Christa Bedwin's Blog

The Experience of Physical Gratitude and How it Shapes Plot and Character

What makes you grateful? The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, Receiving Prosperity by Louise Hay, and every one of Abraham-Hicks' teachings are about creating a successful and happy life by focussing on what makes you grateful.

One of the main reasons we often have physical hobbies is because they make us feel good. They put us into a happy little state and some of us even hum or sing while we are doing our hobbies. It gives us a precious place to think our thoughts or just get in a happy, healthy mental zone of gratitude.
There is the reward, of course, of a new outfit or a toque or a birdhouse when your project is done, but there is even greater value, for many hobbyists, in the doing of the activity, itself. 
I mentioned that I am building a greenhouse out of old windows from a house in my Nova Scotia neighbourhood. 
I have been very startled several times during the process by people saying "what are you growing to grow in it?" because that had not even entered my mind, and I'm so many work hours from that stage! There are so many joyful hours of calculating lumber and mitre sawing and hammering and pondering and measuring and puzzling and making things work out before the GROWING comes. In fact, it's turning out to be such a beautiful structure, that it might end up being more about drinking tea and reading books in the afternoon sun with a view of the herb garden, than about filling it up with boxes of dirt and plants. We shall see! 
In romance novels, it's often very sexy to think of the hero hammering together a house, or renovating with a particular artistic eye for beauty. I think the /reason/ that this is sexy is that the hero is following a happy, productive path during that phase.
Many books also seem to have the heroine running a shop or a cafe. There's a great deal of satisfaction in her daily activities -- counting receipts, doing inventory, dealing with customers. Or sometimes, there might be frustration! 
The point is, giving our characters actions, and a life path, helps drive the plot forward and give us a structure to shape the characters and hang the emotional development on. Many of the older romances had the heroine being kind of aimless until she became a nanny or a maid for a rich guy, though even that gave activity to shape a plot around.
Nowadays, many of us love to read about strong, happy, successful heroines who do really cool stuff. Personally, I feel like there are enough struggles in my real life. I like the fairytale world of a romance, where business is successful and girlfriends are awesome and men are sexy.
Assignment:Either:1. Think up an activity for a heroine, and one for a hero, to pursue throughout the plot of a new novel. It doesn't need to be their career. Maybe he's a bank clerk but loves model trains. Or maybe she's a secretary for a really dull boss, but restores antique furniture in her spare time and meets her hero through that hobby.
OR
2. Write about yourself doing a hobby or one of your favourite things. Write about that little hum of satisfaction that buzzes through your body as you do it. What physical sensations let you know that you're enjoying yourself? 

Using physicality to help tell emotional stories

 This is a short little assignment for a course I'm teaching on how to use the actions of our hands to help portray emotion and mood in the stories we write. I based the course on this blog post: https://cbonwriting.blogspot.com/2019/07/living-and-writing-with-less-money-and.html

1. What skills do you have? Draw on these.
Are you a quilter, a chainsaw carver, a wood carver or builder, a spinner, a knitter, a crocheter? Whatever your jam is, whatever your hands have experience doing, meditate on that, and come up with just one emotion, event, or scene that you could illustrate by using the action of the craft.Either tell us your idea, or write out a few paragraphs of the scene.
Thank you!
Examples:
Imagine a woman in her craft room. 
SPINNINGWe have, for example, that poor princess who had to spin straw into gold in the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumpelstiltskin). While she spun, she worried and worried.
BRAIDING/KNOTTINGImagine writing about a teenager or a young spritely senior citizen braiding or knotting friendship bracelets, and thinking about the events of the friendship as she does it. In fact, what fun it would be to have a teen and her grandma doing that together, sharing the stories as they go.
KNITTINGOr imagine a woman knitting her cat a colourful, glorious scarf to wear into her grave after a winter's death, and a headband of the same skein of wool for herself. A grieving process that nonetheless knotted the colour and joy of their life together into a memory they could share forever, that she could wear in the future to feel connected to her departed furry friend. The knitting kept my hands busy while my whole heart and soul were with my cat while we waited, reluctantly, together, for her parting.Teenage son, also putting his hands into his grief and love, walked to the hardware store to buy a shovel before Christmas might close it, and built a beautiful pine box in just her size with his two big capable hands. We had to carry boiling water to the grave site to make the frozen ground possible to dig on New Year's Day.
QUILTINGOne of my day jobs is technical editor for a mining company. This week, when an engineer asked me how I could help with some documents she and her team are drawing up, I drew upon the analogy of a quilt. I (appropriate to the audience!) gave her a bulleted list. I said:

