I greet my few readers this rainy Monday morning. It looks as if this is going to be a normal week. Not much taking me away from what I want to be a normal routine.
I was up at 6:30 a.m. and in The Dungeon, and had my devotions before 7. I just finished checking a publishing website I keep up with, which reminded me this is my day to blog. Yes, having been so out of the habit I needed that reminder.
Tomorrow I have an afternoon dentist appointment for some major work. I also have an assignment for my former company that will take ten to twelve hours to complete this week. Beyond that, blueberry picking is before me. I’ve yet to search the full extent of the field in the woods across the street from our house. I would do that today, but it’s raining right now. The showers should pass before long, but I won’t go out into a soaking wet wood.
Beyond that, this is a week for writing and other author tasks. My critique group meets Wednesday evening. I’ve submitted my work and have only one piece submitted to me at present.
In The Dungeon, I anticipate the normal stock trading activities, and writing. I have five chapters left (actually 4 and a half) in Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition. I’d like to get one done per day and, by Friday, call the first draft complete. I have no writing tasks other than that this week. Well, perhaps a little clean up of my work areas.
Next Sunday I have another author event, at the Rogers Library, hosted by Ozark Book Authority. I think it will be just an author table for selling and signing books, though the organizer said something about having writer panels. I have a hard time believing the turnout will be enough on a Sunday afternoon in June to justify that, but we’ll see. Two author events in one month: that’s a first.
The grandkids found a wild blueberry patch in the woods across the street from our house. How many years has that been there and I didn’t know it?
After 2,700 miles in the last 24 days, consisting of two round trips from home to West Texas, first to pick up grandchildren to stay with us then to return them, things are back to normal today. That also includes our special bug infestation earlier in May, something I haven’t written about here.
I took the grandkids to a Wednesday evening service project at our church, packing meals for the food challenged.
Well, not quite back to normal. This afternoon we have our quarterly pest treatment. We always have some prep work to do for that and putting things back afterwards. Then there’s the question of groceries and whether we have enough or if we need to make a quick trip to the store. Then there’s getting the checkbook and budget up to date for all the debits on the trip, and filing the receipts. The latter isn’t critical, but I like to have finances up to date always.
Then, there’s my speaking engagement tomorrow, to the Village Lake Writers and Poets. This was supposed to have been in April, but I got bumped when another speaker was booked over me. I’m mostly prepared, but would like to run through it a couple of times today and tomorrow morning. My topic is “Genre Focus Disorder: Is Poetry the Cure?”
One other thing is an assignment from my former company to write a construction spec. I’ll need to look at that a little today, consider the deadlines, and decide how much time I’ll need to put into it. It isn’t huge, but it’s the first “major” assignment they’ve given me since I retired on January 1st this year.
Couldn’t let them be on screens all day. Chores were assigned, and done cheerfully—for the most part.
As for blog post, I have nothing planned. I’ll be thinking about them over the next few days. I hope to quickly get back into my rhythm of Monday and Friday blog posts. I normally try to plan ahead for those, knowing a week or two out what I’ll be posting about.
Trips aren’t over yet for the summer. We will soon make an overnight trip to Oklahoma City for a church event. Back to Texas a little later to help the kids out, and maybe one more time for the oldest grandchild to come stay with us for a week. It’s all good. I enjoy long distance driving, as does the wife. A road trip us usually a joy.
Now, will I be able to accomplish a little writing today? Documenting America waits. Stay tuned.
At the moment our grandchildren are with us, the three older ones, ages 11, 8, and 6. They’ll be here until next week. That’s after we spent ten days with them and their parents in Texas. So it’s been a busy time for me, for us, and I have little progress to report on writing.
The Kindle e-book was published on May 6, 2019. Print book was published May 27, 2019.
But I do have a little. Adam Of Jerusalem is now published in paperback. Sophie did a good job with the cover, and Amazon accepted it on the first submittal. At the last moment I found a stray comma in the introduction and had to correct and upload that. I’ll need to do that to the e-book as well. That will be after the kids leave.
I was able to complete tasks on my friend Bessie’s book and it is now published in both e-book and paperback. Once Again Upon An Island follows upon her first book of similar title. I did the cover: me, with my limited skills. It had been a year since I worked with G.I.M.P., and forgot much of it’s use. Fortunately, I had made some cheat sheets for some tasks. I think, once we are a quiet house again, I’ll do more G.I.M.P. practice.
