First of the month. Time to review progress last month and set some goals for August. That means return to my environmental series will be delayed one more post.
First, the goals I set at the beginning of the month. They were not ambitious goals.
Get back on the two Bible studies I’ve set aside to complete other things. I’d love to set a goal of finishing them by the end of the month, but I think that’s too ambitious. Let me instead say to work on them in at least 10 writing sessions. I believe I worked on the Bible studies only one day. Life circumstances and changed writing interests resulted in my not being able to focus on this.
Attend three writers meetings, all in-person. Did this. They were three good meetings.
Blog twice a week on Monday and Friday. Might be a challenge with the grandkids here. Did this. Maybe a couple of posts weren’t the best.
Work on the programming of the next Bible study. I’ll post about it at some point. I did manage to have a couple of good sessions on this. I’m not as far along as I wanted to be, but at least I made progress.
Not originally a goal, but something I worked on was the next book in The Forest Throne series, tentatively titled The Key To Time Travel. I did this because the grandkids were here, and they were interested in getting started on it.
What about this month? I’m still dealing with some health issue for me and my wife. We were going to take a long road trip this month, but that’s up in the air right now due to health. I will decide on that sometime this week. I’m going to establish goals as if we won’t be making the trip.
Attend three writing group meetings in person. This includes making the presentation at one on Aug 9.
Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday.
Write at least two more chapters in The Key To Time Travel. I hope to work on that some today.
Write at least two more episodes of Tales Of A Vagabond. I still don’t know what I will do with this. I need to get a little more into it before I can assess if this is a viable item for Kindle Vella.
Continue to program the next Bible study. The tentative title is Death Kindly Stopped For Me.
Do some marketing of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. Also need to close a couple of sales of this.
I’ll leave it at that. This is really a tough month to plan anything, given uncertain health issues.
At the moment, I feel like I’m running between different projects. Projects started but not finished. Projects wanting to get started. Projects developing in my mind. Rather than list all of them, I’ll just mention what today’s work on projects is shaping up to be.
First thing this morning, I sent in the order for a proof copy of a new paperback book. I won’t say what it is right now. It’s not a book for sale, but rather one for private purposes. The proof will arrive June 29; I’ll show it to one intended recipient on July 8; and I’ll make a presentation about it to a club I’m a member of on August 13.
Next, I transcribed two letters from 2008. That was after going through a notebook of letters from that year and culling all those already in electronic format. This is part of a decluttering project. It’s totally unnecessary to spend time on this at this stage of my writing career, but it’s something I feel I must do if we are ever going to downsize.
Now, I will work on the memoir I started earlier this month. I want to present a few pages of it to my critique group, the Scribblers & Scribes, tonight. It’s now 15 typed pages long. I don’t know that I’ll actually write a full memoir at this time. It’s a fill-in project of sorts, to be able to have something to share with the group, as I don’t figure they’ll want to see my Bible studies. That’s not really the type of stuff critique groups were made for. Concerning the memoir, I don’t have a lot to do to be ready for this evening.
The amount I plan to do on these projects today won’t take much time, so I will likely shift to another project. This is another letters collection. Letters between me and a friend who died a couple of years ago. I have pulled them into a book and done the majority of the formatting. All that remains is to insert some photos, figure out the book size, and go through the publishing process. This is another unnecessary project; it’s something I want to do, something I can give to his wife and daughter that they might want to read.
Also today, I hope to find 30 minutes to an hour to make those last changes to my website. It would be nice to check that one thing off the list.
Oh yes, one last small project was to write this blog post and schedule it for posting tomorrow. That one is done!
So, that’s the life of a distracted, unfocused writer—at least this one. I’m anxious to get these loose ends finished so I can get on with my next book.
Folks, sorry to say but I will not have a real post today. While it’s a new holiday and I should have time, we have company here. As the chief cook and bottle washer, I’ve been busy with that. Plus, I have three—no four—writing projects in progress that I need to work on, at least two of them today.
So see you Friday with a real post. As I right now, I’m not sure what it will be.
It’s now 7:13 a.m. on Monday, my posting day, and I’m just getting to this post. I had intended on doing a book review, but the time has gotten away from me. So, instead, you’ll have to settle for a mish-mash, oh I’m-so-busy post.
