Time to work on a cover for the newest volume in this series?
It’s that time of the month—time for accountability of writing goals. How did I do last month vs. what I planned? First, the progress.
Blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday. As usual, I achieved this. Only one time did I find myself late and have to throw something together.
Attend three writers meetings. One writers group is folding, so I’ll only have three most months henceforth. Attended all three, as well as an online social gathering of writers.
Begin serious writing work on Documenting America: Run-Up to Revolution. I don’t know how fast this will go—or how slow—so I won’t set a word goal. I actually began this on Saturday, and was able to complete the commentary part of Chapter 1—first draft, of course. This bodes well for future writing progress on this book. Yes! I made some major progress on this. As of 8/31, I had 12 of 31 chapters complete. The rest have the source documents fully edited and are ready for my words to be added.
Read more in reference documents for my new Bible study idea. If everything gels, get started on the study overview and outline. I didn’t read any more source documents, but I did spend a little time improving the outline.
Continue to work on digitizing/discarding of genealogy papers. Yes, I did this, though made less progress in the last week than previously.
Now for some goals. I’m a little hesitant to set any, because my mind has been too active on some potential new projects. But, if I don’t set some goals I’m just drifting to the future instead of steering a purposeful course. So here they are.
Blog twice a week, Mondays and Fridays. I suspect my readers are tired of seeing that goal each month.
Attend three writers meetings, plus the online social gathering.
Complete the first draft of Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution. This is very doable, but I will have to be disciplined, especially in consideration of…
.. Decide on whether to post my new Documenting America book to Kindle Vella and, if I do, get the first chapter/episode published on Wednesday, September 6.
Tie down the new writing idea that came to me on August 28-30. Write all I can about the idea in manuscript. No, I’m not sharing what it is now. Heck, I don’t know when I would have time to write it if it seems viable.
Enough! I’ll also be working on the genealogy papers digitization project. I have a very large notebook open on my desk that I’d like to get all the way through in September.
This week, I’ve been unable to write anything. My work-in-progress, Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution, sits more or less where it was on Monday morning. I think I got a few words written on Monday (completing a chapter I left undone on Friday), but no more.
On Tuesday, I sat in The Dungeon as usual, pulled up the next chapter to write, and…nothing came to me. I couldn’t make sense of the source document, already edited to length. So I put that aside and came back to it on Wednesday. And on Thursday. Nothing. I still couldn’t see how to write the chapter.
Part of the problem is my hurting left shoulder. Did I write about that before? It was severely strained when I was walking Nuisance, our daughter’s family’s dog, in early June, and the dog had an encounter with a snake. They saw each other before I saw the snake. They lunged at each other, and in restraining the dog, boom. My shoulder was damaged. It’s not broken or dislocated, but it hurts like the dickens (as Dad used to say). Having my arm in the typing position seems to be where it hurts the most.
So I’ve been doing other things this week. I wrote a couple of long-hand letters. Organized some e-mails. Worked on my correspondence files from 2018 and 2019, deleting duplicates. Digitized some genealogy papers. That still hurts my shoulder, but I have enough breaks from holding my arms in place on the keyboard.
Oh, one other thing that’s been taking up some time and brain power is arranging for repairs to be done on the house. Dealing with contractors, getting estimates, scheduling work. I always find that draining. One item is now under contract and will be done next week. I should get the final estimate on the second one today. The third I’ll deal with next week.
So that’s where I’m at. Writer’s block for the first time in my writing “career.” I’ll try again today and see if the words will come. Maybe Monday I’ll be able to write that second C.S. Lewis/Screwtape post.
I had thought my children’s time travel books might spur sales, but, alas, not so.
After having taken the month of June off from writing—except you can’t fully take that long of a time off from writing—what you do is back off of new writing and pretty much maintain things like the blog and promotion—I’m now back at it, working on a new book in my Documenting America series.
It felt a little weird at first, to come down to The Dungeon in the morning and do things other than writing. But my routines, interrupted for a mere 30 days, have quickly re-established themselves. I have a goal as to where I want to be at the end of July, and I think that I’m either on pace of maybe even a little ahead of where I want to be.