Imagine that the report writing we do is like a quilt. So each report has a number of squares or pieces that we then sew together into a beautiful whole. The best way for me to help you is:

If you have a square complete, I could edit that.If you want some help figuring out how the pieces should go together, I can help with that.If you have point form notes and a clear idea of how a piece should look, I could help write the words for that.

 

Does that make sense? But don’t throw me a whole quilt-in-a-bag without a clear idea of what tasks need to be done – give me a clear objective when you send me a task.

 

If you are having a sort of “I have a jumble of ragged pieces in a bag and I need help sorting them out” then we should probably look at that together to figure out how to start. Is that fair?

BUILDING a GREENHOUSEI didn't mean to make these all "female" crafts and I have an even better story about building a greenhouse and my Estwing hammer and my mitre saw and my grandpa and logs and windows smashing but it was turning out too long and I really want to see some nice short input from youse all so I won't share that unless you ask!_._,_._,_

The Joys of Teaching Engineers to Write

Q: Why would an editor want to teach engineers to write?Because it’s so much fun! Engineers are extremely thoughtful, always looking at a problem from a number of angles and challenging dogmatic ideas. This matches my own approach to life and to language, so I love discussing English with engineers.Conversations with high-IQ people are great. You just won’t get the same level of analysis from a room full of literature majors, who have been trained  in a completely different way of thinking.I love the engineering approach to language. Engineers are taught to invent, to innovate, to question. And isn’t that essentially exactly the same process editors go through when they edit?Ergo, if you ask me, editors and engineers are a natural match!(Caveat: If you’re a dogmatic, authoritarian sort who can’t stand to be questioned and to reasonably and scientifically debate why one word choice or text layout or document format is preferable to another, or give the reasoning behind your rules, then you might not like engineers—they want reason with their rhyme.)Q: Wouldn’t it put editors out of business if all the engineers and others learned how to write better?There is nothing to fear. We will never run out of work editing for engineers, because there will always be, in our lifetimes, a lot of work for engineers to do, and they need to write to report on the work that they do and communicate with clients, each other, and the public.Good Reasons to TeachEven if you mentor and teach some of your individual clients to be much better writers, even such great writers that they don’t really need you any more, fear not! There will be plenty of new engineers who will appreciate your teaching too.And as we all know, one client who values you will often refer you to many more clients.Another point that great editors know is that often, if you hold a class to teach all the engineers in your company how to do what you do, the result is often that they value you more because you are doing more, with a deeper background, to their manuscripts than they know how to do themselves, and that they previously misunderstood what you were doing. Teaching classes about what you do will often result in people valuing your work more highly. Not everyone has a passion or a skill for editing.Ergo, there is absolutely no need to hold back. It’s well worth it to share all of our trade secrets with our clients, engineers or not. Mentor away! A more likely result of you teaching them better writing is increased appreciation for you, not a loss of work.Benefits to Working with EngineersAnother factor at play in editing for engineers and scientists in English is that you will often get to work with plenty of brilliant people from all over the world, because engineers travel (and immigrate) a lot for work. Their English might not be perfect, but that might be because it’s their fourth, fifth, or sixth language!And if the writers have romance languages as their first language, then you get to edit poetry. Sometimes I find it a shame to reduce the word count and eliminate the poetry into ruthless efficiency. Easier to read the science, of course, but slightly less beautiful, sometimes.Q: How do you teach engineers to write?This is a big topic, but here’s a start on what you need to arm yourself with if you are going to edit for engineers, and/or teach them something too.Speak functionally. Engineers love to know how things work. If you explain how white space helps to highlight the important points by reducing reader fatigue and distraction, and give some examples to demonstrate it, then engineers are way more likely to jump on that train than if you just tell them abstractly that they should use more white space.Guidelines are good, too, but if you just spout a lot of rules without backing them up with good reasons, engineers are likely to analyze themselves out of using your rule.So, participate in the analysis. And if you are asking people to follow rules that you can’t back up with sound logic, functional science, and a history of how that rule came into being, then maybe there’s something wrong with your rule!Use examples. Examples teach like theory never can. Great teaching (or style guides or instructions for projects) includes both examples and theory.Example:Let’s say that someone in your class, or in a company that you edit for, has brought up the case of putting one or two spaces after a period. Some writers do not like the fact that this rule has changed in their lifetime, and they have plenty of reasons not to follow the new rule.If you don’t tell them WHY they should only use one space after a period, you will find you have a low compliance rate.However, if you explain that two spaces was appropriate when we used typewriters, but that computer programs are designed to use just one space, and that it will look wonky if they use two, that will get a lot of converts. Engineers understand changing technology and modernization.But you will still have some holdouts. So try an authority-based viewpoint. “It’s what we do in the publishing industry. You may notice that every book in the bookshop and every journal you ever submitted a paper to, strip out the extra spaces.”That might get you a few more converts.Then, you might try a second, even more intricate functional argument: Double spaces on word processing programs create large white spaces between sentences, which will lead to rivers of white space between sentences. These  rivers of white space have been proven in multiple controlled experiments to make readers’ eyes wander and get distracted from the reading at hand.Load yourself up with knowledge, not arrogance. As the spaces-after-period example shows, sometimes you just need to patiently have more information than they can possibly contradict.And then you patiently have to accept that some of them are still going to disagree and keep using two spaces after a period, the way they were taught in 1973. Don’t sweat it. Just add it to a standard editing task you do on that person’s papers when you receive them.Q: How do you know that you’re teaching with any success?One of the best compliments I ever received from an engineer was “I forgot to touch my phone the whole time you were teaching. I don’t think that’s ever happened before.” [image error]

