Category Archives: creativity

Christianity, creativity, miscellaneous, Writing

Snow Day

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Looking north, not on our street but the one our circle ties in to. Plowed, but having had almost no traffic on it. The road veers to the left in the distance while our road goes right, both steeply downhill.

Yesterday was a snow day. This large winter storm, called “Landon” by the Weather Channel, was strung-out across more than half the USA. The forecasters missed the start of the storm, but otherwise got it mostly right.  They even predicted that we would get a last band of snow last night, and it happened. It looks like another inch or two on top of the 6 we already had.

So, when you are retired and have hit your 70th birthday, what do you do on a snow day? For me, I can’t resist going out in it. Never mind that the temperature was 18 and a north wind was blowing the fine snow at a 45-degree angle. I bundled up and hiked up the road. Not far, just up to the stop sign and back.

As I left the house, I measured 5″ in two places on our property, and a 13″ drift near the garage. Our street wasn’t plowed. Tire tracks came to our mailbox and stopped. The mailman had obviously driven that far and, not having any mail down the road (one of two houses there is current vacant), just backed up the hill. He/she did a good job of staying within the downhill tracks as they backed uphill.

At the house up the road, my neighbor was out. Having just shoveled his driveway, he was standing there, in just a light jacket. We talked for a while, me at the top of the driveway and him just inside the open garage door. Then I continued my walk. I was surprised to find the next road plowed. It isn’t a main road, though it does connect to main roads at both ends. About an inch of snow had fallen since it was plowed, and only one set of tire tracks showed on the freshly fallen.

At the next road, it was the same. Plowed, more snow falling, and only a few tire tracks. No one was out, either on foot or in vehicles. My walk had been pleasant thus far. But when I turned to head home, the wind was in my face, driving the fine snow. It was biting, not all that pleasant. But, I had only gone .17 miles, so it was a short walk past five houses and lot and lots of woods on both sides. I reached home having not fallen and invigorated.

I then returned to my work for the day, a fresh mug of coffee in hand. I think that was my fourth. My work was reviewing edits to the church Centennial book suggested by the two proofreaders and uploaded to the document in Google Drive. They did more than just proofread it, however. They had a lot of suggestions for changes. We have a Zoom conference scheduled for this afternoon to discuss it, and I figured I should go through the comments before hand. So, in The Dungeon, Google Drive on one screen and the Word doc on the other, I went to work. By the time 3 p.m. came around, my brain was fried, despite having taken those breaks for the walk and for lunch.

On a snow day such as this, I would have then gone to the sunroom with my coffee and read and taken a nap. But yesterday, instead, I did that in my reading chair in the living room. I tackled my e-mail inbox, going through e-mails over 10 years old and deciding what to do with them. I made good progress and can see light at the end of that tunnel. Then I’ll get to tackle the sent box. Through the evening I went through another twenty pages of comments in the Centennial book.

Now it’s almost 8:30 a.m. on Friday. The sun is shining through The Dungeon windows. I have ten to fifteen pages of comments to go through. I have other writing to do, then the conference at 1:00 p.m. After that, hopefully, I’ll find myself in the sunroom, alternately reading and napping. It should be a pleasurable after-the-snow day.

Church History Novels, creativity, critique group, Danny Tompkins Short Stories, miscellaneous, Sharon Williams short stories, Writing

Dendritic Passage

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Is this considered a craft? Oh, no, I did a craft! What’s to become of me? I feel the dendrites in my nervous system getting all worried.

Whether the pandemic is over or not, it’s good to be coming out of it. To go to the grocery store and not wear a mask. To go to church, not wear a mask, and get a cup of coffee (while staying 6 ft. distanced the whole time). To have long-interrupted groups meet for the first time in over a year. Yes, while we realize the spread of the virus isn’t over, and questions remain as to the effectiveness of the vaccine against all mutations of the virus, it’s still good to open up.

One group I belong to has been meeting. The Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers took a few months off, then decided to meet outdoors. I joined this group in March 2020 and attended one meeting before the pandemic hit. These are people who enjoy writing letters, on paper, that get sent through the mail. We have been meeting at a church not too far from me, under a drive-under at the back door, skipping the coldest and hottest months. That was good to keep seeing each other and talk about our letter writing activities.

Another group I’m a member of is the Scribblers & Scribes of Bella Vista. This is a writers critique group. We had our last meeting at a library in early March 2020. We typically had four or five people attend out of six active members. One of those has moved away; two others were new and we don’t know what their current interest is. Three of us were core members who rarely missed a meeting. While we were shut down, we sent pieces for critique by e-mail and received feedback the same way, but it wasn’t quite the same as reading pages in front of other writers and receiving comments then.

We began meeting again last Tuesday, all except me, as I had a one time church meeting to attend. I e-mailed in for critique the beginning of a short story. I’ll have to wait for the July meeting to see them all again. Anyone reading this who is interested in a writing critique group can find us through MeetUp.