I haven’t yet promoted the sequel. I know I should, but it just seems meaningless to do so.
That gets the long-suppressed dreams of a writer going in my mind. As I work on a new project, other projects come to mind. Even as I plod along toward daily goals, and book sales trickle in at Amazon (10 in June, so far 3 in July, plus one personal sale), other new projects come to mind. Specifically, things I could write and publish serially on Kindle Vella. Four non-fiction series are rolling around, taking up brain space that should be going to the new book. Well, one of those projects is related to the Documenting America book.
The other three potential Vella projects are pie-in-the-sky stuff, things that are more dreams than real projects. Things that would spur sales and generate a little income, get my name a little more wide-spread. Things that would take up time.
And that’s the problem. Do I want to hop over to Vella series from books? That makes no sense. I have no idea how well Vella series sell. Most that are there seem to be fiction, and my ideas are non-fiction. Last month I browsed the non-fiction titles there, and could draw no conclusions. Would my non-fiction series gain an audience there, or not?
In my dreams, they would, and not just a small audience, but a fantastic, large, and ever-expanding audience, waiting for the next in each series, almost begging for more. I won’t share the dreams of how many dollars those series would bring in, because if I did, someone would say it’s time for an intervention, to bring me back to earth.
Such are the dreams of the writer. Working on one project while dreaming of four others while watching anemic sales show up in the Amazon sales report while wondering how to better self-promote. I suspect I’m not alone in that.
Time to move on to the next daily task on the new book. Push the dreams into the background for a couple of hours, and see what I can get done.
In that post, I said my main project would be the next Documenting America series, Run-Up To Revolution. I started working on it yesterday, creating the Table of Contents and cataloging the source items already in the Word document. I turns out I only have five more documents to either find and copy or type. That’s a good start.
But is it the right thing to write? The last couple of days I did some more looking into Kindle Vella. For those who don’t know, that’s an Amazon platform for stories/books brought out in serial form. I thought maybe I could publish my nascent memoir, Tales Of A Vagabond, there. I have five “episodes” as K-V calls them) written, and a little inspiration caused me to start planning the broader book.
But wait, because that new Bible study I mentioned in a previous post continues to pull at me. I did a little research reading for it yesterday in the second source document, and a proposed outline has started to come together in my mind. Nothing is on paper yet.
But it also occurred to me that maybe I should return to working on the eight-part Bible study A Walk Though Holy Week. I’ve written about that before. Parts 4, 5, 6, and 7 are written, and Parts 4, 5, and 6 have had one editorial pass. These four could be ready to publish in a couple of months, Parts 1, 2, and 3 are fully planned, and Part 8 partially planned. It occurred to me that maybe I should shift to writing Part 1, for I don’t know if it makes sense to begin publishing the series at Part 4. What to do, what to do?
Then, our adult Sunday School class has begun re-studying C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. We went through it around 2008, and I wrote four chapters covering four letters. I found them useful in teaching fifteen years later, and I feel the itch to work again on it again. But, that would be quite time consuming and energy sapping. What to do?
And that’s not all. A couple of months ago, finding myself at the time of our critique group and me with nothing to share, I dashed off the first four pages of the first book in my long-planned-but-never-started Alfred Cottage Mysteries. The crit group seemed to like it, as they had liked the series summary I had shared earlier. I’ve wanted to write that series for a long time but have hesitated since it would be yet another genre—something I don’t really need.
And one other thing occurred to me. Perhaps it’s time to get going transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia, as I did with the letters from our years in Kuwait. I want to get to that while I still have strength of mind and body. That’s not a commercial project; it would be only for family. But it’s important to me to see it done. I think, among all these things I’ve mentioned, it is the least likely to pop up to the surface at this time.
With all that, I actually have one or two other ideas floating around in my head, things that have come to me recently that haven’t gelled sufficiently to think of a title, an outline, or a purpose and scope. But they are there, consuming brain cells, and interrupting my reading on more immediately pressing projects.
