As I mentioned a few posts back, I’m not worrying about writing stuff for a while. My works-in-progress are on the shelf (or actually the desk, work table, or end table) until after the holidays. Oh, in the next couple of weeks if an unexpected free hour comes my way, I might work on something, but I’m not planning on it.

So the only writing I plan on doing before the end of the year is the two articles I have under contract for Buildipedia, and my share of the family collaborative Christmas letter that goes in our Christmas card every year. I’ll keep up with this blog too, hopefully at a three posts per week pace.

How can I, you ask, call myself a writer if I don’t write? How can I turn it off, leave pen on table, hands off keyboard, and do other things? Wouldn’t I burst from the inward pressure to write? Or if I don’t burst, can I really call myself a writer? Or think that I have a “call” to write.

We’ll find out. It helps that the other things I must do are important, so that I know I’m pushing writing aside, not for the urgent, but for the important. I know, too, that this time of alternative busyness will pass. This is not a tunnel without light, but with a clearly defined end. And as I said above, this is not a writing “fast” such that I must not write, but rather a well set table in life that includes many other entrees right now. I can still sample the writing if I want to, as I did yesterday. I wrote a quick sonnet to post on the Suite101 writers forums, and I began a new article for Suite101, something that came up unexpectedly but which I think I can knock out with minimal effort. And, I’m still doing research reading for the next Bible study I will write.

So in general I’m not writing. But I find that I can shut down writing, but the ideas then seems to flow faster than ever. Until this week I had four ideas rolling around in my head about on-line writing things I could try, things significantly different than what I’m writing now, things I plan to mull over a long time before really trying. Wednesday as I was driving home from church, a fifth idea of a similar nature came to mind. I began mulling that, and recalled the other four for comparison. No, wait, I could only remember three of the four! What had happened to that other one? I wracked my brain, search for sheets of paper with apt scribbles, looked through other things I’d written for a clue. Nothing. The idea was gone. I had only four when I should have had five.

But wait, last night I went back to mulling again, and the missing idea was back. I have five ideas to mull, ideas about new ventures and a new way to publish on-line. The mulling will continue for some months before I go beyond mulling.

But other ideas have come to mind. Articles for Buildipedia, that the editor has expressed interest in but which I’ve asked to be delayed till the new year. Ideas for articles for Suite101, maybe twenty of them. Ideas for scenes and dialogue for In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. Ideas for putting my Bible studies into publishable form.

No, the ideas never stop. Which is one of the reasons I think of myself as a writer. I will never have a shortage of ideas in the few decades I have left to produce works of imagination, as Macaulay used to call them.

After this brief hiatus, I shall write on.

The autumn foliage in northwest Arkansas started out pretty poor this year. Maybe “pretty” isn’t the best adjective: not as good as years past, not even close to memories of New England foliage, way below what I remember from 25 years ago in North Carolina. The maples and other in-town trees just didn’t seem as pretty. Maybe it was the weather, or some kind of minor insect blight that kept the leaves from turning those nice fall colors.

I must describe a little for my readers outside of Arkansas. Our normal foliage here is not even close to as nice as other places. The locals ooh and aah over it, but it’s bland. Oh, in the towns it’s nice, where people have imported, planted, and cultivated non-native species that give color. But out in the country, in the hillsides above the farms, or where farmers haven’t cleared, we have mainly oak forests. Oak leaves in these parts turn brown. Dull. Drab. You see an occasional birch, or something in that family, that turns yellow, but it is rarely a brilliant yellow. You have some hickory or other fruit trees that turn nice. They are beautiful to look at, and stand out among the drab oaks.

I try to tell people that they should imagine that one nice tree among a thousand, and what the hillside would look like if every tree on it were that color. Then they would know what the New England foliage is like. Actually, in New England it’s a beautiful mix of colors, including some purple, and some evergreen trees among them. Just beautiful to look at at the right time, a mix of pastels and bolds.

The North Carolina foliage was different. When we lived in Bentonville, our neighbors had two large maple trees in the front yard that turned brilliant red, on fire. I told people to imagine driving the interstate and having both sides, every tree, just that color, mixed with an equal number of brilliant oranges. That’s the North Carolina at peak foliage.

