I’m having a restful Sunday. Took a nap or two this afternoon. It’s evening now, and I may try to write a little this evening. Or maybe I’ll continue to work on old e-mails, deciding what to keep, what to discard, what to archive. For some reason I find that a restful occupation. Right now I’m going through e-mails from 2011.
But this blog post is about a small writing success story that happened late last week. I think it was on Friday, but it might have been Thursday. This involves poetry. Now, years ago I wrote poetry, but I transferred away from that and concentrated on prose for a long time, with many works under my belt. From time to time over the last ten years I would try my hand at poetry, but none came to me, either by inspiration or perspiration. I have ideas for poetry books, but no means to make them happen.
So Friday evening, I had a minor breakthrough, a two word breakthrough. I wish I could explain how this happened, what inspired me to bring this poem to mind and to figure out those two word needed to replace two unproductive words. I’ve been reading in three books: Behind The Stories, a 2002 book about a couple of dozen Christian novelists; The Joyful Christian, a library book that is a compilation of a number of Lewis’s writings; and, on my phone, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Vol 3. I think my catalyst may have been in the letters book. Lewis probably wrote something to someone about some poetry that person had sent him. As a result, the problem poem came to mind. It’s a sonnet I wrote in 2002, my 18th sonnet. But as I said, I was never happy with the closing line. I had emended it several times, maybe improving it, but never feeling that it gave the required punch the sonnet needed.
Well, the words came to me while I was reading. I didn’t have my computer open, so I wrote the revised line on a sheet of paper by my reading chair, and said it over and over to myself. I went to bed saying it, mulling it over and over. It seemed good. I’m going to paste in the poem here. I would type it, but I don’t know html and poetry lines don’t come in right on this platform.
A snip from my Word file. Alas, I don’t like the way poems format on this platform. If the poem isn’t readable, click to enlarge.
I’m not going to explain it. Native Rhode Islanders will understand, both the place references and the object references.
I’m not saying poetry is back for me. My mind is still mainly on prose: stories, novels, articles, letters. But I’m glad for a small poetic break-though. I leave it to poetry critics to explicate that last line and judge its worthiness. Now, back to my prose.
Some of the area already cut. I started at our mailbox (just out of the photo to the left) and am working my way uphill along the street and downhill toward the woods.
It’s hot out. Yesterday’s high was 97°. That’s actually around average for this time of year in Northwest Arkansas. I think our summer, overall, has been slightly cooler than normal—not by much, just a few degrees. Certainly within a standard deviation of normal.
In these temperatures, if I have yardwork to do, I go out immediately upon getting up and do it. This year I have yardwork every day. That’s anywhere from 6:30 to 7:00 a.m., depending on when I wake up and how fast I’m moving. Today it was 06:45, and I was out the door in just five minutes. I worked until 07:45, so just under and hour.
Some of the isolated blackberries. Still some weeds to cut away if I want to, but I’ll probably leave them. So long as I know where the blackberries are that’s good enough.
The front yard (a rock yard, not grass), is picked free of weeds; nothing to do there. Our unplanted flower bed needs to be picked of weeds again, but the lack of rain has resulted them being impossible to pull out; nothing to do there. The backyard (also a rock yard) needs much weed pulling. I think I’ve weeded twice this year. But I never blew the leaves off of it last year, which has prevented many weeds from growing. Still, that was a possibility.
However, I also had work to do on our wood lot. This is the lot south of our house. It’s our lot. Over a year ago, the power company did a lot of cutting on their easement on this lot, clearing growth away from their lines. The shredded the smaller saplings and hauled off the bigger stuff. This left about 30 feet of a combination of grass and wood-covered bare earth. I raked down a bunch of the shreddings and put them on a brush pile on the lot. Naturally, plants have come up in that area. The favorable rains and temperatures have resulted in a lot of plants growing in this area, some as tall as 6 feet.
I’ll start working in this direction either tomorrow or, more likely, next week.
Most of those plants are weeds and grass. Some are wildflowers. A few are blackberry plants. Everyone knows I want more blackberries, and to have them growing on my own lot instead of across the street in the right-of-way would be great. So, to remove the unsightliness of the tall weeds and to isolate the emergent blackberry plants, I’ve been manually cutting weeds on this lot using hedge sheers. That’s my only option since my weed eater quit and I haven’t replaced it yet.