Ah, the life of the writer with Genre Focus Disorder, too much immediate time, and too few years left in an already fruitful life to write everything that sits a while in my mind, never mind those ideas that flit through.
How can I possibly have progress in a month that I was taking off from writing? Well, taking time off for me is different than for others. It’s hard for me not to keep up with writing even during my month off. So I got a few things done. I’ll list them along with the goals, then I’ll see what kind of goals I can set for July.
Blog twice a week, Mondays and Fridays, as always. Even with grandparent busyness, I was able to get this done. Each day had a real blog post written and posted.
Attend writer groups meetings as I can based on travel schedule. As expected, travel kept be away from all but one of the scheduled meetings.
Proofread as much as I can of the four completed volumes of A Walk Through Holy Week. I proofread parts 4, 5, and 6 (which I didn’t remember proofreading last year). Part 7 will be a July goal.
Work on the cover for the AWTHW series. I don’t sell enough books to pay for cover creation, so I just have to do it myself. I have a concept I want to use, if I can do the graphics. Which leads to my last goal… This is done, sort of. I worked with my 10-year-old granddaughter, who shows some artistic talent, to go from my preliminary concept to a working prototype. Whether it’s a fully workable prototype, I’m not sure.
Work with G.I.M.P. on how to do more artistry in covers. I’ll have to find some tutorials.
Other things I got done were:
Catching up on correspondence, both new writing and filing all unfiled correspondence for 2023.
Publish The Key To Time Travel. I didn’t mention this as a June goal because I wasn’t sure of the timing for getting the cover. After dealing with some health issues, the cover designer finished her work, and the book went on sale this month.
Work on the source material for the next Documenting America book. See the July goals.
Do more reading than normal.
Brainstorm an idea for a new Bible study, and read some source material for it.
Made a few updates to my website—not major ones, but things that needed doing.
And one thing that wasn’t writing related, but which I feel like mentioning, was digitizing my genealogy files. No, they are not done—far from it. But I added to what I did in prior months and fine-tuned my filing system as I went along. At the end of the month I felt good about how much of this I accomplished.
Now, for some July goals.
Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
Attend two writers meetings, one of which I’ll present at. A third meeting may happen and I’ll attend, if the library can schedule them.
Work on Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution. Last month, even thought it wasn’t on the schedule, I managed to copy most of my source documents and load them into a Word document. The next step is reading and condensing them to the right length for the format of the series. I anticipate this will take all of July and possibly even longer.
Write up my recent Bible study idea into a proper outline of what it would be.
That’s a good number of goals for a month after a break. Documenting America will be my main task for the month.
A cute title for a book on punctuation. Of interest to writers, but probably not many others.
I’m not sure where I picked up this little volume, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by Lynne Truss. I think I won it at a writers conference. It’s a small hardback, 209 pages. What’s it about?
Punctuation.
The title comes from a punctuation error, though the author didn’t tell exactly where it happened. The writer, writing about panda bears, meant to write, “The panda eats shoots and leaves.” Alas, a pesky comma crept in, and it was printed “Eats, shoots and leaves.” The difference in meaning is startling, all from a misplaced comma.
Truss tells of several books on punctuation, going back to the 1700s. She shows how acceptable punctuation came into use through what worked and what didn’t. Punctuation was for the purpose of giving readers clues as to when to take a breath, when to fully stop. It’s a British book, so deals mostly with the British way of punctuating. Truss does talk about the differences on the two side of the pond.
It’s a good book. Truss manages to make a boring subject quite entertaining. If you are a writer and need to get a better handle on punctuation, this should be helpful. It wasn’t so much for me. I can’t say that I learned much in it, other than something about how punctuation has changed through the years.
I give this 4-stars. It’s not a keeper, however. I’m either going to give it to someone at one of my writers groups, or put it in the donation pile.
From my reading chair in the sunroom, looking south. It’s hard to tell, but I recently spent a couple of hours cleaning the window fan from years of dirt. Gotta be healthier.
