Turning an infiltration pond, which didn’t infiltrate, into a filtering pond.
My last post was on September 11. At that time, I was planning for trips to Minnesota to oversee a construction project. That the trips would happen was sure, but the timing was unknown. The first one could happen in a day; it could wait a week or more. I couldn’t order tickets, couldn’t plan my schedule.
During this waiting period, I let blogging go. I even let most of my writing go. Otherwise, I kept to my normal schedule and tasks.
Finally the schedule became clear. I made three trips to Minneapolis and watched the re-construction of two stormwater ponds. The main work was on Saturdays (since it was at an active childcare facility) with prep work done on Thursday and Friday. Each time I flew up for the prep work and flew back on Sunday. I decided I’m too old to rush to get to the airport, return a rental car, and rush to a plane.
Sometimes it got messy.
It’s almost over. I have one trip next week, on election day, for a final inspection. That should be it, unless they pay me to go up next summer to check on how the vegetation is doing.
That’s over. But getting back to the disciplines I set aside for a while has been hard. My weight is up, my blood sugar is up, and my writing time is down. I’m also getting closer to that magic last day of work, December 31st this year, knowing I’ll have oodles of writing time on the flip side. That’s made my motivation lag.
It looked good once it was done.
The one good thing I did was write in hotel rooms while I was out of town. I was able to finish my novel-in-progress, Adam Of Jerusalem. That was a good thing. I’m now reading it aloud and editing as I go. It’s clunky, and will need significant editing. I don’t believe I’ll publish it this year.
So, hopefully you’ll see me back to my regular Monday and Friday posting. Hopefully my posts will be meaningful. And hopefully I’ll hang on to writing in the 1 month and 29 days of working life I have left.
I’m writing this Thursday evening, and will schedule it to post on Friday, my normal blogging day.
Although, if you’ve missed four consecutive, normal blogging days, can you say you have a regular blogging day? I hope so, and I hope to be back on a more-or-less normal schedule going forward.
You ask “What has kept you too busy to blog?” A number of things, which have taken both body and brain power. Around the time of my last blog I was assigned to help with a quick turnaround project at work. It was right up my alley: writing the scope of a water and wastewater masterplan for a downtown district, and us getting paid to do it. This was made more difficult, however, when a key player in the larger project of which this forms a part turned in his resignation. He’s still here, but a greater burden fell on his main assistant, and other work she was doing for which I was assisting fell back to me. So that tied me up.
Then, I’m managing our project manager training program, which is being taught mostly by others. But I’ve had to do a lot of paperwork with it, juggling class schedules and teachers. I wouldn’t quite say it’s a nightmare, but definitely a bad dream.
Time outside the office has been taken up by yardwork and moving my mother-in-law into her permanent assisted living quarters (from a temporary, respite one). That included helping my wife through quite an adventure of buying a used table. Perhaps someday that will be a story to tell. I might even adapt it for the next volume of The Gutter Chronicles.
Speaking of books, I continue to make progress on my work-in-progress, Adam Of Jerusalem. Two weekends ago, after helping my wife get on the road to visit the daughter, son-in-law, and grandkids, I managed to add just over 3,100 words on one long day. Then, last weekend, Labor Day weekend, I set a goal of adding 10,000 over Friday to Monday. I did that. Sticking to my chair, minimizing breaks, and working through previously uncertain plot lines, I quit at 3:00 p.m. Monday having added 10,100 in four days. That puts me at 48,400 words. The book is running a little short, so I have only 22,000 to go.
All these things have left me quite brain dead in the evenings. Two evenings recently I had evening meetings, and didn’t get home in time to do much.
So, what does the near future look like? This weekend I hope to add 6,000 words. That will take me about through the sagging middle and at the brink of the ending action. Rain is forecast for Friday-Saturday, so I think I’ll have fewer distractions.
Alas, I have trips scheduled. A warranty project requires me to be in Minneapolis two consecutive Thursday-Saturdays. That may be next week and the week after, or it may delay a week. At least one time I’ll fly up on Wednesday and back on Sunday. Plus, I’m supposed to fly to West Texas next weekend for a family thing and drive back with my wife on Monday or Tuesday. That part is a little iffy right now, due to the Minnesota thing.
That means lots of distractions, lots of body and brain energy that might keep me away from my self-appointed blog duties. I have a book review to do, two writer interviews I’m waiting on, and a handful of other things to write about. No shortage of topics; just shortage of energy and gumption.
We’ll see, though. Tonight, I feel much better in both body and mind. Maybe I can power through this and get some things done on the road. That would be really nice. I’d love to get AOJ published before the end of the year. That window is slowly closing, but I’ll keep hoping for now. And hope for the future is what keeps us busy today.