I edited the first chapter of Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition while we were in Texas, and yesterday I typed it. Tonight I’m going to either edit more early chapters or write my portion of two or three later chapters. At least I’ll be able to show some progress in the midst of busyness.
The weekend will be full, between yardwork and grandkids and preparing to teach adult Life Group. Still, maybe I’ll get a little writing done. That’s the plan.
Can a graphics duffer create the print-book cover to go with this? Enquiring minds want to know.
As I look out from The Dungeon windows at 06:47 a.m., the sun is hidden by the tall trees at the rear of our backyard. But enough sun gets through I can tell it will be a sunny day, at least to start. Storms are predicted for tomorrow, and might start in a small way sometime today.
Yesterday was a busy day. In addition to stock trading in the morning, I did a few writer things. I’m trying to create the print book cover for my friend’s book. I made a good start on it despite the fact that it’s been a year since I created a cover. Using G.I.M.P., a no-cost alternative to Photoshop, I managed to get the overall sizes of each part of the cover in place. I found some good notes I wrote on that. Alas, I’ve forgotten enough that I didn’t get it done in the time I had. Hopefully I will this morning.
I then at a quick lunch, hopped in the van, and went to do some engineering work, final inspection of one site and monthly inspections on three other sites. I completed the final inspection, with a little arguing with the contractor thrown in. Not bad arguing, just them obviously not appreciating the things I found. I got a little testy at one point when they gave new information about a structure I’ve been trying to get them to modify. Why they didn’t give me that info months ago is a mystery.
I went to the first monthly inspection, walked the site, saw only one or two things out of the ordinary. This has been a problem site, with me constantly finding things they are doing in violation of City codes. They’ve started to get much better. They had installed almost all the handicapped ramps incorrectly. I decided to let the first few go, but I found a new one wrongly constructed. They will have to change that. They also had one where they attempted to construct it correctly, but came up short. Fortunately the correction is inexpensive.
The engineering work to that point took me from 12:30 p.m. to about 3:30 p.m., with two more sites to go. I was beat and dehydrated, as I hadn’t taken water with me. I decided not to do the other two inspections, leaving them to the employee of my former company who joined me yesterday for training purposes. I came home, rested an hour, then wrote the reports for the two inspections.
Then I took it easy in the evening. We had plenty of leftover chili to use for taco salad, so had that for supper, and a slice of turtle pie for dessert. I spent much of the evening on the computer working on the reports as well as trying to find some photos in the company files to prove the point I tried to make on site.
I’ll soon be creating a cover for “Documenting America: Making the Constitution Edition”. It will be a simple re-creation of this one.
I wrote an e-mail to the CEI project manager, telling her my inability to do the two other inspections was “most likely a combination of too much sun, frustration with [the other] engineer and developer and contractor, age, and perhaps a creeping retirement-starting-to-care-a-little-less each month.” I haven’t heard back from her yet. I have trained the other man to do these inspections and had no doubt he could do the remaining two and write acceptable reports.
I spent no time in the sunroom, didn’t work on my own books at all, didn’t make much progress on my to-do list. My wife and I did a little reading aloud, and we took a very pleasant call from our oldest grandson and had evening devotions with him. Our reading carried us after normal bed time.
So, up this morning after sleeping through the night, ready to “awaken the dawn” that I see unfolding out the window. It’s fully light out, though the trees still obscure direct rays. On to other things for a couple of hours, then back to the book cover work.
The Kindle e-book was published on May 6, 2019. Other versions will be coming soon.
Those who read this blog regularly will realize I missed my normal posting days of last Friday and yesterday. Extreme busyness of a few out-of-the-ordinary things consumed so much time I just couldn’t see my way clear to carve out the time to write posts. Those unusual activities have eased just a little, enough for me to write today. I’ll be back in the swing of things soon.
Here then is a short post, to say that my latest novel, Adam Of Jerusalem, is published—at least the e-book is. As always, the print book will lag a little. I put this up about a week ago, just before the busyness set in. I was planning on making this announcement last Friday.