Summer is here—maybe not by definition, but by the reality of temperatures. When I finish my morning work in The Dungeon (writing, stock trading), I go to the sunroom with either coffee or water, and read for an hour.
The sunroom is not air conditioned, and it gets hot in the summer. A time will come, in July and August, that it will be over 90 degrees by noon and more or less unusable. Right now, however, it’s around 80 degrees at that time. Each year I make an adjustment at this time. I swivel my reading chair around to face south, put a fan in the window just a few feet away, and make do with the air flow making the room fairly comfortable.
I made that change yesterday. I would have done it a little earlier, but the fan desperately needed cleaning. That took a long time, as I had to removed the grill (which turned out to be a pain) but couldn’t fully remove it due to some clips on one end. Thus, I had to reach my hand in between the spread grills and clean it as best I could. I finished that on Monday, and used the fan for the first time this season on Tuesday.
Now, when I sit there, I’m looking out the south windows a couple of feet away, rather than the north windows on the other side of the room. What do I see? Well, the chair is low enough, and the window ledge high enough, that for most of the view, all I can see is trees. Oak trees. Most of them with 12-inch or larger diameter trunks. They are dense. The canopy is fairly solid and very little sunlight penetrates it—that’s even after thinning the trees to make our woodlot somewhat park-like. If I raise up a little, I see more of the trees and trunks. The ground is lower, and falling away.
Except for off to the right. There the ground slopes up steeply. I can see the tree line at the edge of the woods, the grassy area between the trees and the street, and the asphalt strip of the street. The grassy area isn’t solid. It is punctuated by blackberry bushes that I’ve allowed to spring up. I can even see a small pile of cuttings from this morning’s yardwork, which I plan to move to a compost pile tomorrow.
Further away, across the street, I can see the woods across the street. A hundred and fifty feet into that lot is the fort I build with my grandsons, but it’s too far back in the dense foliage and I can’t see it from the sunroom. I know it’s there, but I can’t see it.
This new view means that I can no longer see the birdfeeder on the deck; it’s now behind me. However, today I noticed that I can see the birdfeeders reflected in the south windows. It takes concentration to look at the glass and see the small reflection instead of looking straight at the south woods. I was able to see birds come and go, but the reflection wasn’t clear enough to know what type of birds they were.
I have about a month more to enjoy the south view if temperatures are normal. It might even be a little longer than that, if I change my schedule and read in the sunroom before the heat of the day warms it beyond the edges of enjoyment level. Or there will be the occasional rain day, when I can use the room all day.
So what point am I trying to make? To change your schedule according to the needs of the moment? To enjoy whichever view life gives you? To observe the panorama of views that life gives you? I suppose all of the above.
Now in my fifth year of retirement, I’ve come to enjoy my noon reading time. I’m usually up at around 6:30 a.m. and in The Dungeon working by 7:00. With only a short break for breakfast, that’s close to five hours of writing or whatever work I have to do. Reading makes a nice break. The sunroom is nice venue. I have enough books in this house to find interesting reading material for the next 50 years—no exaggeration.
So I keep busy in the sunroom. At times I even look out at the windows and simply enjoy the view.
Hard to see in this photo, but the gaps in the forest are there. I took this photo this morning, and the cloud cover is about the same as Wednesday.
On Wednesday, I came to The Dungeon as per my routine, mug of coffee in hand. I opened my current Bible reading book, which is the harmony of the gospels that I wrote, did my reading, had my prayer time, and got to my work—or maybe my busywork, can’t quite remember exactly two days ago. At some point I went upstairs for breakfast, then returned to The Dungeon and got to my real working time.
The day had dawned cloudy and remained so. At some point I looked up and out the window. Now, the window is covered with vertical slat blinds from the top to the floor. And my computer desk with the upper shelf unit is between me and the window. So two items are blocking my view of the outer world.
But I did have some view, enough to know the clouds were still thick. All I could see was tree leaves and branches. Once the oaks leaf out, which happens in the latter part of April, the holler behind our house is fully obscured. I see leaves close, a little light behind them, and then a mass of leaves that covers all else.