Yes, I’m late for my Monday post. I like to post around 7:30 a.m., yet here it is after 8:30 p.m. Hey, at least it’s still my posting day. Except, of course, I didn’t post anything for Friday. So maybe someone could say this is very late for Friday’s post.
What keeps me from making my posts regular and on time? Up until a few months back I would write my Monday post on Sunday afternoon, and schedule it to post on Monday. I didn’t do that yesterday, as I wanted to get back to work on my novel. Then, Monday morning before work, I continued to work on a certain writing project, the research for it, which I do a little on every morning before I start my day. That keeps me from writing before I start work, and getting to a post during the day isn’t always possible. I’m laying that research project aside after this week, so maybe I’ll have mornings for blogging.
I suppose I have some lethargy and brain tiredness. Now only 4 months and 17 days from retirement, I find myself busier at work than I’ve been in a dozen years. Our engineering group is short handed and they need me to step away from training and do some work on projects. Plus the intensity of the work leaves me mostly brain dead at the end of the day. There’s no way I can come home on Thursday and write a post and schedule it for the next day. My brain power isn’t there.
I’m not sure what it would take to get back to a regular blogging schedule, which I was able to do fairly well in 2017. 2018 isn’t working for me, however. 2019 will be my first year of retirement. Hopefully I’ll find the time and brain power coming together at the same time, and will blog twice a week. Plus work simultaneously on two works-in-progress; plus pick up old abandoned projects and see what to do with them; plus start a newsletter and try to build a mailing list.
Last Friday I did some cleaning in my office. It is somewhat of a mess, and I figure I’d better get it organized before my retirement in a mere 4 months and 25 days. Every week I’ve been taking something home, reducing the amount I’ll have to bring home the last week or day. It’s working. I see much less I’ll have to take care of in the months and weeks ahead.
So on Friday last, I was going through little piles of paper on my desk, mostly the back of sheets from my Dilbert desk calendar, which I use as note paper. One of those had some notes I’d made on some Bible passages, three to be precise. I looked at them, trying to remember why I’d made those so many months ago, and what I was trying to tell my future self, meaning me right now.
I soon understood. These were some biblical insights I had that I thought could be turned into a Bible study. Yes, I saw it clearly. Three passages, three insights, three lessons. The start of a Bible study for our Life Group at church; the start of a Bible study book.
Now, I’ve written about this before, how these ideas come to me of things to write about. Often they are book titles that I can’t leave, which, in my mind, I flesh out into plot (for a novel) or outline (for non-fiction). Since I’m so busy while still working, and since I can’t possibly fit anything into my writing schedule for the next decade or two, I usually document the idea by writing it, hopefully somewhere where I’ll find it again, and in a form I can understand, then try to put it out of my mind. If I didn’t do that I think I’d go crazy.
I found this one, and after a bit of thought understood what I had written and why. I pondered it a while. I’m always looking for something for Life Group curriculum, as I’m more or less in charge of that for the class. This looked like a good one. Three weeks isn’t really enough for a good lesson series, so I thought more about it, and easily came up with a half dozen more lessons on the theme. I felt like I then had something, stuck the paper, and a larger sheet newly generated, into my carry-home folder. That night I looked at it some more. I thought of how, if we did that series beginning in October or early November, I could tie some Christmas lessons into the them. I added those, making twelve lessons. Two more came to mind, making fourteen.
The experts these days say your lesson series should be a matter of about six weeks, or a little more. Fourteen lessons would work for Baby Boomers, but not for later generations. But, our class is a bunch of Baby Boomers. so the longer series should be okay.
Now, the questions to be asked are:
When do we start this series?
If Sept 9, which is the earliest day needed, can I get enough done to make that happen?
If it runs through Dec 16 as we would need it to, what do I do with it then? Should I immediately turn it into a printed Bible study? Or should I “shelve” it for the moment, to returned to when I have a more opportune time?
Enquiring people, including the author of this post, want to know. If I do this, what do I do with my publishing schedule? I’m so far behind on my novel-in-progress, and I’ve laid aside my research into the next Documenting America book. Do I totally trash the schedule and move the Bible study into first place on the writing list?
I have a few days to decide. For sure it’s something I’ll develop (at least a short-ish version if not the long one) and teach, along with my co-teacher. And, some day, I’ll expand into a published Bible study. But for now, what to do, what to do?
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything for An Arrow Through The Air about Thomas Carlyle and my studies about his life and writing career. I’ve published one book about him, a compilation of the articles he wrote in the early 1820s for The Edinburgh Encyclopedia. I’ve sold a whopping nine copies of it.