It’s not really hard work. I work from the downhill side so that I have to bend less. Still, it includes a lot of bending. Once I find a blackberry plant the bending increases, as I go slowly, cutting weeds and grass around it to isolate it. I have around six or seven viable blackberry plants isolated so far. I’m not sure if I’ll find any others, but I still have a long way to go, so I may.
The hickory is down. The clean-up remains. That will be tomorrow, along with raking down some of the cuttings of the weeds.
Another thing I’ve been doing in my morning outdoor work is cutting down a 4-inch diameter hickory sapling. This is growing right against an oak, and the two of them don’t need to be so close together. Until the power company did its clearing, I never noticed this tree encroaching on the oak’s territory. Again, I’m using manual tools: my ancient bow saw and my little folding pruning saw. Sawing is hard work, especially when bending or kneeling. No, 4 inches isn’t a lot to cut through. Hickory is a hard wood, however, so the combination of conditions meant I decided to do this over a few days—four days to be precise. Today, down it came after the last little bit of sawing. Now I get to do the clean-up.
If I had to guess, I’d say I have about five more mornings of work on the woodlot, a morning of work on the flower bed (once it rains), and at least five mornings of weed pulling in the backyard. By then a few weeds will have come up in the front yard and I’ll pull them.
All of this should be of no real interest to my regular readers. So in my retirement I get up early in the summer months and do yardwork. Big deal, right? It’s of interest to me, however. I figure I have another month of doing this, having a little less daylight each day.
This work, while it helps keep me limber and “young”—young being a relative term—it does cut into my writing time. My short story is sitting there, waiting for me to add the final conflict and last 2,000 words. The Forest Throne is sitting there, waiting for me to get beyond the first chapter and make a book out of it. Documenting America: Run-Up to Revolution is sitting there, waiting for me to move from completed research to writing. And sorely needed updates to this website are begging me to get to them.
This too shall pass, and soon I’ll be back to starting my day off with writing, the yardwork either being completed or the days cool enough to do the yardwork later in the day. I’ll be glad for that time to come.
No new work on this, except to link the three main volumes in a series. I sold 4 copies of The Civil War Edition in the last ten days. More about that in another post.
Well, July came and went without me establishing any writing goals. Yes, you astute observers will have noticed that I didn’t post goals at the beginning of July nor give a recap of how I did with my June goals. When July started we were busy heading to Chicago for a family event. I prepared a few posts ahead of time and scheduled them to post while we were away. Writing progress and new goals wasn’t something I could write early.
But here are my June goals and how I did on them over a two month period. You can get through them then see my August goals after that.
Finish the church anniversary book. I think I’m doing well on this, and should be able to add the final portions and declare it done by the end of the month. …I have some more interviews to conduct, which may hold it up, and some contributions by some others. I won’t say that I’ll have those contributions, but without these interviews the book won’t be done. The book is DONE! I’m at the point where I am so far ahead of schedule with it that, if I had to go to press today I would be satisfied with it. However, since I still have time available, I will continue to tweak it. Maybe do a few more interviews, work on some more photos, etc. It will still be an August goal, and probably every month going forward until it goes to print.
Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. With this post I’m well on my way toward achieving that. I achieved this goal.
Explore a little more the linking of a series together on Amazon. I have four series among my Amazon publications, none currently linked. This was on my list of things to do last month but didn’t get done. Not only did I explore this, but I managed to get two series created, linking existing publications with their related publications. That was the Danny Tompkins short stories and the Sharon Williams Fonseca short stories. No, wait, it was three series. I also linked my Documenting American non-fiction books into a series.
Work on this website, creating a new landing page and updating some content. I did not do this, technophobia taking over I suppose. I don’t think this is a difficult thing to do, but I put it off and allowed other things to fill the time.
Work with the cover designer concerning new covers for the Church History Novels series. This is somewhat out of my control, based on her schedule. I haven’t checked with her in a couple of weeks. I stayed in touch with the cover creator. She has had a very busy summer, interning somewhere. She contacted me last week to say she is just about ready to get back to them and wanted the print book dimensions. So this is good news, and a goal sort of met.
Watch some Amazon videos on how to better do Amazon ads. They keep sending me e-mails about available webinars, several of which look beneficial. I’d like to watch at least one a week. Goal partially met. I watched two Amazon advertising webinars. They weren’t very helpful. I also re-took the 5-day Amazon Ad Profit Challenge in July, the fourth time I’ve gone through it. I created six ads for Acts Of Faith, bringing me up to 16 ads running. Are they profitable? I’ll cover that in a future post.