So, now my church history novels series has books 1, 2, and 4 published. I know what book 3 will be, and I have a program for books 5 through 9, or maybe it’s 5 through 11. I need to gather together all my writing idea sheets and bring them into some sort of useable arrangement.
I’ll now finish the next volume of Documenting America, my current project, then will see what to work on next.
Here’s what I got up to this morning—a nice, steady rain. Yet, it didn’t put me back to sleep.
I’m starting this post at 7:05 a.m. I’ve been up since 5:20. I got up a little before 5:00 for a call of nature and never got back to sleep. My right shin was hurting and kept me awake. I finally got up, went to my reading chair and tried to sleep. It was raining hard. The noise of the rain from the open window behind my head, and on the skylights and the roof, was soothing, but didn’t do the trick for putting me back to sleep.
So, a few minutes before six I got up, put on the coffee, then came back to my chair and opened the book I’m reading on my cell phone. It’s Thomas Carlyle’s Miscellaneous Essays, specifically his 1829 essay on Voltaire. I don’t know much about Voltaire so was looking forward to this particular essay. Alas, 68 pages into a 73 page essay and I don’t know much more than I did before reading it. I’m either reading distracted or Carlyle’s style is working against comprehension. I won’t re-read it immediately to see which it is.
Now I’m in The Dungeon, typing this on the fly. It’s going to be a busy day. I have to call my dentist when the office opens. For some reason I think I have an appointment today that I failed to put on my calendar. Later, at 12:45 p.m., Lynda has a medical appointment in town that I’ll accompany her on. That will consume about three hours including the driving there and back.
Last night, via e-mail, I received the final information needed to publish Adam Of Jerusalem. At some point today I’ll plug that into the publication files, then complete the final formatting. I hope today I’ll get the Kindle e-book edition published, tomorrow the Smashword edition, and maybe Wednesday complete the print book and order a proof copy. This may sound like a lot but it’s all doable, depending on the time to make the print book cover from the e-book.
Of course, at 8:00 a.m. I’ll get on the elliptical for 5 minutes, then go into my Monday morning stock trading routine. Meanwhile, last night I completed my research in the source document for one chapter of Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition, a chapter I hadn’t yet done any reading for. I identified the excerpt I want to use and will today add it to my book file. That will give me three chapters edited, waiting for my original words to be added.
Somehow, when adding the photo to the cover, I caused the text to be offset from center. I’ll correct that later today.
Then, I also need to spend some time on books for two other authors that I’m helping. One is the retired missionary from our church. I’ve written about this before. I’ve created a rudimentary cover for it, which, while not professional, will likely suffice for this book. I have the same publishing tasks ahead for that book, that I can start any time.
A second book, for a different author, is not as far along. She came to my attention through the critique group I’m in, as she’s the church friend of a young man who has attended a couple of times. Her book is encouragement for women who have a church background but are working to recover a strong spiritual relationship with God that they either lost or perhaps never had. I may work on that some today, though more likely tomorrow.
So there you have the outline of my day. How much of this I will actually accomplish is a mystery. But, I’ll try. With God’s help and strengthening I’ll complete much of it.
The United States Constitution. What a great system of government.
As I mentioned in a previous post, as I’m going through the source documents for Documenting America: Making the Constitution Edition, much good material gets edited out. It winds up on the cutting room floor, so to speak, using the movie industry term. Some of this is good material. I’d love to use it in my book, but, alas, I need to keep the book a reasonable size.
The thought came to me to use it for blog post material. So, instead of just dumping it, I’ve been saving it for use when it’s time to write a blog post and I have nothing else in mind. It could also be newsletter material, I suppose, if I ever take the plunge to writing a newsletter.
But, again alas, something I put into a file last week, from one of the Federalist Papers, is now nowhere to be found. What did I do with it? Did I save it to my Documenting America Vol 3 folder? It’s not there. Did I save it to my Blog folder? It’s not there either. Maybe, without paying attention, I saved it to the root folder of my Documents. Nope, not there either. Did I fail to save it and let it go drifting off into the ether?
Whatever, the excellent item I was going to use for today is not on my computer. I could spend an hour looking for it, but think, instead, I’ll find something else. I saved other stuff.