How to explain my fascination with Carlyle? He is a most complex character. Raised in southeast Scotland by strict religious parents who we’d consider to be peasants, he studied for the ministry, then briefly for the law, before settling on literature as a way to earn his bread. The encyclopedia articles were his writing apprenticeship of sorts. From there he did mostly translations for a while, with commentary sprinkled amidst the words of others. Thence it was magazine articles for most of the next six years, though with some book writing.
Finally, he broke out into books, and obtained success. He was significantly helped by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who published his books in the USA and sent handsome royalty checks back across the pond. England noticed his success in America, and began to demand his books. By 1840 he had achieved a measure of financial success.
The biggest disappointment for those who like Carlyle has to be his embrace of race-based slavery. He was quite upset that Great Britain was in the period of emancipation of all slaves in the empire. It was passed by Parliament in 1833 and would become final in 1848. By 1849 Carlyle was writing and publishing pamphlets in support of slavery.
How awful that is. How could he do that? His belief that work was the highest and best thing mankind could do, and that since slavery was guaranteed work it was good, caused him to be blinded by such concepts as freedom and justice. My question is: How did this happen? And when? My Carlyle studies are for the purpose of answering this question. What caused him to land on the dark side of this issue in history?
I have two more Carlyle books in the works:
Thomas Carlyle: A Chronological Composition Bibliography
Carlyle’s Chartism Through the Ages
Both of these are on the shelf for now. The second one is perhaps 70 percent complete, though I don’t know that for sure. My two essays to close the book are yet to be written. And I have to check with several Carlyle authors to gain permission to reprint essays of theirs. The first one is less far along, maybe 50 percent. Yet, this one I continue to plod along on, that plodding purposefully quite slow.
I have the format of the Bibliography established, and am reasonably satisfied that I have all, or darn near all, of his known compositions for the years up to 1842/3 entered and documented as to composition dates. I have a few things to make more sure of, such as how to handle the notebooks he used in 1822 to about 1833, but I’m fairly happy with how that part is shaping up. So I still need to add his later works, from 1843 through his death in 1881.
The good news is this is the period of his life when his writings were mostly all published, and the dates of composition are fairly well known. I got past the hard part, the years before 1834. But, that doesn’t mean everything falls into place without research. Publication dates are known and documented; composition dates still need to be established for some items. To do this, I’m working my way through Carlyle’s letters, wherein he often mentions what his work(s)-in-progress is/are.
Right now I’m reading one letter a day, from the Carlyle Letters Online, a database of Duke University. Or, if in a given day he includes a short note, I might read a couple or three letters. I do this in my quiet time when I arrive early at my office, after my devotions, and before I work up the day’s to-do list. So I read maybe 10 to 15 letters a week, taking 5 to 10 minutes of my time every workday. I’m currently in July 1843. Carlyle had just finished a magazine article and went on a holiday (without Jane, his wife, who it appears didn’t want to go) to Wales and Scotland.
The days I’m reading now, he is between compositions. I could skip them, but have elected not to. I feel they give insight into the man, and could be useful for all of my Carlyle writings, either those in progress or something in the future that I don’t yet foresee.
This is, for the most part, satisfying the need I have to be working on something that would be considered intellectual rather than simple entertainment, or even popular education. I don’t say that to be snobbish. I just want to work on things that really expand my mind. I have more to say about that, but this post is already long. I’ll save that for a future post, perhaps my next one.
Not the Sunday just passed, nor the two before that, but I think if was the one before that. July 8th, I guess. I was in the sanctuary of the church, now called the Worship Center. I sat alone as my wife was ill and couldn’t come to church that day. After teaching the first lesson in a new series in Life Group, which went fairly well, I thought. It was then on to the sanctuary.
The music was good, mostly the typical modern songs that struggle to speak to me. But it was good. The time came for Pastor Mark’s sermon. He’s in a sermon series titled “Please Disturb”, the idea being that we should invite God in to disturb the things we really don’t want disturbed, such as our prayer life, our future, our story (yesterday’s topic). It’s been a good series.
That particular Sunday, as the pastor was speaking, my mind was also thinking about my writing, and the many things I want to write for the Christian market. I searched in my Bible and found a sheet of paper to write on. I pulled out my pen and, as the pastor continued to speak, I began listing things I’ve written for this market and things I want to write. I started with non-fiction books, all of which are somewhere in the future. I listed five, though I believe the last time I went through this exercise I had six. Not sure which one I’ve forgotten.