Since last Monday, we have been watching a friend’s dog, Rocky. He’s a good dog. Small, white, curly fur. Not terribly demanding. But oh how he interrupts life’s normal rhythms. When I get up in the morning, after weighing, checking my blood sugar, dressing, and taking my pills, instead of going to The Dungeon and having devotions and begin my work day, I walk Rocky. Just up to the stop sign and back, about .34 miles. Then there’s a walk at 9-ish, then noon, then 5, then 7, then 10 at night just before bed. Some of those walks are shorter. One, at 7 or 8 p.m., is about a mile or a little longer. I’m getting my steps in and losing a little weight.
Rocky goes home tomorrow. We will miss him, but it will be good to resume normal daily rhythms.
Which, unfortunately, are being interrupted by my heart rehab program. Based on the heart cath in April, which showed one artery 50% blocked and a tear in one artery, my cardiologist wants me to undergo heart rehab. I did the work-up last Tuesday, and I start today. One hour, three times a week, 20 miles away. Exercise and education to start, and I take it just exercise by the end. 36 sessions, though they say some people “graduate” out after about 12.
I won’t lie: I’m already resenting the time and gas money I’m going to have to spend on this. I know it’s for my good. But the angina has essentially gone away. All these walks with the dog and I don’t think I’ve experienced any angina. I’m wondering if that tear in my artery has already healed itself (as they say it does in 75 to 95% of the cases). I doubt that artery has opened up in such a short time, but who knows?
As to the other things, I have writing, stock trading (looks like a bad day today), household chores, outside work, and trying to keep up a good reading schedule. All in a day of retirement.
For the last three days, I have been working on our income taxes. No, it didn’t take me every waking hour during those days to complete them, but ours are somewhat complicated because of the two businesses we run (one my writing business). I completed them Tuesday, took Wednesday to proof them, make copies, sign, put s check in one, and mail them. Done for a year. I even created the folders and files for next year’s taxes.
Now, I need to get back to my writing, back to the two Bible studies. But it’s a beautiful day. Sunshine, not a lot of wind, heading to mid-60s for the high. I might get out and do some yardwork, or walk a little way. I have need to go to the post office and the bank. A year ago, I would have walked to them. But lately I’ve had some heart pain, mainly when walking up-hill. Actually, not heart pain, but pain at the base of my neck, in the front. So I’ve curtailed most of my walking until I have a procedure next week. More on that in Monday’s blog.
I feel as if I’m on vacation today without that tax thing hanging over me. I caught up on correspondence, both e-mail and snail mail. I filed a few things. I think I’m going to take the day off from writing, and will spend most of the day tomorrow catching up.
I’m now down to the third Bible verse that I use to start my day. [If interested, you can see an overview of this series of posts here, and the first verse here and the second verse here.] Here’s the third verse.
So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ [Luke 17:10 NIV]
Pouring over old record books held at the church was the first place to start in my research.
This is at the end of a passage sometimes titled “Sin, Faith, Duty”. Jesus talks about how a person who has a servant will not, after both servant and master have had a busy day, serve the servant. He will expect the servant to continue in his/her duties until the master’s needs are met.
Yet, Jesus says: If all you, as a servant, have done is your duty—if you have not gone beyond your duty and done more than asked—you are an unworthy servant.
This verse struck me several years ago. I think I was still working as an engineer when I found this and knew right away it had to be one of my life verses. I was closing in on retirement and was kind of skating, doing the minimum I had to to keep my job. Then this verse came anew into my life, and I knew I had to change. About a year before retirement my boss gave me a difficult assignment, to assist (and eventually take over for) a design professional who was overwhelmed with problem projects. I dug into it, and for fourteen months had a wild ride bringing those projects into some kind of resolution. I think I did my duty with them, and more than my duty.
That also hit home last July. In June I had finished writing the book for our church’s Centennial, at our pastor’s request. This meant monthly virtual meetings of the committee, and lots of research and writing. The deadline for the book kept getting pushed out as our celebration kept getting delayed due to pandemic and construction. I decided to stick with it as if the deadline was close, finished it about 10 months ahead of schedule, and set back to rest awhile.