How to Get a Dragon for a Pet

I’m sharing this excerpt from my unpublished book “How to Get a Dragon for a Pet” for the benefit of a class on Magic and ancient Cornwall (Dumnonia) that we’re enjoying together this January 2020.
This may sound like a post of pure silliness to some of you. If you have no interest in getting a dragon for a pet,  or possibly no understanding or belief about dragons existing at all, you might as well skip this post and return to my more “professional” writings about how to edit papers for scientists and engineers or how to write lessons to enchant students about math. J Only read this post if you actually are interested in having a dragon, or knowing about people who have dragons. Have a nice day.
Meditation to Get a DragonorHow To Actually Get a Dragon for a Pet


“Pure-hearted people are not always wise or good for themselves, though they are often very good to others. This is why pure-hearted people need dragons.”-- ScullyRubba
Normally when we use the word “get” in our society, people think “buy.” Well, you can’t buy a dragon. And if you are lucky enough to “get” a dragon for a pet, which I hope you will be, you won’t be able to keep it in a cage.
You can buy a silly stuffed dragon, or dragon stickers or dragon pictures or a dragon book like this one. You can study dragons, think about dragons, and dream about dragons. But the only way to get your very own dragon into your life is to meditate one up. You have to attract a dragon into your life, and you have to be brave enough to invite them to stay. I might as well tell you now, this is way easier for kids than it usually is for adults.
Dragons have been around a long time. They know that money and stuff and circumstance mean... just about nothing, as a measure of a person. They’ve seen generations of rich people lose everything they have in wars. They’ve seen dirty rotten thieves in every economic group. They’ve seen the integrity of communities of monks and nuns who have lived for thousands of years in poverty, but even there, they’ve seen corruption. People with impure hearts really can’t fool dragons, though they sometimes try. But after all these years, all these millennia, getting to know humans, dragons pretty much don’t bother talking to people of impure heart. They just remain invisible rather than engage in pointless conversations.
As I have mentioned elsewhere in this book, you might very well get a dragon who likes to play tricks.  However, it is extremely unlikely that you will get a dragon who you can trick, though dragons sometimes play along with kids’ jokes, just for fun. But don’t go thinking you can hide your true nature or your emotions from a dragon.
And sadly, that’s why most adults never get dragons.  They’re too busy hiding. Dragons require Bravery.
“Most adults are big fat chickens, though single moms are often braver than most.”-- ScullyRubba
So if you want a dragon for a pet, and you want to attract a dragon, you have to clear your heart. Make it light. Kids are often already pretty clear, but the older they are, the more cluttered with nasty stuff from society their hearts tend to get (you know, like bickering, and name-calling, and bossing each other about)(until they learn how to reverse that and become clear light again!) but adults generally need to do a LOT more work to become clear enough to understand dragons.
The first thing you have to do to clear your heart is to write down your gratitudes, and to do it every day. Who and what are you thankful for? The nifty things about gratitudes is they’re nearly endless. I’ve never yet come to an end to any list of gratitudes I started to write. You start writing the big things you’re thankful for, and the little ones, and the more you open yourself up to the thankfulness, the more thankfulness flows in. And the more thankfulness flows in, the clearer your heart gets. You might have to do this for a week, or a month, or a year, before your dragon comes.
… which is not to say you’re a better person if your dragon shows up faster. As we said above, dragons have a lot on the agenda. Aside from visiting all the people they’ve collected into their lives over the centuries, they also (I think) have council meetings with each other in that other realm they have, the one between space and time, which they can get to through magical places (like stone circles in Cornwall, or when they fade behind menhirs in Brittany). So don’t be impatient or annoyed if your dragon takes its time. Sometimes they do. I mean, you can get impatient and annoyed if that’s how you like to feel. But it won’t change the dragon’s behavior any (just like you shouldn’t change your behavior for impatient or annoyed people either, as any good dragon will tell you! Other people’s choices of emotion are their choices, not your business.)
Now here’s how not to get a dragon: I can just imagine some families getting around a table like a business meeting, and bickering “I think our dragon should be red.” “No! I want a blue dragon.” “It should fly!” “No! It should swim!” “Now, now, kids, how about we compromise, we’ll have a blue dragon that flies” (or a red dragon that swims, or whatever...).
That is NOT how to get a dragon. You have to be open, willing, accepting, and pure of heart, and then you have to listen. You do not get to choose your dragon , any more than you get to choose that you’re the child of a single mother or a father with a huge nose that you’ve unfortunately inherited, or that your hair is brown. You just have to accept the dragon you get (or go ahead and reject it, if you’re a fool –– your choice!). Dragons do not come from pet stores, and you can not keep dragons in cages. And if you insist on wanting a pet that you can choose, or a pet that you can keep in a cage, then you should probably choose a type of pet other than a dragon.
I don’t know how long you have to listen, but it’s just until the dragon shows up. At some point, you will just know the dragon is there. Maybe it will come and alight on a tree beside you, or maybe it will be there when you wake up one day, or maybe, like my dragon, the dragon’s mother will put the dragon’s egg in your maple tree, and the cat might not be all that happy about it, but there it will be. And maybe it will even jump into a novel that you thought was a relatively straightforward historical romance.
And maybe your dragon is already here, and you just haven’t listened or looked in the right way. If you close your eyes every morning and be very still and quiet, that’s the easiest way to find your dragon, and find out how your dragon likes to be.
If you want a pretend dragon, you can make one up. You can write it any colour and size and shape under the sun. But if you want a real dragon, the only way to get one is to listen, and watch, and wait.
And if one never shows up… rejoice. Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t need a dragon to help you. Maybe you’ve already got your king and courtiers, and the message from the dragons is to count your blessings, you’re wealthy enough already.

Medieval Magic and History January course sneak peek

I thought I'd share this sneak peek into the medieval magic and history course I have on the cooker for January... here's a beautiful blustery little BBC video from the cliffs of Cornwall for you. It's poet Simon Armitage discussing the 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74glI1lg1CQ
It's a pretty male view of magic and history, of course, that misses a lot of the female side... but don't worry, we'll be digging into what women got up to, too!