I then went on to Bible studies and small group studies. I had seven listed that I’ve already taught. I have notes on them, but they are not even close to being in publishable form. Then there’s two I’ve actually started some research and organization on; then added four more that I know I want to develop, teach, and write. That’s twelve all together; some which are developed and taught, some not.
I then listed the Church history novels I’ve written, am writing, and plan to write. That’s nine works in a series. Add all of those up and they come to 26 works. Of these: two are published; one is a work-in-progress; one has a couple of chapters written before being set aside for a time; six have been fully developed but not written; two have some research started; and fourteen are plans or dreams.
All this I wrote while Pastor Mark was preaching about inviting God to disturb us. I actually felt that I was able to hear what Mark was saying, and understand it. My notes took no more than ten minutes to write. They were then out of my head. The rest of the sermon wasn’t multi-tasking; it was solely devoted to the sermon.
Maybe. Also on this piece of paper, written below the list of works I want to write, is a note that says “conflict for AoJ”. This is my work-in-progress, Adam of Jerusalem. I’m about to enter the middle of the novel. I know what I want with the ending; I knew what the beginning needed to be; but the middle was a mystery to me. I had one event planned, but I needed a whole lot more. What would I fill the middle with?
On this sheet of paper are five conflicts, five events that can all be written to lead to where I intend to go with the ending. I don’t know when I wrote these. Was it during the same sermon, or was it another time? I’m not sure.
But, as I look at those notes, it seems to be a good plan. Each of the five events can link together, and can flesh out this middle portion of the book.
Yesterday, in church, during the sermon, I found this sheet of paper. I took a minute to read it, then tucked it back into my Bible. I didn’t have to do anything more on it. I listened to the sermon without feeling the need to multi-task. I think I’m going to leave this in my Bible. It will be there whenever I need it during church, allowing me to concentrate on the sermon without feeling the need to multi-task.
Once again I’m a day late with my Monday post. Or, since I didn’t make a post last Friday, perhaps I’m four days late with Friday’s post.
No matter. I’m here now, with several things I could write about. News has come that all the boys and their coach have been rescued from that flooded cave in Thailand, a monumental achievement. President Trump has picked a new nominee for the Supreme Court, which will be worth discussing once I know more about him. The animosity of the political left and right for each other is growing, though, seemingly, more so on the Left than the Right. Any of these would be worth a post.
I thought, however, to just say briefly that I haven’t abandoned my writing, though it seems difficult to both carve out time and apply my mind to it. Last night was a good example. I went to The Dungeon around 7:30 p.m., intending to either write a post here or add a few hundred words to my novel. I did neither. I have a little clean-up of my work area to do, which I did. That took four minutes at most.
I then sat at my computer and…couldn’t write. My brain felt fuzzy. I believe my blood sugar was high, the result of a filling supper on the heals of snacking at work in the afternoon. I couldn’t write, neither the post nor the novel.
Such is life. Finding writing time is difficult, as I’ve written about before. Finding writing time when my mind is both focused and creative is even more difficult. This spring and summer I’ve had four major, personal tasks/items I had to take care of, the kind of things that weigh the mind down (at least mine). The third of those was completed Saturday with the sale of my pickup. The fourth and last is as good as finished (aftermath of the February auto accident); only a little paperwork to do.
And, our summer travel plans are set, with a trip to Chicago to see our son scheduled, and a trip to West Texas to see our daughter and family scheduled. At work, plans for my retirement are well underway, and people are starting to step up to take things off my plate onto theirs. So, my mind should be less burdened than at any time for the last six months, maybe longer.
So why couldn’t I write last night? Maybe it wasn’t the burdens; maybe it really was high blood sugar causing a fuzziness in my head. Either way, I did a little on-line reading, realized the fog wasn’t going to clear, and went back upstairs to watch tv and then read in two different books. Got to bed around 11:15 p.m., and slept well.
Today, here I am, ready to get my office work done, and feeling much better. With the burdens slowly lifting (I have a whole host or secondary tasks that are contributing to the burdened mind), I think I’ll be writing again soon.
I find it hard to believe we are halfway through the year 2018, and that the second quarter has ended. My title remaining till retirement now stands at 5 months and 29 days. The closer it gets the more I’m looking forward to it.
But with the end of the second quarter it’s time to report book sales. They were definitely better than in the first quarter. Here’s the table.
Not the greatest quarter, but an improvement over the last.
After a first quarter of only 6 sales, the second quarter has 18. Ten of these were of my latest book, The Gutter Chronicles, Volume 2, which I published this quarter. Four more sales were of The Gutter Chronicles, Volume 1. So the second in the series dragged the first along, at least a little.
I created and made the cover for this one; so, if it doesn’t work, I’ll gladly take the blame.