But one item nagged at me. The church had 12 known charter members, but supposedly 63 charter members in total, the names of the other 51 never having been properly recorded, or, if recorded, the records were lost. A new pastor came a few years into the church’s life and established record books. Henceforth, members were added and deleted as they joined and left or died. But he also reached back in time and recorded, I’m sure to the best of his ability, the names of everyone who had been a member before he became our pastor. It included some members who had already left. That was a total of about 170 names.
Something inside me said I ought to dig in, do the research, and see if I could determine who those other charter members were. But, I protested to myself, if there are 170 names, and 12 of those are known charter members, that means I have to research about 158 names and try to sort them out as to which to include in the 51 and which to exclude. It was a monumental task and I decided I wouldn’t do it.
July rolled around, and I began proofreading the book at a leisurely pace. I came to the point of there having been 63 charter members, 51 one of them unknown but buried among 158 names, and I had to stop. The verse came to me, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.” I had done my duty; the book was done, and done early, leaving plenty of time for editing and proofreading.
But, the thought kept nagging me: if I only did my duty, I was an unworthy servant. I made the decision that I would do the research and see what would result.
Thus, July and August were consumed with research of those 158 names, trying to find a reason to choose 51 of them as charter members. First, I developed five criteria of what would make me include or eliminate someone as a probable charter member. Then I went by family groups, then those not in family groups. Using various internet research sites, I applied the five criteria to each person.
Slowly, everything began to sort out. I was able to make educated judgments and narrow the list of probable charter members down from 158 to around 60. After that, it was just guesswork, but I came up with my list of 51 names and added them to the Centennial book.
But, I didn’t mean for this post to get into the nitty-gritty of the task. I wanted to show how this Bible verse spoke to me and helped guide my behavior. It probably sounds like so much patting myself on the back. I don’t mean to do that. I know there have been plenty of times when I was that unworthy servant, doing only my duty or even less than my duty. But using a real illustration of the principle resulted in the back patting.
I hope this verse will help you as you develop a strategy for completing the work that life has assigned for you to do, or that you have taken on voluntarily. And that the three Bible verses in this series will encourage you. The sun is just breaking the horizon on this cold (28°) spring morning. It is time for me to awaken the dawn!
Not too long ago, I posted about the second of three Bible verses that I try to start each day with. This one, 2 Corinthians 4:17, talks about our troubles on this earth being light and momentary, and will result in an eternal glory that far surpasses the troubles. My focus of that post was that I wasn’t experiencing the glory because I wasn’t using the troubles as a spur to personal growth.
This photo doesn’t really show how my workspace was torn apart from moving stuff to get to devices and cables. Will wait a little to everything back in place. Maybe I’ll even organize it a little.
Wednesday was one of those days, when troubles seemed somewhat more than light. The power company was working in our neighborhood and had alerted us that they would be turning off our power for a couple of hours in the morning, and that they would come by and tell us before they did. The day started out normally. I was at my computer by 7:30 a.m., doing writing and stock trading tasks. It was about 10:00 a.m. before the power company came by and gave us a 10-minute warning. I closed out of all programs, keeping only a couple of Word documents open, closed the lid on my laptop, and left The Dungeon.
Sure enough, the power soon went off. I took the occasion to make my weekly grocery run to Wal-Mart. Normally a Tuesday task, a long meeting then had caused me to delay a day. I went and did my shopping, for a change finding everything on my list. At the self-checkout, all worked well.
The man at the self-checkout station next to me had some unusual items in his cart: a dozen cans of salt and that many gallon bottles of vinegar. That seemed strange, and I did something I never do: I started a conversation with him, asking him about the oddity of his purchases. Understand: I never do that. If at all possible I go through the store and consider it a good time if I don’t have to talk with anyone.
Although, earlier in this trip, I did talk briefly with a woman shopper in the pharmacy section. A rock and roll song was coming over the loudspeakers and I was humming it. This woman and her adult daughter came in my direction and the woman was singing it. She caught my eye and stopped, embarrassed. Then I started signing it and so she started again. Three seconds later we had passed each other, on with our shopping.
Back to the man and his cart of salt and vinegar. I assumed he was buying for a restaurant, but he said no, it was for his concoction of killing weeds in his rock yard. He told me his formula. Since I have the same problem and have considered hiring a lawn service to spray deadly chemicals on it, I was interested. I learned something from this conversation, this impromptu, hard for me to start but easy to continue conversation.