I took note that the leaves were perfectly still—not a bit of movement. But then I focused on the small amount of leaves deeper in the woods that I could see through the small gaps between the near leaves and branches. There, behind the front foliage, were places where gaps in the forest canopy allowed more light to penetrate. And in those gaps, I could see leaves and branches stirring. Eventually, that stirring worked its way toward the nearer leaves and branches, and they began to stir as well.
That got me to thinking of the limited view we have of the world. Our view is obscured by the things around us: the work at home, the work at a job, the need to keep in contact with people. So many things crowd our lives that, to use the old and trite adage, we can’t see the forest because of the trees.
It’s good to be looking for those gaps in what crowds us in to see beyond, to see what the rest of the world is up to. That’s what makes our little piece of the world a better place to live in.
When I took note of that movement in the forest, working from deeper in it to the edge of it made up of our back yard, I knew I had to blog about it, but how do I find meaning in it? Meaning, that is, beyond the gaps that allows us to see a little more of the world? And I thought of what I wrote not so long ago about friendship.
Friendships are the little gaps in the forest, with light penetrating the canopy and shining deep within. Friendships are elusive in this busy world, but well worth cultivating.
I’ve been working hard on my current work-in-progress, A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 5. I’m down to less than 1,500 words to go on the main text, plus some kind of introduction. My hope is to finish it today, though a doctor appointment may be too much interruption for that to happen. No matter if it does; I’ll finish it tomorrow. Then, I’m going to take time to cultivate some friendships I’ve kind of dropped while working so hard between writing and parent/grandparent duties.
Here’s to friendships, and to little gaps in the desk top-unit, the blinds, and the forest, that occasionally align and allow a view of the woder world.
Every now and then, I come to a blog day with nothing much to say. I’m sure my few regular readers notice those posts. They are days when, for whatever reason, I’m knocked out of my regular routine, or I didn’t sleep well after not planning ahead.
Today is a little different. Rather than being knocked off my routine, I’m trying to reestablish it. After over two weeks or helping our daughter’s family in West Texas, we are back home and trying to get back to normal. It will be a short normal, as the helping times will come back fairly quickly.
Today I was up at 6:30 a.m. as always and in The Dungeon before 7:00. I caught up on a number of things, but blogging wasn’t on my mind. Getting back to writing was. Except I had some correspondence tasks to do first. Once those were done, it was time for the stock market to open and I had three trades I wanted to make. I lingered over those trades more than I had to. Next thing I knew, it was 9:00 and time for breakfast.
Consequently, it was 9:45 before I was back in The Dungeon and ready to write. My goal for the day was to get back into A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 5 after 12 days and make some progress on it. I didn’t have a specific word goal. Well, I got into it and made progress as I hoped. By 11:20 I had close to 1,300 words added and the next to last chapter completed. Only one chapter to go, and a little of that is done. Based on the word target I established for each chapter, I have maybe 4,000 words to write, plus the Introduction.
So I came here to An Arrow Through The Air and got to my other writing for the day. It’s a blah post, about writing progress. No earth-shattering ideas. No political rants. Nothing about things learned, ministries participation, or people helped. But it’s where I’m at.
And now, the sunroom and my noon reading break beckon.
I’m hoping that, by the end of the year, this will not be the only Bible study in my bibliography. Alas, I wrote that caption in 2022, and here it is 2023 and it’s still my only published Bible study. But I’m much closer to that goal.
Since early February, my main writing focus has been the Bible study on Holy Week that I developed. I wrote about it here. With a good writing day Saturday, reaching back to work on Part 5 (Part 7 being caught up), I got to the point where I can see light at the end of the tunnel on both Part 5 and Part 7. An introduction for the series, to go in the as-yet-un-started Part 1 also came to me this weekend.
Thus, it’s time to be thinking about the next thing to write. The second book in The Forest Throne series, The Key To Time Travel, is done, just waiting on cover creation. I will most likely give it the once over, checking to make sure the dates are correct. That’s a one-day task at most.
This was one of my two new publications in 2022. The sequel will be out within two months. When will I do the next one?