Continue work on the next volume of Documenting America. I’m still mainly in the reading for research phase, though I also did some of the book planning and created the book file. I want to at least complete the basic reading (40 more pages) and move on to some other sources. I think that is very do-able. I did finish reading the source materials. I also add somethings to the book file and even began the process of editing down the source documents. But, I would have to say I did not complete this goal.
Six ads running. Not a lot if impressions or clicks, and only one sale in July.
So all in all, June and July, while not stellar with accomplishments, did have their moments. Lack of July goals has reflected in that lack of accomplishment.
Now, time to set some goals for August.
Continue to tweak the church anniversary book. I can think of only two more interviews to do. I may add in photos this month. I have a bunch in the file now, but have more I could add. As I do this, I will first format the book for print dimensions. That will let me bring in photos at the right size.
Finish a short story in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series, tentatively titled “Foxtrot Alpha Tango”. I wrote four pages in July to share with the Scribblers & Scribes critique group when we met that month. With just under 2,000 words written, I believe it’s 2/3 done.
Work on the middle grade novel I started in July. The Forest Throne is technically to be co-authored by my oldest grandson, though I’ll do most of the writing and he will edit it, helping me to understand what 10-13 year old boys like. I wrote the first chapter of this in July and sent it to him for comments, receiving his approbation of the sample. I’d like to add another 5,000 words to it this month to go with the 1350 written so far. I’ve brainstormed out most of the plot but not specific scenes.
Blog twice a week, as always.
Do some work on my website. I’m not sure what, but I have to overcome this technophobia and improve it.
Attend meetings of my three writing groups, assuming they don’t get cancelled because of local corona virus outbreaks.
If the cover artist gets the covers re-done, re-publish the three older church history novels, updating them for new copyright info and list of works, as well as link them in a series.
That’s it. See you in September with a progress update.
Good morning, folks. Yes, I’m late with my post today, which will be somewhat of a nothing post. The last several days have been quite busy and didn’t plan a post in advance.
What has kept me busy? One thing is the church anniversary book. This has been a week of sending e-mails, making phone calls, gathering information from previously untapped sources, and adding text to the book. I have only one more interview to do, which I hope to do today. The text is now over 27,000 words, so definitely longer than I expected. I added some photos to the manuscript, but most of the photo work is still to come. Hopefully I’ll have some help with that.
Stock trading has taken up some of the day each day this week. Yesterday and today were especially busy with it. The days were profitable, so I don’t mind the work. It does cut into either writing time or reading/idle time, though.
Other than that, I stay busy with household chores as well as outdoors work. My day starts at ±06:30, when I am outside to do some yardwork. Right now I’m pulling weeds in our horribly overgrown and unplanted flower bed in the front yard. It’s a slow process, even with a shovel to loosen the clods. I would say I have another week of that work. Tomorrow I hope to finish trimming bushes in the front yard and removing the cuttings. That’s a very do-able goal. Hopefully I’ll find a little time for reading as well.
Today will be busy with a grocery run, work on the book, some Amazon listings maintenance, and maybe vacuuming. Or I may leave that for tomorrow.
Well, this has been a blah sort of blog post, but it’s what I have for today.
Is this considered a craft? Oh, no, I did a craft! What’s to become of me? I feel the dendrites in my nervous system getting all worried.
Whether the pandemic is over or not, it’s good to be coming out of it. To go to the grocery store and not wear a mask. To go to church, not wear a mask, and get a cup of coffee (while staying 6 ft. distanced the whole time). To have long-interrupted groups meet for the first time in over a year. Yes, while we realize the spread of the virus isn’t over, and questions remain as to the effectiveness of the vaccine against all mutations of the virus, it’s still good to open up.
One group I belong to has been meeting. The Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers took a few months off, then decided to meet outdoors. I joined this group in March 2020 and attended one meeting before the pandemic hit. These are people who enjoy writing letters, on paper, that get sent through the mail. We have been meeting at a church not too far from me, under a drive-under at the back door, skipping the coldest and hottest months. That was good to keep seeing each other and talk about our letter writing activities.