Back to light and momentary troubles. When I got home, the power was still off. The power company had said two hours, and we weren’t there yet. So I went to the sunroom and read. The temperature was 40° out and the sunroom was getting cold with the space heater not working. I was about done with my daily reading quota in this particular book when the power came on, just shy of three hours since it had gone off. The power company had said it might take as long as that if they ran into any problems.
All was good. The trouble of no power was indeed light and momentary, and I thought I had redeemed the time well. A brief lunch, and downstairs to The Dungeon to resume my activities, only to learn…no internet. No problem. I rebooted the modem; still no internet. I rebooted the router; still no internet. I waited then repeated those two steps. Still no internet. I finally found a number for our internet provider. They did a remote reset of the modem; still no internet. I got on a text chat with a rep of their company. He did various things. I tried to explain the situation. Two hours of texting; still no internet.
I took note of the steady light showing on the modem and the all-lights-flashing status of the router, assumed a router failure, and texted a friend who is an IT guy in his job and arranged for an evening call. I wondered if the router experienced a power failure when it came back on. I also considered that the internet provider had sent an e-mail a week before, saying they had increased speeds and I would have to reboot the modem to take advantage of that. I hadn’t done it yet, but the power shutdown was actually a forced reboot. I now have 866 mbps speed—but no internet. Could it be that this old router was incompatible with the higher speed?
This trouble was turning out to be worse than light and not all that momentary. I found other things to do, mainly going through an old genealogy research notebook and getting rid of a bunch of stuff I no longer need. I read the instructions for the air fryer we’ve had for three years but never used and planned to cook some veggies in it. Supper came and went, and I had the call with my friend. We talked through the internet problem. He agreed with me that it sounded as if the router had gone bad. Based on our set-up, he talked me through a work-around, and poof! we had internet.
From there the conversation rolled into other areas to fill the hour. Technology, internet, CATV vs streaming, cost increases, even a little into politics. We ended when he was expecting another call to come in. It was a good hour.
So how would I describe these technology troubles. Light? Momentary? In hindsight I would guess so, though it didn’t seem like it at the time. But since the time was redeemed, and redeemed well, I would have to say they were indeed light and momentary, and that God used them toward the goal of eternal glory.
Moving this 7 foot high woodpile about 60 feet downhill might interrupt my writing rhythm.
I haven’t looked back to see what my writing goals for March are, but I know I’ve been busy writing. I’m into a rhythm of sorts. I need to be since I’m working on two projects at once, while still waiting on two others to truly finish and drop off the radar.
The two waiting to be finished are the church Centennial book and my MG/YA novel There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. The former is done and sent to the printer. At least the insides are. The cover has lagged due to the designer’s busyness. She sent it to me on Tuesday. I immediately shot it to our pastor and committee chair for approval. Both wanted tweaks or changes, one involving a new photo. That photo arrived in my inbox today. I sent it on, and the cover designer says I should have the revised cover tomorrow. Once I send it on to the printer, that project will be truly done.
The other project is also done—sort of. I’m waiting on five beta readers to give me feedback, four of them in the target age group. I’ve given nudges but hear nothing from them. The cover is under preparation by a different designer. I think, once that is done, I will publish it with or without the feedback from the five. If they give me good suggestions for substantive changes, I can always make the changes and republish the book. Meanwhile, I’m giving my critique group a chapter every two weeks and getting good feedback. Alas, as adult writers, they aren’t in the target demographic. Both of these projects are taking very little of my time.
My Bible commentaries are out, resting one on another on the kitchen table, and likely to stay there for a couple of months. I see blank paper to write on, but what did I do with my notes?
Now, as for current projects, they are two Bible studies that form a pair. First, some background. Last year, Feb-Apr, I taught a Bible study on the Last Supper, 13 weeks I think it was. It was Part 3 of a larger study, A Walk Through Holy Week. We are studying it in our Life Group, one part a year, based on the harmony of the gospels I wrote. I realized that the entire study would make a good series of books. I didn’t do anything with Parts 1 and 2, but Part 3 seemed especially suitable for a Bible study book.