However, one thing we have going for us in the towns in the Ozarks is a more strung-out foliage season. Not all trees turn at the same time. Even the maples, in their different species, turn at different times. The oaks in their drabness trail most of the others. The late maples this year trailed the oaks. The Bradford pears, which are one of the preferred landscaping trees because of their early blooms, seem to trail the others. So part of our problem is the trees don’t all turn close together. The colors, to whatever extent the trees give them, are spread out.

This year, the late turners have redeemed the foliage season, especially the late maples and the Bradford pears. They have been absolutely beautiful. Our commercial subdivision has beautiful, brilliant red maples on one side. Down every street in Bentonville and Bella Vista are lines of Bradford pears that are bright red mixed with orange, mixed with yellow, mixed with still green, all on the same tree. Beautiful. The oaks are brown as always, but as always the sun will catch those brown leaves and, for a brief time twice a day, make them appear an orange brown, and the oak hills turn beautiful.

Today it’s raining, and I can officially say we are past peak foliage. Many leaves will fall. The color when I go out in an hour to go to the doctor will be not near as nice as it was yesterday when I went out for a meeting. But for the last two weeks, when it was supposed to be after the peak, it was the most beautiful.

Which gives me hope for a late blooming writer. Perhaps words cobbled together in a season many would think is past-peak can be found worthy to educate, entertain, inspire, and add a little beauty to drab lives. I hope so.

Biographies are almost always a great read. In part that’s because they are of great people, men or women. Right now I’m reading a book titled Mr. Baruch. It’s a biography of Bernard Baruch, who was a Wall Street speculator of humble origins, who eventually became an adviser to Democratic presidents and politicians. I’m reading that book because I found it among books we put up for sale at my mother-in-law’s moving sale in January 2009. It was among many books I took from my dad’s house after his death, lots of which we intend to sell. The name was familiar, but if what he did was covered in my history classes, I slept through it. I’m close to 1/4 through this 610 page scholarly biography. My conclusion to date: Whatever his politics, Baruch was a great man, a man of accomplishment.

At the same time, in our adult Life Group classes, we are studying Charles Swindoll’s Joseph: A Man of Integrity and Forgiveness. It’s about the patriarch Joseph, and is a very good book. I’ll blog about it eventually, but meanwhile I highly recommend it as either a small group study or even as an individual read. Joseph was a great man of the Bible, a great man in history, a man of accomplishment.

Do you find biographies of great people motivating or deflating? I find them somewhat deflating myself. And, since biographies are only written about great—or notorious—people, most biographies tend to do that to me.

What have I accomplished in life? Unpublished, except for a few articles; lots of work at it, little results. Third string in high school football. Third man in the mile, but barely so. Never rose above third trumpet in band. A generalist civil engineer not really recognized as an expert in anything. A hack home maintainer, barely squeaking by without having to call out a repair man for each little thing. Heck, even most of the water damage we had this summer, which we are still cleaning up from, would have been minimized if I had made the right “diagnosis” of the problem and closed a valve that first evening.

Sorry for the pity party. I just find it all very deflating. Maybe I should quit reading biographies. I’ve actually written three short biographies. Well, two of them are unfinished. The third is of Lynda’s paternal great-grandfather: Seth Boynton Cheney: Mystery Man of the West. It’s “finished”, though whenever I run out of copies I always update it, adding newly found information, improving the illustrations and printing, etc. I have one copy left, so an upgrading will be coming soon. Of course, it’s only about 40 book-sized pages of text, 15 of illustrations and pictures, and 60 or so of genealogy tables and data. It probably doesn’t qualify as a real biography.

Well, I guess I’ll keep plugging at it. The desire to do something great is too strong to suppress. I’d turn all this good energy to weight loss instead, which would be an accomplishment. But this morning when I weighed in, after a weekend of working my tail off around the house and being reasonably good with my eating, I had gained four pounds since Friday. I guess I’ll need to go on my dad’s diet: water only, and that just to wash in.