Here’s one from an anonymous writing from someone from Pennsylvania who didn’t like the proposed constitution.
The wealthy and ambitious, who in every community think they have a right to lord it over their fellow creatures, have availed themselves, very successfully, of this favorable disposition; for the people thus unsettled in their sentiments, have been prepared to accede to any extreme of government; all the distresses and difficulties they experience, proceeding from various causes, have been ascribed to the impotency of the present confederation, and thence they have been led to expect full relief from the adoption of the proposed system of government, and in the other event, immediately ruin and annihilation as a nation. These characters flatter themselves that they have lulled all distrust and jealousy of their new plan, by gaining the concurrence of the two men in whom America has the highest confidence, and now triumphantly exult in the completion of their long meditated schemes of power and aggrandisement.
Whoever wrote this, a small part of a much longer article, was, I think, spot on concerning what happens when power is obtained and then applied to government. Wealthy and ambitious people do tend to lord it over their fellow citizens. They are successful, often from their own work, and they see this as a reason why they should 1) be held in high esteem by others, and 2) have positions of political power.
The writer of the original document seems to have been wrong, however, about the motives of those who wrote the Constitution and about how the government would function under it. Things turned out much better than his dire predictions. He knew things weren’t going well under the Articles of Confederation, and saw this new document as setting up a government of the rich and powerful. I believe most of our 232 year experience with it shows us that this isn’t so.
My Documenting America series focuses on our historical documents, and tries to inspire people to seek the documents out and read them.
Or is it? As I look on Congress today, I see lots of multi-millionaires. I see people who make laws that apply to others but not themselves. I see the rich and powerful say the government should take over your health care while they keep a very nice plan for themselves. Same with pensions and Social Security.
I could go on and on. Can you tell I’m not a big fan of Congress? I think most of the ills in the nation that are often attributed to the president—every president, no matter who it is—are often the fault of Congress, either due to their action or inaction.
So why didn’t this particular passage make it into my book? Simply a matter of space. This document, like all of them I’m using in the book, is chock full of good phrases and arguments. Some turned out to be wrong arguments, some right. It’s all worth reading. If someone reads Documenting America and then digs into the source documents, they’ll see this. All the better. If they don’t, this will remain obscure and unread.
Perhaps my book and this blog will help others to find and read it.
Most of my posts lately have been related to my immediate works-in-progress or my other reading, with an occasional dabble in an inspirational post. I have a thought for the latter, based on study for yesterday’s Life Group lesson. I’m not quite ready for that yet.
So, I’ll stick with what I intended to post about today, which is my current reading in the writings of Thomas Carlyle. It’s been a while since I’ve written about him. “Carlyle” is a category for my blog posts, so you could easily check and see what I’ve written about him before.
I have published one book about him, a gathering and reprinting of his articles written 1820-1823 for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia. So far as I know, my book is the only time all his articles for that publication have been gathered in one publication.
I’ve been slowly, over several years, working on two other books about Carlyle. One is about his book Chartism. The other is a Comprehensive Chronological Composition Bibliography. Both of these works have stalled, mostly because they are simply lower on my writing priority list than others. Perhaps that will change one day, but it’s the case for now.
Carlyle changed from being a compassionate man to a promoter of slavery. How that change came about is the subject of my Carlyle studies.
But I’m back to reading him. From 1827 to 1833 Carlyle’s main writing was a series of articles for the Edinburgh Review and other literary magazines. Emerson gathered these and published them in three volumes around 1839. It was so popular in the USA that a British edition soon followed. Today they are considered one of Carlyle’s major works.
I’ve read a couple of the articles before, and started a couple more, but never got very far with it what have come to be called Carlyle’s Miscellanies. I haven’t wanted to put money into buying them in print (or e-book), and had never found an e-copy of good quality of a public domain version. About two weeks ago I went looking for them again, and, lo and behold, I found an e-book re-issue of the essays, of excellent quality, all in one volume, I think.
I’m reading them on my smart phone. That’s not a totally new experience, since I recently read Locke’s Two Treatises of Government on my smart phone. Still, reading books on phones will be somewhat new for a while. I’m enjoying it there, however. I turn the phone sideways and slightly enlarge each page to fill the window. So far I’ve read two of the essays, the first two in chronological order: “Jean Paul Friedrich Richter” and “State of German Literature”, both from the Edinburgh Review in 1827. I finished the second one last night.