The other group I’m a member of is the Village on the Lakes Writers and Poets. This group is a diverse bunch of writers, a fair number being poets. They met once a month at a writers retreat center in Bella Vista, sometimes as many as 20 people. The meetings were about inspiration for and education concerning writing, along with read-around of our work. Then the pandemic hit. The March 2020 meeting was cancelled. By April we were ready for Zoom meetings and did this every month during the pandemic.

In May, the State having lifted many restrictions, we met at a coffee shop, just five of us, and did some planning and dreaming. In June, we met at a pavilion of one of Bella Vista’s parks. One of our two group leaders led us in an exercise. Now, I hate writing exercises. I’m not sure why; I’d just rather write what I want to write and be done with it. But I took part. The leader had brought plucked off leaves, colored pens, pencils, and sketching paper. We were to trace a leaf (or leaves, whatever we wanted), then take fifteen minutes to write about it, after which we read our exercise to the group.

Not trace. I’m not exactly sure what this craft is called. Put the leaf on wax paper, then a sketch sheet above it, and rub the leaf through the paper so that the features come through. Leaf rubbing I suppose it’s called. My leaf didn’t want to cooperate. I chose yellow as my rubbing color. Probably not the best, as yellow doesn’t show well. The thick parts of the leaf didn’t show well, so I took a green pencil and traced them.

As to the writing, I stared at my leaf and couldn’t think of a thing. Then I took note of the dendritic pattern of the leaf and remembered an e-mail discussion with my now-deceased friend, Gary Boden, and a train of though came to mind. Here’s what I wrote and read to the group.

Dendritic Passage

As the trace of the leaf shows more prominently the division of segments—i.e. the spine and the hard, thick parts, so is my writing life and all that has brought me to this point. These start at the periphery and end at the bottom of the stem in what is called a dendritic pattern.

Dendritic? Yes, that’s the term. We used it in hydrology to describe the nature of a drainage basin, coming together from the far-flung edges and arriving at the main channel. But I think the word comes from the natural sciences, for I first heard it from Gary, a zoologist by education who ended up his career in computer systems. Branches coming together but with a fabric between them is what makes a dendritic pattern.

As I look at this leaf from an unknown plant and see its dendritic pattern, I see my writing. Each little spine is a genre that captures some of my time and results in a book or story. The latch-key teen experiences resulted in the Danny Tompkins stories. The many places visited early in adult life are being turned into the Sharon Williams stories and Operation Lotus Sunday. My love of God’s story and His word & church has moved to a branch that is the church history novels and

Hydrology, botany, and neurology (if that’s the right word) all make use of the term dendritic. Who knew?

At that point the leader said “Time.” When I read what I had to the group, someone talked about the dendritic pattern of the nervous system. I later looked up a dictionary definition, and both the pattern of a tree and the nervous system were used in the definition of dendritic. And the word “dendrite” for the first time came to my attention. Guess I should have figured that.

This is not a profound post. I have no conclusion to draw, no inspirational thing to write. Just an observations. Groups are coming back. I took part in a writing exercise. I did a craft-like thing and lived to write about it. All is not right with the world, but it was better that day when we met.

My camera is not with me right now. When it is, I’ll edit in a photo of my leaf rubbing, quite possibly the first and last I’ll ever do. Now, on to my day’s dendritic activities.

Oh, and why did I write “Passage” instead of “Pattern” in the title? I guess I don’t know.

Christianity, creativity, stock market, The Teachings, Writing

Grinding Away

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Will I ever complete the 4th book in this series (3rd book chronologically)? I’m sure I will, but right now the way is not clear.

This week I got back to work on The Teachings , re-reading in the last three chapters and looking at comments on Chapter 7 by a member of my critique group. I made sure my manuscript notebook was correct and carried it with me wherever I was in the house. It went with me to The Dungeon, to the sun room, to the living room, even to the kitchen table. I barely looked at it, just two times I think.

Alas, all my good plans were only partially realized. I’ve spent a fair amount of time on stock trading this week. Monday through Wednesday I didn’t make any trades. I mainly did research. Actually, I think I made two small trades on Monday and one on Tuesday, testing a new strategy with a very small toe dipped in the trading pool.

Then, in the drive to continue to declutter and reduce our possessions, I took yet another box of old correspondence out a couple of days ago and began ordering and inventorying it—letters, postcards, and greeting cards from my juvenile days through the first five years of marriage; to my dad and a few to my grandparents, I finished that box yesterday, sort of. The main batch of correspondence is done, but I pulled from the box all the things that don’t fit. These include letters to Dad from his uncles in England, a few letters and cards to him from his siblings, a few to my grandmother from her friends, and some of ours from other years. I found six pieces of correspondence that are part of our Saudi years, so I’ll have to put them in another place. Having more or less finished with this box (a box of keepers for now), I think I’m down to two or three boxes of things to go through and inventory.

Other downsizing tasks included getting rid of four old bicycles, and preparing to mail books and magazines that have sold on Facebook Marketplace. Then, of course, there were two dentist appointments for me. One was supposed to be for Lynda, but as she’s slightly under the weather I went ahead and took it, cancelling a second one I had for later in the month.

Yet another box of old correspondence pulls me away from other tasks I’d like to do, the unnecessary but enjoyable interrupting the important.