Somewhere around June 1, I will be looking to start something else—unless I take a month off from writing to do some major decluttering work, in which case July is the more likely date for writing something new. I actually started something else last week, the first volume in the Alfred Cottage Mysteries. That was mainly to have something to bring to critique group. I don’t know if I’m ready to begin work on it as yet.
But what do I write next? My Genre Focus Disorder (GFD) is so severe, I have any one of several directions to turn. I’ve spoken about GFD before, and if I can find the posts, I’ll put in a couple of links. It is a self-defined, self-diagnosed writing condition. It’s the inability to stick to one genre and build an audience in it. I’ve got it bad. I’ve met a few other writers with it, but I believe their cases are less severe than mine. Now that it’s time to pick a new direction to go in, what do I choose?
This was the last volume published in my Church History Novels series. When Ill I do the 5th?
I could write the next book in the Documenting America series. I have sold more in that series than any other. I did the reading research for the next volume, which will be titled Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution, around two years ago. Hopefully my notes are comprehensive enough that I can jump right into the writing.
Or how about the next book in the Church History Novels series? I have four books in that complete. That’s my second-best selling series (which isn’t saying much). I know what the next volume will be about, though I’m not sure of the title yet. Actually, I know what the next three or four books in the series will be.
It’s been a long time since I wrote most of the poems in this, around 2005-6, I think.
Then there’s a book of poetry I’d like to write. It’s tentatively titled On Of My Wishes. I created the document last year and grabbed close to 30 poems from my “inventory” that will fit the theme. Alas, inspiration for the 20 to 30 others I need to write to flesh out the book hasn’t come. I’ve been so busy with prose, poetry is almost a distant memory. Could I rekindle the desire to write it, at least for one more book?
I could keep going with the Holy Week Bible study. I’ve completed Parts 4 and 6, and, as I said earlier, and very close to done with Parts 5 and 7. That leaves Parts 1, 2, 3, and 8 to be written. I could just continue on with them while that’s what’s been on my mind. Or, I have another ten Bible studies developed and taught, and a few more in development that would probably make decent books. Maybe that’s where I should go.
I have one Carlyle book published and two more started. And essays about him on my mind. It’s probably an obsession that I ought to get treatment for.
A couple of other non-fiction projects I started on are about Thomas Carlyle. One was a comprehensive, chronological bibliography. I’m well along with that, maybe 70 percent of the work, with the hardest parts complete. I pulled the document up Saturday evening to check to see if I had a certain of his compositions in it. I did, including documentation from his letters. Also, I began putting together a book about Carlyle’s Chartism, a pivotal work for him I believe. That may also be around 70 percent done, though I haven’t looked at it for at least five years. Why do either one of them, when the one volume about Carlyle that I edited and published doesn’t sell? Beats me. Mainly to complete unfinished projects. I hate leaving things unfinished.
A period of intense research is what led to this book. What will come of this new time of research?
Another thing that’s nagging at me is a genealogy book about my wife’s immigrant ancestor, John Cheney of Newbury, Massachusetts. I actually have much work done on it as far as research of his personal life is concerned. I researched, wrote, and published books about two of his descendants. I’d like to do a book about him, and maybe about four or five more about his children. This is more a dream, a hobby almost. Still, I’d like to get that done.
I could always stick with the Alfred Cottage Mysteries. They are cozy mysteries based on young Alfred’s genealogical studies. For some reason, I think they would sell. More dreaming, I guess.
One more short story to go in this already published collection has come to mind. Maybe that will be next?
And that’s not all that’s available for me to add to. The Gutter Chronicles could use a third volume. Ideas for series that I’ve fleshed out include The Waterville Dome, one about stock trading that’s partly planned, and…it seems that I’m forgetting something else. Oh, yes, the next two volumes in The Forest Throne series. The next one is partly planned out. And I haven’t even mentioned short stories.
See what I mean about Genre Focus Disorder? Maybe I do need to take that month off from writing, get some serious decluttering/dis-accumulation done, then see where to go. Whatever I decide, I’ll report it here.