Another group I’m a member of is the Scribblers & Scribes of Bella Vista. This is a writers critique group. We had our last meeting at a library in early March 2020. We typically had four or five people attend out of six active members. One of those has moved away; two others were new and we don’t know what their current interest is. Three of us were core members who rarely missed a meeting. While we were shut down, we sent pieces for critique by e-mail and received feedback the same way, but it wasn’t quite the same as reading pages in front of other writers and receiving comments then.
We began meeting again last Tuesday, all except me, as I had a one time church meeting to attend. I e-mailed in for critique the beginning of a short story. I’ll have to wait for the July meeting to see them all again. Anyone reading this who is interested in a writing critique group can find us through MeetUp.
The other group I’m a member of is the Village on the Lakes Writers and Poets. This group is a diverse bunch of writers, a fair number being poets. They met once a month at a writers retreat center in Bella Vista, sometimes as many as 20 people. The meetings were about inspiration for and education concerning writing, along with read-around of our work. Then the pandemic hit. The March 2020 meeting was cancelled. By April we were ready for Zoom meetings and did this every month during the pandemic.
In May, the State having lifted many restrictions, we met at a coffee shop, just five of us, and did some planning and dreaming. In June, we met at a pavilion of one of Bella Vista’s parks. One of our two group leaders led us in an exercise. Now, I hate writing exercises. I’m not sure why; I’d just rather write what I want to write and be done with it. But I took part. The leader had brought plucked off leaves, colored pens, pencils, and sketching paper. We were to trace a leaf (or leaves, whatever we wanted), then take fifteen minutes to write about it, after which we read our exercise to the group.
Not trace. I’m not exactly sure what this craft is called. Put the leaf on wax paper, then a sketch sheet above it, and rub the leaf through the paper so that the features come through. Leaf rubbing I suppose it’s called. My leaf didn’t want to cooperate. I chose yellow as my rubbing color. Probably not the best, as yellow doesn’t show well. The thick parts of the leaf didn’t show well, so I took a green pencil and traced them.
As to the writing, I stared at my leaf and couldn’t think of a thing. Then I took note of the dendritic pattern of the leaf and remembered an e-mail discussion with my now-deceased friend, Gary Boden, and a train of though came to mind. Here’s what I wrote and read to the group.
Dendritic Passage
As the trace of the leaf shows more prominently the division of segments—i.e. the spine and the hard, thick parts, so is my writing life and all that has brought me to this point. These start at the periphery and end at the bottom of the stem in what is called a dendritic pattern.
Dendritic? Yes, that’s the term. We used it in hydrology to describe the nature of a drainage basin, coming together from the far-flung edges and arriving at the main channel. But I think the word comes from the natural sciences, for I first heard it from Gary, a zoologist by education who ended up his career in computer systems. Branches coming together but with a fabric between them is what makes a dendritic pattern.
As I look at this leaf from an unknown plant and see its dendritic pattern, I see my writing. Each little spine is a genre that captures some of my time and results in a book or story. The latch-key teen experiences resulted in the Danny Tompkins stories. The many places visited early in adult life are being turned into the Sharon Williams stories and Operation Lotus Sunday. My love of God’s story and His word & church has moved to a branch that is the church history novels and
Hydrology, botany, and neurology (if that’s the right word) all make use of the term dendritic. Who knew?
At that point the leader said “Time.” When I read what I had to the group, someone talked about the dendritic pattern of the nervous system. I later looked up a dictionary definition, and both the pattern of a tree and the nervous system were used in the definition of dendritic. And the word “dendrite” for the first time came to my attention. Guess I should have figured that.
This is not a profound post. I have no conclusion to draw, no inspirational thing to write. Just an observations. Groups are coming back. I took part in a writing exercise. I did a craft-like thing and lived to write about it. All is not right with the world, but it was better that day when we met.
My camera is not with me right now. When it is, I’ll edit in a photo of my leaf rubbing, quite possibly the first and last I’ll ever do. Now, on to my day’s dendritic activities.
Oh, and why did I write “Passage” instead of “Pattern” in the title? I guess I don’t know.
Our only reason for going to Universal was the Harry Potter exhibit. We didn’t see much of this. We went on the Hogwarts ride and, while it made me a little sick, I managed not to puke.
On May 20, about noon, Lynda and I pulled out of our driveway and began a three-day drive to Orlando, Florida. We had much preparation for this trip, though the decision to make it took a long time. We were to meet our daughter and her family there. They had saved up for a long time for a big family vacation, and this was it. They had invited us to go along, and we were providing the accommodation through a timeshare exchange.