Also of interest to the course, this interesting archaeological find! Nearly the whole bronze age throughout Europe relied on trading tin with Cornwall (then known as Dumnonia) -- did you know that?
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/19/uk/cornwall-tin-israel-intl-scli-gbr/index.html
https://www.timesofisrael.com/groundbreaking-study-ancient-tin-ingots-found-in-israel-were-mined-in-england/


Here's the signup link! https://www.heartsthroughhistory.com/workshops/early-medieval-magic/#register

Using Mathematical Concepts to Decipher Languages

By Christa BedwinIn mathematics, exercises and activities help students to systematically build on what they already know. Through a step-by-step approach, students develop math skills and understanding, and eventually, the procedural ‘how’ evolves into the conceptual ‘why.’In the same way, language study in natural, practical situations, like travel to foreign countries or even frequent visits to ethnic neighborhoods or restaurants, can provide opportunities for breakthroughs. Basic understanding of foreign language grammatical concepts eventually gives way to natural conversations—opening a new world of possibilities.Let’s say you’re in Italy and you walk into a coffee shop for a cup of coffee and to ask for directions. If you ask about paying for coffee when it’s delivered to you, you would likely try to put together the words from a pocket dictionary, “I + pay,” to form “io pagare?” without even trying to sort out the grammar.The server might reply, “Dopo, dopo,” while making calming body motions. Most Italians use a lot of body language and gestures that reinforce their spoken words. You and your students would pick up that “dopo” means “later.” Or, the server might say, “Si, adesso,” and with body language make it clear he would like to be paid now.Next, you ask for directions but don’t quite understand his reply. So when you head hesitantly out the door, the store owner might say, “Aspette, aspette,” which you understand by his hand gestures to mean you should wait. The owner likely wants to walk out the door with you and show you the directions on the street.If you were to consult a textbook to determine what learning just took place, the answer would be problem-solving using visual, social and contextual clues. Ben fatto!The English language has Latin, Germanic and Greek influences, making it easy to learn many foreign words.There are also similarities in grammatical structure with other languages.To begin identifying the similarities, get an introductory language CD. While driving in the car, start with a few basic words that can be easily picked up. Then, watch your students progress to patterning, problem solving and communication skills.Identifying Patterns in Foreign LanguagesAn easy example of recurring patterns in other languages can be found by introducing yourself. This is usually one of the first things a native and foreigner do in conversation. Through this exercise, students will build flexible thinking as they put together the combination of potential words, then compare and contrast the words in different languages.In English, we usually say: “My name is Jill.” But we can also say: “I’m called Jill.” Or a bit more awkwardly: “I’m named Jill.” Compare to…French: “Je m’appelle Jill.” (Me, I’m called Jill.)Spanish: “Me llamo Jill.” (I’m called Jill.)Italian: “Mi chiamo Jill.” (I’m called Jill.)Did you notice the similarities in the look and sound of “named,” both llamo and chiamo?Figuring out the Unknown Variables in a Foreign Language SentenceWhen your students learn a new language, they must learn vocabulary and the structure of the language. That includes the order of words, how verbs are conjugated and how nouns are pluralized.Once your students grasp the structure, they will develop the skill of using known words to guess the meaning of unknown words. Remember our math example? It’s a process similar to finding the unknown number “X” in algebra.You’ll soon watch your students improve their speed in this game as you travel and learn. And, the neural connections and skills they develop will last much longer than the trip and will carry over into other skills at home.Let’s look deeper into learning new words that fit in sentences where you expect, which is called decoding logic. For example, let’s say your students learned two tiny things about French:The pronouns: je (I singular), tu (you singular), nous (us), vous (you plural).