Now, having gotten all those tasks out of the way, I should be ready to work continuously on my book, right? Not quite. I’m reading in five different books right now, and try to do some in each every day. I won’t list them here, as they may be the subject for my next blog post. Suffice to say that I’m making a little progress in all five.

Saturday will find me blowing leaves and hauling them into the woods, picking up recently fallen brush, and maybe finishing the border of wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom. I think I have about 6 feet to go, a twenty minute task. I want to get that done before our next visitors come, which will be a week from Saturday. And, of course, there’s always preparation needed to teach Life Group, even when I’m just a substitute. Oh, wait, Saturday is the Rhode Island Author Expo. Since it’s a virtual event this year I signed up to attend it—as a participant, not as an author. That pulls me away from other things from 9 to 4, if I decide to attend all sessions. I’m not really a Rhode Island author, having lived away from my home state for 46 years, but I still want to keep a little of Little Rhody in me.

So, while I can be thankful that the desire to work on the book has finally happened, I can also rue that other tasks continue to get in the way. I’ll somehow get the book done, but it’s sure taking much, much longer than planned.

commuting, creativity, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

Searching For A Metaphor

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It’s approaching 6:00 p.m. on Sunday as I’m writing this, taking a moment away from working on my novel to work on this post. It’s been a busy weekend. My wife is still away, in Oklahoma City, on grand-baby #4 arrival watch. Due date is still more than a week away, but his brothers and sister all came early, so she went up early, and will be there a while after the birth. My mother-in-law is also away, visiting her relatives and friends in southwest Kansas. She won’t be back till around Oct. 3 or 4. So it’s just me in the house.

I’m in The Dungeon, which is where most of my serious writing takes place. After Life Group, church, buying a sandwich and fries from Arby’s, making a quick stop at the Neighborhood Market for something I forgot yesterday, and dropping recyclables off, I got home to the empty house. I ate my lunch while channel jumping between NFL football games that really didn’t interest me and one of the Star Wars movies, which some channel is showing over and over again this weekend. Then I went to The Dungeon to write. I could tell, however, as I started, that I would have difficulty adding coherent words to Preserve The Revelation, so I decided to go to the couch in the nearby family room and take a nap.

My nap lasted a little less than an hour, but I woke up with greater powers of concentration. I guess I was wiped out from Saturday’s labors. While I was working on Saturday it didn’t seem like I was working very hard. Oh, I was getting things done. I went to Wal-Mart early for groceries and building project materials. I removed cut branches and pulled vines from the front and back yard to the forest; worked on the flower garden project in the front yard, getting the edging blocks in place (I think; I may yet modify the layout a little, but it will be minor). Then I came inside and set up a new shelf unit in the storage room, to replace the old, old computer table which took up a lot of room but didn’t have all that much storage capacity. I’m not looking for more room to store more stuff we’ll just have to get rid of some day, but I want a neat storeroom, and the computer desk was frustrating those effort.

All that done, I fixed a salad for lunch, then went to The Dungeon to write. But, I was so exhausted from the work I’d done, I couldn’t write. I added a few words to the novel, but knew I wasn’t going to make major production as I’d hoped. So I searched YouTube for a medley of my favorite oldies, and spent a few afternoon hours just listening to some girl group songs and doo-wop. Then it was drive to town to the church to set up stairs for today’s worship service, then home to cook supper, then to study to teach Life Group lesson, while doing laundry, then to drop into bed and sleep the sleep of the dead for seven hours.

What, you ask, does all of this have to do with the title of the post, “Searching for a Metaphor”? Perhaps it’s a weak connection, but I have been searching for a metaphor for my writing for a while. As I read other people’s writing, such as Mark Twain’s short stories, or Thomas Carlyle’s non-fiction, I find them to be rich in metaphor. As I look back on my own writing, especially my poems, I know the ones that are best are those which are rich in metaphor. My poems of late, alas, have been more focused around imagery, not metaphor. Images are important too, but I think metaphor is a higher use of language.

I look out The Dungeon windows. The tall oaks are swaying, so it much be windy outside. Now they’ve stopped, so obviously it’s intermittent wind. There they go again. Dusk has come upon us, plus, it’s cloudy. We were supposed to have rain this afternoon, but it has never come.  I find no metaphor in the trees, however; nor in the lack of rain, the busyness of the weekend, the usefulness of a nap, or the significance of writing with good, solid production.

I wrote a poem on Friday. It started out as a haiku, based on the eastern sky during my morning commute. This is often a time that inspires a haiku. However, I wanted to make a little more out of the poem. The tanka poetic form takes a haiku and expands it by two lines. It’s supposed to have only more information on images already presented, not present new images. Friday evening I worked on it, being just a few words short of the complete tanka. In the evening I was able to add those lines. But the tanka, while probably not too bad, is not a metaphor.

Alas, I will keep searching. Perhaps by the time winter comes, I’ll have much less work to do around the house and property, and will be able to quiet my mind for a while, and train myself to think in metaphors, instead of, at best images, or at worse to-do and to-purchase lists. One can always hope.