We weren’t sure we were going to go, what with covid and then the gas shortage. But things seemed to be falling into place, and a few days before the time, we made the decision to go. We told our son in a phone call but forgot to tell our daughter. The first night in the motel we let her know via Messenger and she replied, “Oh, I didn’t know you had decided to go.” She wasn’t upset; we just had forgotten to tell her. That meant that she wasn’t able to make suggestions about things we could bring with us that they would need but couldn’t take on the plane.
You go to Florida you expect to see an alligator in the wild, right? We had two in our resort ponds.
Fast forward to Orlando. Our daughter, her husband, and their four kids had four days planned for theme parks: three at Disney and one at Universal. Then they added a second day at Universal. We bought tickets to go to Universal the same day they did. The other days we planned to just stay in the resort (which was very nice), doing the usual things we did at home, plus maybe a little walking, a little shopping, a little sight-seeing. In truth, we did less than that. Other than preparation of meals for everyone, or taking everyone out to eat, we just had a restful time. Oh, yeah, I played chauffer to reduce parking costs.
What’s a vacation without a little trauma? In this case, a foot gashed on barnacle-encrusted rocks at a Gulf beach, requiring 4 stitches.
We had great interaction with all the grandkids. I had several good conversations with Ephraim, the oldest. He and I are sort of planning a book together. I think I’ve mentioned it before in these posts. Tentatively titled, The Forest Throne, it will be a time-travel sort of book. I’m brainstorming it now, trying to figure out how to make it unique, not just a run-of-the-mill time travel story. I talked to Ephraim that I was concerned that I’m too far removed from being a 12-year-old and how to make the book suitable for kids that age. He said not to worry. I should write the book and he’ll make adjustments to make it suitable for kids his age.
The lines and noise level at Universal made the experience less that satisfactory for us boring, old folks.
The day we went to Universal I had problems getting Lynda and me into the park, something about our e-tickets wasn’t right. So the rest went on. Later we all met up. Then Lynda and I got in line to do the Hogwarts Castle ride. That was an hour, maybe more. From there we went to the Three Broomsticks for lunch. That was over an hour wait, most of it in the sun. Lynda was tired, I wasn’t tolerating the noise level very well, the heat bothered both of us, and the walk to find a quicker place to eat took us all the way back to near the park entrance. So we left, getting some ice cream near the entrance.
A big city has a variety of foods. One evening of a down day I sprung for Indian food, which made the day worthwhile.
It was a couple of days later that I was talking again with Ephraim. I don’t remember exactly what it was we were talking about, but probably about my not enjoying amusement parts because of lines, noise, and not liking any rides that are high, fast, or quick turning (which is all of them). Ephraim said, “Grandpa, you’re boring.” I replied, “I try to be.”
He didn’t mean it in a bad way, but I’m very happy to be described as boring. Maybe it isn’t quite true that I’m boring. As I look back on my life, I’ve done a fair amount of risk taking and exciting things. But no more. I’m happy to sit at home, write my books, trade my stocks, walk the streets and trails for exercise or on the elliptical. Let others have their amusement parks. I’ll take boring any and every day of the week.
Masks and wands at the ready is how you do theme park at the end of a global pandemic.
We were with the kids from Saturday May 22 through Tuesday June 1. They left for the airport and a couple of hours later we hit the road. We made it home in two days this time, as we were in a mind to travel and, except for one major slowdown on I-40 in western Arkansas, the roads were clear. Now having been home for five days, I can say, “It was good to be with the kids, and it’s good to be back to our boring existence at home.”
What’s going to happen with The Forest Throne? If I don’t make it my next book, Ephraim may be too old by the time I get to it for him to help with it. My brainstorming is causing all the parts to come together. I’ve figured out an angle to make the time travel different. I’ve figured out two stories of this unique time travel. The last piece will be how to finish it all, for it won’t be a series that goes on forever. I’m brainstorming that now.
Actually, I wrote that title while it was raining. Right now the sun is shining. No, wait, it’s behind a cloud again. The rain stopped close to an hour ago. The forecast is for more rain during the day, but right now the radar doesn’t show anything close. I’m not sure what to expect.
The forecast for this blog post is also a little uncertain. I still have those three short books to review, but don’t feel like doing any of them today. I have a few book sales I could report on, but nothing earth-shattering, so I’ll pass on that. Stock trading is going ok. We aren’t killing it, but nothing really to report. Engineering has totally disappeared, as CEI no longer calls on me for anything. I guess that’s not bad, as I don’t miss it. The two years of hourly work was a good transition into retirement, but is now over.