Why am I doing this? Why distract myself from my writing or research for my writing. I can only plead a reduction in sanity, or perhaps an increase in delusion. I sometimes think myself a scholar and want to read something that either is or seems to be scholarly. Carlyle seems to fit. And, in case I ever do get around to finishing that Chartism book, these readings might actually play a part in it.
The Richter article was easy enough to understand, and I found it informative and even enjoyable. The German Literature article was tedious, even boring. I think this is where I bogged down before in my reading of his essays. The book has some good parts to it. I think I would grasp more with another reading. Carlyle, like so many writers of his time, wished to write poetry along with prose. He left a number of poems to us, none of which are highly thought of. I may pull out some of his thoughts on German poetry, really about poetry in general, and see if I couldn’t make essays out of them.
Queued up on my phone is his third essay in the book, “Life and Writings of Werner”. I don’t believe I’ve rad this one before. I don’t know Werner, so am not looking forward to reading it, except to know it will perhaps sate my need to be reading something intellectual. If I can get through this third essay, there’s hope that I will get through the entire book.
Meanwhile, should you buy and read my previous book on Carlyle? I’m really just an editor in that book. I wouldn’t recommend it, not unless you want to make study of Carlyle a significant intellectual enterprise. If you do, be forewarned that, after publication, I found an embarrassing error in the chapter on Pascal. I corrected it in the e-book, but it remains in the print book, awaiting my taking the half-hour needed to make the correction and republish. Seeing as I have to migrate all my print books from CreateSpace to Amazon KDP, I’m planning to get that correction done during the migration.
Richard Henry Lee, while a true patriot, wasn’t happy with the proposed Constitution. [Photo by Billy Hathorn, used under creative commons license]As I work on Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition, my main problem is having too many sources or sources of too great a length with too many inspiring words. If I put in everything I want to, the book would be 200,000 words. In comparison, the first volume in the series was a mere 45, 000 words and the third only 70,000.
Clearly, I have much editing to do. A good example of this are some letters written by Richard Henry Lee right after the Convention. Published in a newspaper with a pseudonym, they were anti the proposed Constitution.
Since in the book I want to present both sides of the argument, Lee’s letters interested me. I pulled two of the five letters into my manuscript, and discovered they were over 9,000 words. Heavens! How in the world would I ever get them down to a reasonable length, which is between 1,000 and 2,000 words without throwing away valuable words?
I decided I had two different things I could do with the excess words. One is to take some excerpts from the letters and build blog posts around them. In furtherance of that, Here is a quote from Letter 3.
This, by a part of Art. 1, Sect. 4, the general legislature may do, it may evidently so regulate elections as to secure the choice of any particular description of men. It may make the whole state one district—make the capital, or any places in the state, the place or places of election—it may declare that the five men (or whatever the number)…the state may chuse who shall have the most votes shall be considered as chosen. In this case it is easy to perceive how the people who live scattered in the inland towns will bestow their votes on different men, and how a few men in a city, in any order or profession, may unite and place any five men they please highest among those that may be voted for and all this may be done constitutionally, and by those silent operations, which are not immediately perceived by the people in general. I know it is urged, that the general legislature will be disposed to regulate elections on fair and just principles: This may be true. Good men will generally govern well with almost any constitution: but why in laying the foundation of the social system, need we unnecessarily leave a door open to improper regulations? This is a very general and unguarded clause, and many evils may flow from that part which authorises the congress to regulate elections.
In the book I would make commentary on this excerpt. I would focus on how Lee’s fears were not met—except where gerrymandering occurs, but this is done by the States, not the Federal government. I would make reference to his statement that “Good men will generally govern well with almost any constitution” and quote it in my commentary, as I did here. While Lee’s letter is negative relative to the Constitution, I would present his side but find a way to make it positive.
And, perhaps, a fourth to this one? Yes: Making The Constitution Edition, hopefully in 2019. Update: It will come in 2019!
So why didn’t I? Why did so much of Lee’s words end up on the cutting room floor (my final excerpt being only 1450 of Lee’s 9200 words)? Chalk it up to editor’s license, and the fact that I have a surfeit of material, and that I judged other of Lee’s words to be better for my chapter.