During this quarter, I did almost no promotion. A couple of Facebook posts was it, along with an in-house e-mail to the company that told all that the second volume was available for pre-order. I did a little looking at Amazon ads, but wasn’t able to spend the time studying to know if it was right for me.
So, into a new quarter, still plugging along, though slower these days. Multi-tasking isn’t working very well for me. In a future post, maybe on Friday, I’ll talk about my current writing.
The following two pics are smaller versions of the above two, for linking at Absolute Write.
You usually see that statement turned the other way: Can’t see the forest for the trees. I take that to mean the tasks that must be done are keeping you from seeing the larger, strategic picture.
I put it the other way: Can’t see the trees for the forest. My meaning is the strategic picture is so solid, so dominating, that it’s hard to see the individual tasks necessary to be completed so as to reach that strategic goal.
I don’t really want to get into the specifics, the tasks that I have to do. Most of them have nothing to do with writing or my specific work-in-progress, although that writing project, as well as research beginning for the next project, are in the mix. I have all these tasks to do. Together they make a forest. I can’t tell which one needs to be chopped down first. I can’t see the trees for the forest.
Retirement from my day job, the career of civil engineering I’ve spent over 44 years in, is just 6 months and 2 days away. I am so looking forward to that. No, it won’t be difficult to lay my “tools” down after so long. I have other tools I’ve already picked up, and will be quite happy spending time writing that I currently spend dealing with careless contractors, trying to transfer knowledge to the youngin’s, and tying up an hour or more of time just getting from point a to point b every morning and evening.
But, until then, the forest will continue to overwhelm me. I have resigned myself to that. The two additional books I had hoped to publish this year may not even be one book. I hate that, but have to live with it. I just hope I don’t become like Charles Lamb, who couldn’t wait to retire from his clerk’s job so he could write full time, but then, after retirement, wrote very little. Was it the clerk’s job that kept him going? Is it my civil engineering job that keeps me going, focused on the competing quest?
News has come out in recent weeks about a literary agency where a bookkeeper stole millions of dollars of author’s money, both advances and royalties. The story was covered recently in a couple of posts on The Passive Voice, one of the two writing blogs I follow regularly. Passive Guy, an attorney who owns this blog about information relevant to self-publishing, generally takes posts from other publishing-related sites, quotes a good chunk of a post, and links to it.
He also linked to a post by defrauded author Chuck Palahniuk (who I’ve never read, but is quite a notable author). Palahniuk wondered why he wasn’t getting much revenue. Turns out this prestigious literary agency, Donadio & Olson, had one man who handled all money transactions. This clerk figured writers wouldn’t miss a few thousand dollars, so he took some or all of the agency’s clients 85% for himself, presumably passing on the 15% the agent and agency got. It seems D&O had zero financial controls in place.
This clerk’s theft is estimated to be $3.4 million of however many years he’s been doing it. He’s been charged. So far, I haven’t heard that anyone else at the agency has been charged.
Why not? The big bosses there (all two of them) didn’t steal, but they obviously didn’t fulfill their fiduciary responsibility. The agency owes writes this $3.4 million. They should be held liable for this, and probably face criminal negligence charges. Scratch one literary agency.
In another post, Passive Guy quotes a blog postfrom Kristine Kathryn Rusch, an author who has been published by trade publishers and who has championed the self-publishing sector in recent years. Kris is saddened for her fellow writers who have been cheated on, outraged (though not surprised) that the agency was so lax in controlling finances, and again speaking about the whole system of requiring agents in the first place.
One of the surprising things that came out of this is the non-response from the agency. The fraud was discovered in March. Even now, D&O’s web site is silent about this, and I don’t think they’ve sent notices to their authors. That is shameful to the max. Okay, so one of their employees was a crook. Let your clients know; don’t make them learn this from the media. Probably announce it to the world: He, world, and authors, our bookkeeper was a crook, we were asleep on the job trusting him, but we’ll get it right. They have lost the PR game, that’s for sure.
What about all the other literary agencies out there? I imagine they will experience fallout from this, though I don’t know what or to what extent. Will authors represented by agencies now wake up and demand that publishers send them their cut directly instead of through their agents? Better yet, since the author hires the agent, have the publishers send 100% of the funds to the authors, and have the authors pay their agents, the people they hire. Yes, that seems more fair to me. Maybe that will happen soon.
If I haven’t said this for a while, I’ll say it now: I am so glad I chose to self-publish back in early 2011. I avoided the whole agent thing and kowtowing to what publishers want. No, I don’t have a lot of sales, but the 561 sales I do have are gratifying. I’ll continue to self-publish, and watch the trade publishing industry continue to implode.