“Est-ce que” in front of something forms a question.When you meet someone in a hotel, the person might ask: “Est-ce que vous aller au restaurant ce soir?” It looks complicated written out, but your students’ flexible brains will process this in a snap.The more they practice, the faster they will pick up more words. It’s incredible what a few weeks of trying to communicate in a foreign language will do for your students’ skills.Here are the steps their brain might go through to decode this phrase.One of the words—restaurant—is the same as the English word. That’s handy and happens a lot..Chop up the code and decode the pieces you know.“Est-ce que | vous  | aller au |  restaurant |  ce soir?”| you (plural) | …Unknown1 | restaurant | …Unknown2Okay, we know it’s a question because it starts with “est-ce que.” And, they’re talking about all of us and the restaurant.Your students already know three of the five pieces!Because we know the sentences in French follow the same structure as English, we can guess without much thought that Unknown1 is a verb. What would we do? We’d go to the restaurant. Okay! That must mean “aller” means “go” and “au” means “to the.” That can be confusing, which is perfect for further learning. This “cognitive dissonance,” as educators call it, will send curious kids straight to their language lesson to figure out why “au” is two words here.What would come after “restaurant?” Probably a time. You can pick up what time they are talking about by looking at the context of the conversation. In this case, the Unknown2, “ce soir”, means “this evening.”When your curious students look at their phrase book again, they will find other time phrases such as matin, midi, après-midi and nuit (morning, noon, afternoon and night).This overall process captures the benefits of homeschooling. Students in a traditional French class will waste countless hours learning simple words like “ce” and “au” vs. “a le” that can be difficult to assimilate and remember.However, in our travel-based, problem-solving learning environment, those little words fall into place on their own in real-world practice. The desire to get the words right in the company of others is a fantastic motivator for students. This will drive them to their book to find (and remember!) the right way to use what they learned.3 Ways to Apply Math to Language Learning at HomeIf you are not planning an international field trip, your family can still benefit from applying math to language learning. Here are some fun homeschool activities to try with Google Translate.Look up lists of Latin words and compare to their English, French, Italian and Spanish equivalents.Race to see who can be the first to find five very similar words in two to three languages. Explore which subject areas are most likely to have similar words.Help your students make charts of equivalent words in an area of their own interest. If they choose a modern field such as computers, have them identify English words that are used throughout many languages. If they choose an historical period centered on ships, have them look up the etymology (word history) of a few key words or phrases. This could easily lead to an exciting study of various trade routes and empires that caused languages to mix throughout history.Endless adventures at home and abroad await in the exploration of foreign languages. Applying math principles to the learning of languages will help get you well underway.