It has occurred to me that I have a second way to use some of these deleted words or other sources that I have cast aside in my editorial duties. For years I’ve thought about starting a writer’s newsletter, to be shared via e-mail; something to “market my wares”, so to speak. I’ve hesitated doing this because of the work involved. For a while I thought I would wait until retirement to start it. I’m there now, and still hesitate due to the work.
I wanted to title the newsletter Citizen and Patriot, after the words of James Otis in his argument against the Writs of Assistance in 1761: “These manly sentiments in private life make the good citizen, in public life, the patriot and the hero.” That didn’t seem appropriate for a writer’s newsletter, however.
Then I thought, perhaps it could be a column in my newsletter. Since I hope to be forever working on books in my Documenting America series, this could be the column where I promote them.
Still another thought came to me. Perhaps I could make this a stand-alone newsletter, one that, through using the words from America’s historical documents, to urge good citizenship and patriotism. I could even make it a paid newsletter and maybe make a little money from my research.
Well, of necessity I’m going slowly with that. I would need a design, a simple masthead, and a few sample newsletters prepared to see what it looked like and how much time each would take. I’d need to establish a frequency, and utilize some time of e-mail marketing service to make it happen. All much work, it seems to me.
So, for now I’ll accumulate sources. I’ll relegate many unused sources, and large parts of used ones, to my editor’s waste pile—but I won’t discard them, not just yet. Perhaps I’ll have more blog posts about them, and maybe a newsletter somewhere in my future.
Sunrises are always inspiring. Wikimedia Commons user TeemuN. Link to license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
One of the bad things about being a writer—at least for me—is that every good thought you have, every good thing you read, becomes an idea for writing. Why oh why can’t I be like other people and just enjoy what I read without thinking I have to derive something from it?
My morning devotional reading is in Psalms. I was quite regular in my devotions when I was a working man, taking a moment with coffee at my desk at work to read something in scripture and pray before starting my day. I admit, however, to my shame, that I lost this discipline once I retired. I started that back up last week, and have faithfully read the Psalms each morning since, before I wake up my computer.
But I digress. On Tuesday, I read Psalm 57. You know how they say (whoever they are) that every time you read something in the Bible, no matter how many times you’ve read it before it becomes new for you again? Well, it turned out to be true for me that day. The key verse was 57:8, which reads
Awake, my soul! Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn.
That last phrase hit me. “I will awaken the dawn.” What does that mean? I pondered it. It speaks to me of anticipating the day, of rising before dawn and saying that you can’t wait for the day to begin and see everything God has in store for you on this day.
The Psalms are a comfort to many readers. Public domain
That doesn’t always happen, does it? Some days your normal waking time comes and it’s all you can do to swing your legs out of bed and find the floor. Standing up is a struggle, never mind going about your getting-up activities.
The psalmist didn’t seem to have that problem. He was so anxious to get going with the day that he called for his soul to wake up, for his harp and lyre to wake up, and together they would summon the dawn to get a move on.
That’s the kind of start to the morning I want to have.
So, I have this new encouragement to begin the day in a positive way. That was Tuesday. On Wednesday I read Psalms 58. I saw that the words under the title, which would actually be the first words in the text since these psalms weren’t numbered when they were written, were “For the director of music. To the tune of ‘Do Not Destroy’. Of David. A miktam.”
I remembered that quite a few psalms give the tune it is to be sung to. I checked the last several I’d read. For Psalm 57 it was also to the tune of “Do Not Destroy”. For Psalm 56 it was to “A Dove on Distant Oaks”. Psalm 60 is to “The Lily of the Covenant”. Other psalms in this part of the book have other song names attached to them.
Immediately, a possible book came to mind. I’m not going to give the details of it at this point. In fact, I’m still working it out, though, like many of my book ideas, what it will be from beginning to end has pretty much flashed before my eyes.
Is it a do-able book? Would anyone ever want to read it, or, like the rest of my books, will it sell around 20 copies and be forgotten? Will I ever get it written? Perhaps someday you’ll find a book of that title by me, for sale at Amazon and other fine retailers. Or perhaps not.
Lots of questions. Time will reveal a few answers, I hope.
