Project” will take more time as, even though I’ve done all of the experiments, I need to redo them. Besides, building and shooting off a water rocket is fun.
I seem to have forgotten something. Book marketing. I love to write. I love to publish my books. I need to sell some of them. They must support themselves.
When do I do the book marketing?
Sigh.
Happy New Year everyone. May all of you get the gift of time. Send some my way. I need it too.
But, who wants to be realistic in January?
Right now I have extra computer time every day because the days are short. Some have even been too cold or wet to lure me outside for time other than chore time. “The Carduan Chronicles,” “The City Water Project,” and my botany project are humming along.
Speed bumps loom. Seed catalogs have arrived. What will I attempt to grow in the garden this year? Time melts away working in the garden enjoying warm days.
And there are the baby chicks. I plan on twenty little pullets. Their house is rebuilt to discourage predators and keep them warmer during cold nights. Baby chicks are so cute and fun to watch.
Baby chicks are no competition for baby goats. March is kid month here. These cuties are time gluttons from the time they are born. And I grant it gladly for several months.
There are the usual time consumers: mucking out the barn, mulching the garden, spring cleaning in the house.
Write? When?
And this year I plan to spend one day a week out hiking to take pictures for the botany project. “The City Water Project” will take more time as, even though I’ve done all of the experiments, I need to redo them. Besides, building and shooting off a water rocket is fun.
I seem to have forgotten something. Book marketing. I love to write. I love to publish my books. I need to sell some of them. They must support themselves.
When do I do the book marketing?
Sigh.
Happy New Year everyone. May all of you get the gift of time. Send some my way. I need it too.
December 12, 2018
Stepping On Toes
What makes a book memorable? For me it’s one that pushes me out of my comfort zone, makes me think about some idea I hold as true and now must defend against new information, perhaps to keep it, perhaps to change it.
Edgy is the term used.
This doesn’t mean I want to read about my real life, good and bad. I’m living that and don’t need my nose shoved in it any further.
Instead I want to be a safe distance from these ideas. Fiction offers writers a chance to do that.
Consider “Les Miserable.” A man is sentenced to prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. It reflected those times. It addresses our own times and how we view our justice system. Should we use prison time to try to rehabilitate or punish?
Consider “The Hate U Give.” We read about such incidents in the newspaper or see them on the news. We look at them through our own lens. We need to look at them from another lens as well to find solutions.
Which books talk to you? Why?
As a writer, I want to write books that talk to my readers long after they close the back cover.
Yet, we live in a time when so many people want the world to kowtow before them, tell them only what they want to hear and believe. If a book is edgy, it steps on these people’s toes. They won’t purchase or read it.
The world has a lot of people. Each person is a unique individual living a unique life. Closing our eyes to this and hanging onto our ideas, right or wrong or somewhere in between doesn’t help us live together peaceably.
As you consider the books you will tackle next year, add a couple challenging your comfort zone. Expand your life and your ideas.
Edgy is the term used.
This doesn’t mean I want to read about my real life, good and bad. I’m living that and don’t need my nose shoved in it any further.
Instead I want to be a safe distance from these ideas. Fiction offers writers a chance to do that.
Consider “Les Miserable.” A man is sentenced to prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. It reflected those times. It addresses our own times and how we view our justice system. Should we use prison time to try to rehabilitate or punish?
Consider “The Hate U Give.” We read about such incidents in the newspaper or see them on the news. We look at them through our own lens. We need to look at them from another lens as well to find solutions.
Which books talk to you? Why?
As a writer, I want to write books that talk to my readers long after they close the back cover.
Yet, we live in a time when so many people want the world to kowtow before them, tell them only what they want to hear and believe. If a book is edgy, it steps on these people’s toes. They won’t purchase or read it.
The world has a lot of people. Each person is a unique individual living a unique life. Closing our eyes to this and hanging onto our ideas, right or wrong or somewhere in between doesn’t help us live together peaceably.
As you consider the books you will tackle next year, add a couple challenging your comfort zone. Expand your life and your ideas.