A few professional editing thoughts on paragraph length

You would never serve your guests a whole cake without slicing it. Do not serve weighty ideas without slicing them up, either.Plenty of writers, whether it is a report or an e-mail to clients or colleagues, simply spill all their ideas onto the page, and expect their readers to divide, categorize, and understand those ideas. This is not reasonable. If you want people to enjoy your cake or your ideas, present them beautifully instead of as a raw chunk.Over my decades of editing I have heard plenty of "rules" about paragraphs, usually going back to things that school teachers said to young children in a desperate attempt to get more words out of their little writing hands. These false ideas include, but are not limited to, the following:paragraphs need a beginning, middle, and endparagraphs must be at least three sentencesrepeat your topic sentence at the end.None of those are true for adult writing, and particularly not in the internet age! Redefine what you think paragraph breaks are.Paragraph breaks are a way to create white space surrounding your important ideas.If you write something that is not important, well, can you delete it? If not, then it can go in the middle of a paragraph. But your important ideas should show up at the beginning of paragraphs.Readers of long documents and articles now will often spend mere minutes on articles, and skim the first lines of each paragraph to distill the ideas before going to the next item on their busy to-do list.That is how reading happens now that we are used to the internet. There's no point in fighting against it, that's just how it is. If you bury something in the middle of a paragraph, it probably will not get read.This is essential for technical reports, because you need your clients to access your important points.It is also true of modern novels. I can tell a self-published novel these days by (among other things) the lengths of the paragraphs -- most fiction readers these days are not willing to wade through Dickensian 12-sentence paragraphs. And why should we? Make the read more pleasurable by breaking things up. (Aside: If you are going to self-publish and not hire an editor, consider at least comparing your novel to reading you like, to learn how to improve your own.)Experiment for yourself. Take a look at some of your favourite new reads and compare it to something old -- huge difference.Even more than the words you use, the space you put on the page affects comprehension.

Lesson 5: Beyond Dusty Books: Researching Characters and Plots through Crafting

A real boon of researching by doing hand work is that you find a rhythm when you're using your hands, and that can spin out nicely for  pacing a scene. 
For example, you can have some grandmothers sewing a quilt of family events and discussing various family members, maybe relating personality characteristics or events to colours on the quilt. Or you could have a heroine weaving a blanket and thinking about all the threads in her life, the warp and weft of people and events and places.
Or you can have a man making barrels in the back yard and have the heroine admiring his hands and the ease with which he shapes his barrels, and maybe think about how he has molded and shaped his children into beautiful works of art, too. 
You get the idea. I would love if some other people pitched in with some ideas on this!
As I mentioned at the beginning of this course, I spent a few years farm volunteering around Europe, and I've done this a little in Canada too. I know there are many wonderful places to do it in the states, too.