Health is okay, maybe even good. Can’t seem to lose any weight but am not gaining any. My heart seems strong, my blood sugar is under control, I had covid19 and I have also been vaccinated for it, so I don’t fear going around without a mask. I still wear it in situations where it is posted that masks are required or requested. I may wear it a few other times as well. It was hard for me to get in the habit of mask wearing and it will be hard (maybe not as hard) to get out of the habit.
Work on the church anniversary book has slowed, but as soon as I finish this post, and maybe reach a new threshold in the book. I think I’m still on target to finish it around the end of June. I’m reading for research in the next Documenting America volume. Otherwise, I don’t have any other writing in my head that is just demanding that I get the words on paper or pixels.
So, this is a good time to work on this website. Not on the layout or the bells and whistles of a WordPress site, but the content. A writer friend recently looked at my site and suggest some improvements. Or, rather, just said it needed improvement. Then, today, a writing blog that I read had a post about improving your website. I’m always hesitant to do any changes to the website content for fear of screwing something up.
I’ve known for some time that I have things to do with this. Maybe this is the time to knuckle down and do them, while other tasks are not urgent. It’s been suggested that I move my bio from the landing page to a separate tab and have different content on the landing page, perhaps news about my books, or links to them. I’ll have to think about that.
One other thing I really should do this week is some Kindle Direct Publishing work on my book series, to turn them into true series, properly linked on KDP. I’ve been told that easy. I don’t think I’ll work on that today, but perhaps over the next couple of days I’ll look into that.
I believe the next three days will be a mix of the anniversary book and the website. After that, who knows? Just as the sun-clouds situation here today (cloudy right now but no rain) has been uncertain and changeable minute by minute, so my writing plans are.
I’m now down to about 125 of Mom’s old books left, from around the 800 I started with. That doesn’t include the 100 or so that I’m keeping and are on display in the house.
This week has been just that: a mixture of things, getting done, adding to the to do list, and either worrying over or brushing aside.
First and foremost was completing our income taxes for 2020. The deadline was changed this year from April 15 to May 17, and since I knew I was going to have to pay (based on my early estimates) I embraced the new deadline and delayed my personal tax work. I did our trading partnership taxes and got them in by March 15, the deadline for partnership filing. I completed them Tuesday, let them sit overnight, found an error Wednesday, re-printed them, let them sit overnight, proofed them Thursday morning and declared them good, signed them, wrote a check, got them in an envelope, and walked them to the P.O. Done for another year.
No, not quite done. Every year, when I finish the taxes, I say I’m going to prepare my spreadsheets for the following tax season. Obviously, the Federal and State forms might change next year, which would necessitate a change in my spreadsheets, but I can’t anticipate those changes. I can at least create the 2021 Taxes folder and save this year’s spreadsheets into it, change all the date, zero-out the manual entries, and have them ready. Also, I have my “Estimated taxes” tab to help me know if I have to send in any payments during the year. I got that prepared and entries made through yesterday. Also, I created my 2021 writing business spreadsheet, overhauled it somewhat to remove some clunkiness, and made all entries year to date. So, I feel pretty good about this.
This photo didn’t come out as well as I hoped. The left side of the street is lined with blackberry bushes awash with while blooms. I’ll be doing a lot of picking in late June and July.
Speaking of writing business issues, I sold four books yesterday. I buyer was coming to get some of my older books that I have listed for sale on Facebook Marketplace—23 of them to be precise. I took the occasion to message her that I was an author, gave her the link to my author page at Amazon, and she said she would get some. Some turned out to be four. That gives me eight sales for the month. And, yes, these are some of the things I entered in my 2021 writing business spreadsheet.
A local writing group I’m a member of, Bella Vista Village Lake Writers and Poets, met in person Wednesday for the first time since February 2020. It was a planning meeting, outdoors at a Starbucks. Only five of us met, but it was good to do so.
Work continues on my writing projects. I get a little done on the church anniversary book almost every day. Same thing with the Bible study I’m working on. This week I’ve had a break-through, of sorts, on how to do one difficult section. The Bible isn’t particularly difficult to understand at this point, but how to present the material a interesting and informative way was a question for me. I figured it out, I think, and will soon move forward with it. Also, my next short story in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series is starting to roll around inside my head. I think, when I get done with the projects I’m currently working on, I’ll be ready to write that.