The organization I volunteer with is WWOOF: Willing Workers on Organic Farms. The deal is (generally, though there are an umpteen of variations) that you work 5 hours a day, and get the rest of the time to yourself. The farmer feeds you and gives you a bed. Just perfect  for writers to live a low-cost few months!

The other thing I love about this organization is that it's generally peopled by farmers who are organically farming, often in ancient ways, and who love to share knowledge. Some of them are revitalizing linen cloth straight from growing flax. Others make jams and jellies. Others weave baskets or make soap, or weave cotton, or raise animals. All of these basic, simple skills are extremely satisfying to DO.

This program provides and opportunity for those of us who are currently landless to try out loads of homesteading and historical skills that we might not otherwise have an opportunity to try. 

I have found that my characters can really form while I'm hoeing a walled garden at a castle in Ireland, or weeding a potato patch on the prairies, or putting stones on an ancient wall. Quilting and rug hooking and knitting and weaving are other soothing activities that ties us to our foremothers with our hands, and can really help us to get inside our heads. Doing these tasks that almost all of humanity has done until we hit the industrial revolution really connects our hands and our experience to history in a way that gives our writing authenticity.

What ancient or old skills have you tried? What have you built or made or contributed to?

Ruth Goodman is a British historian I mentioned before who is great at describing how it feels to do many old tasks. If you want to get some inspiration, just look her up on YouTube. Here's one of several playlists with several of her historical living experience shows. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFpct...

Christa

Lesson 4: Beyond Dusty Books: Ask an Expert

This lesson seems very simple, but sometimes it doesn't seem so obvious, so I thought I would share an example. If you are struggling to understand something from a historical culture, sometimes you can ask modern-day descendants and modern-day experts!

This weekend I was trying to understand Navajo names and Code talkers. The book I am writing has a Navajo Code Talker in France during WWII.... actually, I discovered by asking an online group who gave me some clues that I chased down through a few more layers, that Navajo Code talkers __were not__ in France. Comanche code talkers were in France, and the Navajo ones worked in the Pacific. Oops.
Nonetheless... I really want to pair the concept of the phoenix (rising from the ashes) with the Acadian heroine (and the native hero), and Comanches didn't have the phoenix as part of their culture, so I'll have to make an apology in my footnotes. I thought I might make my hero have a Comanche mother and Navajo dad, or something, but all of the Comanche code talkers were from Fort Seal Indian School, so I probably couldn't make that work in a reasonable life timeline. Or maybe I will -- I'll ponder it. Anyway -- I am just trying to show that the internet and interactions with other people really help us take our research deeper. Sometimes the first question we ask leads to another layer, and another and another, and often, those new questions end up forming significant plot points! I'm interested to see how this new research settles with my characters. 

Then I was struggling to figure out what a Navajo guy named "Sam" by the white guys in 1944 would have actually been called by his own people. I was having trouble getting answers by surfing the internet, so I wrote to the assistant editor of a Navajo newspaper, and got an amazing answer! I just had to share it here.Dear Assistant Editor (except I used her name),

I am writing a novel where I would like to include a Navajo Code Talker as one of the characters. From my research online I have been able to find out that the code talkers all had anglicized names like “Sam” and “George,” but I am wondering if you could please tell me, if a guy was named Sam in 1944 to the white guys, what might his name have been in the Navajo tongue? 

If you have any other resources that you recommend online that are better and more authentic than others, I would love to know them. I would like this story to bring the Navajo code talker story more into prominence and to do it as accurately and honorably as possible.

Thank you,

Christa Bedwin

Hi Christa,That is a good question! Most Navajos of that era were assigned English names at church or boarding schools more or less randomly. A name like "Sam" would not translate into anything in Navajo.Navajos are given "warrior names" by a medicine man during their form of a christening ceremony, but they are only to be used within the family and with very close associates. Most older Navajos are careful not to reveal their warrior names, as a person who means them harm could use them during a bad ceremony.Instead, before they had English names, Diné used to call each other by names that connoted physical attributes. A famously homely woman leader in Western Agency, for instance, was called "Asdzaan Biwoo" (Tooth Woman). A man might be "Hastiin Nez" (Tall Man) or "Ashkii Chischilly" (Curly Hair boy). Clan names also were used, such as "Kinlichiinii Tso" (referring to a large member of Kinlichiinii, or Redhouse Clan). You could also be named after your parents, such as Atsidi Biyé (Silversmith's son). (This is how the common Navajo last name "Begay" came about; it's a crude Anglicization of "Biyé," or son.)You could make up a Navajo name for your code talker by using Hastiin (man) or Ashkii (boy) followed by an adjective like:yazhi — smalltso - bignez - tallbigood - his knees, referring to someone who had an injury or something unusual about his knees; alsobiwoo — his teethbijaad — his legsbijaa — his ears ... You get the idea. If you can find a Navajo-speaking person in your area, they could give you some more ideas.


How generous of her to share that with me! But I have notice that experts do often share generously. I received similar generosity by TWO experts when I wrote to the Edinburgh public library asking about a vocabulary detail for 1790s Edinburgh last year.

Anybody else ask experts and get hugely generous responses? We'd love to hear about it!

Christa

Lesson 3: Beyond Dusty Books: Delightfully Geeky Detail-Oriented Groups

Here is another way to research your historical book plots and details without touching a research book or even the internet, if you prefer to get fully involved!1. SCA When I lived in a larger city, one of my favourite clubs was an SCA (as previously noted, SCA means Society for Creative Anachronism) historical cooking group. Each month we would choose a time period or theme, and all of the members would contribute something to a potluck. Before we dug in, we would discuss the ingredients, where they would have come from, where and when they would be available and maybe the trade routes that they travelled, substitutions that we made in ingredients for what might be no longer available or hard to source, and so on.SCA people tend to be VERY geeky, smart, incredibly thorough researchers, and simply wonderful people for writers to know. They’re willing to read your Renaissance or Medieval scene really thoroughly to make sure you got the dress right, talk at length with you about what your characters might be eating, and talk battles and weaponry until the cows come home, if that’s your thing! As I mentioned before, I have sometimes found it tricky to track down SCA groups online as they don’t usually call themselves by their real-city modern day name. The clubs are usually named by kingdoms and baronies, etc. The good thing is, if you can track down just one SCA person, you can often ask them questions to help find the SCA club in your area. They tend to often be very friendly and very talkative.
2. Steam punkThe general idea behind “steam punk” is taking the Victorian era’s view of the future and adding lots of gadgets, steam-powered machines, and maybe a little time travel. Again, steam punk clubs are a wonderful way to meet smart geeky people who just love historical detail, costumes, and imagination. They’re often friendly and social and glad to chat with you over intricate details of costumes, period technologies, historical facts, engineering, medicine, and science. Just look for local facebook or meet up groups in your area. 
3. Meet Up groups. If you go to meetup.com and enter in your interests and your local area, it’s a great place to get together with like-minded people. You might find steam punks, historians, chess players, hikers, re-enactors, knitters, readers, and all kinds of groups! Anything that you want to research and chat about, give it a search. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can always start a group with very minimal effort, and perhaps attract those people you’re looking for. 
4. Facebook groups*If you’re living in a smaller centre or you can’t find anyone locally who shares your interests, Facebook might be your answer to lots of fun historical discussions. A few good groups for research that I enjoy includeBritish Medieval History https://www.facebook.com/groups/20081... Medieval History https://www.facebook.com/groups/31578... of Ancient Rome https://www.facebook.com/groups/71857...
*I feel like I need to put a disclaimer: I know some people worry a lot about Facebook, and if that's you, no need to follow these avenues. For me, Facebook has expanded the quality and volume of my social circle enormously, and the good outweighs the danger. (But on the other hand, I don't have my real birthday on there, and feel completely comfortable unfriending and blocking people who bring negativity, so my Facebook is a nice place.) If you struggle with making your facebook or real life crew positive and uplifting, maybe this article will help: https://christabedwinwellness.blogspo....