Other than selling those books, our decluttering/disaccumulation efforts have slowed. Over the last month we’ve finished four small books that are not keepers. Once I get the book reviews done for this blog, off to the sale/giveaway shelves they will go.
After a two week hiatus from walking, I’m back at it. It started with short walks in the evenings with Lynda, just as much as she has strength to do. Tuesday I think we did just under half a mile, Wednesday two-thirds, and yesterday nine-tenths. Also yesterday I did my afternoon walk to the P.O. and, along with some extra trips down side streets, I did a little over two miles on that walk. How great that was. My walking shoes are almost worn out and I’ll soon need to get another pair, but the ones I have are doing alright for now.
My main observation during my walks was the blackberry blooms. The bushes are covered with them, and the number of bushes with blooms is more than ever. On our street, I tend these bushes. It’s not much work. I cut away various woody plants that compete with them for sunshine; I cut vines that grow up and choke the blackberries, and I cut away dead branches from prior years, giving the new branches a chance to grow. It seems to be working, because our street is loaded with bushes. I’ll be making cobblers and muffins and who-knows-what all July and into August, with some to freeze.
Local lore says that you need some cooler temperatures to cause the blackberries to “set” properly. Most Mays we get those cooler temperatures, and the time is called “Blackberry Winter”. Well, last week and this week we had that. We are past the frost-free date, but temperatures dropped into the 40s for the about six of the last ten nights, with the highs getting above 70 only once or twice. This morning it was 46 when I got up. We had this both before the blackberry bushes bloomed and after. This, I hope, will result in a good crop.
And, last among my miscellaneous activities, is reading. I mentioned the small books above that we’ve already read. We started on another one a couple of days ago, a non-scholarly commentary on the book of Daniel. It’s going well so far. I’m also reading in the Annals of America as research for my next Documenting America volume. Also in a very thick book on the history of the Jewish people. I don’t get a lot of pages done each day, but I’m making a little progress. I may pull off this and read the last 50 pages of a book I can get rid in less time. Also, I have volume 3 of The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis for Kindle, and have been reading that on my phone whenever I have a spare ten minutes with nothing to do. So far I’m a 135 pages in on this 1600 page book. It’s probably the most enjoyable of all that I’m reading.
This post is longer than I expected, but I haven’t time to make it shorter. See you all on Monday.
Physical decluttering/disaccumulation of our stuff has stalled. I probably need to renew some of my Facebook listings to see if anyone is out there who wants something I know we want to get rid of. Plus, there are more things in the house that should be easy to make the decision on. Maybe I can get that effort un-stalled.
But the last few days have been full of physical activity. A friend has come to harvest oak trees cut down by the electric co-op about a year ago. I wanted to help him, as there is some real labor involved. We worked on that Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. That kind of work (lifting trees, moving 16″ sections uphill, rolling them into the trailer) sends you back into the house exhausted. At least it did me, and I did less of the work than my friend did. Soon I’ll be cleaning up the residual items on the adjacent lots. For sure I had no energy for clean-up tasks after that.
My time has also been much taken up working on our church’s 100th anniversary book. This week I’ve been working about five or six hours a day on it. It’s enjoyable, but it drains you of thinking energy, and decluttering/disaccumulation is perhaps more thinking than physical labor.
Meanwhile, I’ve been doing some electronic decluttering. That includes:
Going through files on my computer, uploading them to OneDrive, getting rid of duplicate files. That may not sound like much, but my files are much more organized than they were a couple of months ago.
Going through e-mails, deleting what I can, moving them from inbox/outbox to proper folders, saving some out as Word documents—to the right folders, of course—so that some day I can put my “collected letters” together. This I do mostly in the evenings while watching TV.
Pulling out flash drives, seeing what’s on them, and putting them into a physical place with a TOC so that I can find them again and know what’s on each.
In this process, I found various attempts at journaling in electronic format. I found at least eight, maybe as many as ten, files that were journals. Some were a single day, some a few days, one was fairly comprehensive for nine months of 2005.
Journaling is a time-honored way of documenting your life, work, and aspirations. John Wesley did it and published his journals. Emerson and Thoreau both did it and their journals are published. Carlyle did it, though his have never been published. Many others have done it. Life coaches recommend it. Writing gurus recommend it for writers.
In addition to the electronic journals, I have a fair number of handwritten sheets with journal entries. And I have one or two notebooks with journal-type entries in them. I’m close to filling one of those books, which is a slow process at an entry every few weeks.
I haven’t assessed how much the handwritten material amounts to. But I saved all the electronic files to one folder, then merged them together, finishing that process yesterday. After going through the merged file to remove duplicates, the combined journal comes to 18,600 words and 27 single spaced.
That’s not very long. It’s not a publishable document. I haven’t checked it to see if the writing is any good. I suppose I will do that in the next month or two. And I’ll take a look at all my handwritten sheets and books and try to get a handle on just how much material there is. This will give me a sense of decluttering, though not of disaccumulation.
But what about the idea of journaling? Those times I’ve started to journal, I found it difficult to keep up with. I start, but end fairly quickly. Handwritten journals are for sure harder than typed. But that may make them more valuable, more succinct, less verbose. Those who recommend journaling say it helps you when you go back years later and read where you were years ago. For that to work, you would have to be specific and to a level of detail that will help your future self.
I think I’m rambling now. While gathering the journal files together in the name of electronic decluttering, and gathering paper journals together in the name of physical decluttering will be good for the computer and house, and for my psyche, I’m not about to start journaling in a big way. I’ll finish out the two or three pages left in the journal book I’m in right now, but I’m not going to do a lot more.
Thinking about journals have kind of spurred my interest in reading journals. Years ago I began reading David Brainard’s journal, but left off with maybe 50 pages to go. Once I finish my current reads, I may just pull that out, finish it, and put it up for sale. Hey, disaccumulation!
The last day of April and my regular blogging day fell on the same day. It seemed like a good day to post my writing progress for April and goals for May that day, but then I decided to post that piece on harmony. It’s still close to the beginning of the month, so here it is. First, my April results.
Publish The Teachings. All that is left are various publishing tasks, including: e-book TOC; adding two maps, one of which needs modification; writing the back cover copy; writing the Amazon page text; formatting the print book (well, the e-book too, which is far easier); and uploading to Amazon. I think this is very doable. This is done! I published the e-book on April 13 and the print book on April 25. It all went pretty easy.
Republish the three earlier church history novels with new covers and a list of my works. One of the covers is ready. Hopefully the other two will be soon. This is not done. Too many things came up this month, both for me and the cover designer.
Expand the church anniversary book to at least 15,000 words and hopefully 20,000 words.I made progress on this, but didn’t hit my word targets. I’m 13,300 words right now. I’m pleased with the progress, however, as I did a number of interviews with members of the congregations and began incorporating their information into the text.
Blog twice a week. It’s doable. No travel planned this month. Did this.
Do some research on the next Documenting America volume. I won’t commit to how much, but I have to get going on it. For my afternoon reading I have been reading for this research. I’ve done about 100 pages of reading so far, identifying documents to use in the book. I’ve searched for and found on-line a couple of these documents and loaded them into a file for the book. This is a long way away from truly starting on the book, but it is progress.
Look again at the Bible study I was working on in February and early March, and decide if that is going to be my next book or if something else is. I spent some time on this, adding some words, perhaps settling on a format. I’ve decided that this probably is a viable project. I will be spending time on this next month.
So that’s April. What about May? I’m just now beginning to think of this month, but can say a few things based on last month.
Republish the three prior books in the Church History Novels series. This will be the contents, adding information for the full series, including links to all the books. The switch of the covers to be consistent across the series may not happen this month, so the full process may take a little longer.
Create, in Amazon KDP, a true series of these books. People have told me this is easy to do. After I get the content updated, I may tackle this, even if the covers aren’t ready to go yet. And, if I’m successful at that, I’ll create true series for my two short story series. And for the Documenting America
Continue work on the church anniversary book. I’m not going to set a word goal, since I can’t seem to meet the word goals I set. By the end of the month I would like to have all my interviews done, information from those interviews worked into the book. I also want to have basic information added to all chapters.
Continue work on the Bible study. In some ways, this is fill-in work when my mind can’t wrap around other writing tasks. That tells me that maybe my heart isn’t really in this project. Or maybe it means I simply need to get other things off my plate before I can really concentrate on it.
Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday. I ought to be able to do this.
Continue research reading for the next Documenting America I’ve read over 100 pages so far, with around 200 to go.