Alas, when that study was over, I was fully involved in the Centennial book, and when I had it mostly finished by June (with a research supplement not done till Aug), I moved straight into the time travel book because the iron was hot and I wanted to get it done. Meanwhile, I preserved my teaching notes, some of which were handwritten and some typed. Whenever my schedule freed up, I would be ready to write it.
That happened around mid-January this year. I gathered my notes, merged and organized them, then created the book file. I labored at it for a month. Yes, labored, for I found it very difficult to write. My plan was to have one chapter for each week’s lesson. Chapters would be organized into seven sections, making for a reading a day should the reader want to proceed that way. I was able to make some headway on it, starting the seven readings for Chapter 1 and completing some of them. I got some “days” done, others not. By around March 3rd, I had perhaps 12,000 words of a book that I think will be 50-60,000. Not great progress, but some.
Then a dilemma hit me. On Sunday, March 6, we were to start Part 4 of the Holy Week study. I immediately thought I couldn’t work on both studies. Teaching the new one would consume so much time, and cover different material, that writing Part 3 while teaching Part 4 would be difficult. But the thought came that maybe I should just write the new one and lay Part 3 aside. That way, I could write the chapters (again, planning for seven readings in each chapter) as I was teaching it. The material would be fresh, and hopefully the writing would go fast as well.
I taught the first lesson of Part 4 on March 6. The day before, Saturday, I did an intensive study for it. Coming home from church on Sunday, I went to my computer and began writing the new study. As I hoped, it was easier. I was able to incorporate class discussion and thoughts not in my notes that came to me as I was teaching while all was fresh on my mind. Sunday, I wrote one complete reading and part of another. I also organized the chapters and readings. Monday, I did two more readings, Tuesday two more, and Wednesday, two more, completing the chapter. Yay!
That left me Thursday and Friday to return to the Part 3 book and see what I could accomplish. What I found was I really needed to re-study the material just as if I was going to teach it anew. I did that on Thursday, and on Friday I wrote two days of readings. My writing time on Saturday had to go to study for the next lesson in Part 4.
So it seemed to me that this was a viable rhythm. Saturday: study to teach a lesson in Part 4. Sunday, teach the lesson and work on writing the chapter in Part 4. Monday-Tuesday write the Part 4 chapter, hoping to finish by Tuesday evening. If I couldn’t, continue with Part 4 writing on Wednesday. When that was done, shift to Part 3, hoping to study a chapter and write it on Wednesday-Thursday-Friday.
It worked out like that this week. I completed the second chapter of Part 4 on Wednesday, early enough to give me some time to shift to writing Part 3. As of the time of this writing, I should finish tomorrow (today when you read this) the most difficult chapter to write in Part 3. Then, it’s on to Chapter 3 of Part 4 and another chapter in Part 3. I hope this is making sense.
Part 4 finishes on Easter Sunday. The week after Easter I have a medical procedure scheduled that will prevent me from writing a whole lot. I hope to finish Part 4 by the end of April—the first draft, that is. I’ll be very surprised if I am even half-way through with Part 3 by then, but maybe I will be.
As of yet, I have no publishing schedule for either of these. I don’t know if I’ll publish Part 4 when done, and Part 3 a couple of months later, or if I’ll withhold Part 4 until Part 3 is done and publish them together, or maybe a month apart. Once I know, I’ll let you all know here.
Looking north, not on our street but the one our circle ties in to. Plowed, but having had almost no traffic on it. The road veers to the left in the distance while our road goes right, both steeply downhill.
Yesterday was a snow day. This large winter storm, called “Landon” by the Weather Channel, was strung-out across more than half the USA. The forecasters missed the start of the storm, but otherwise got it mostly right. They even predicted that we would get a last band of snow last night, and it happened. It looks like another inch or two on top of the 6 we already had.
So, when you are retired and have hit your 70th birthday, what do you do on a snow day? For me, I can’t resist going out in it. Never mind that the temperature was 18 and a north wind was blowing the fine snow at a 45-degree angle. I bundled up and hiked up the road. Not far, just up to the stop sign and back.
As I left the house, I measured 5″ in two places on our property, and a 13″ drift near the garage. Our street wasn’t plowed. Tire tracks came to our mailbox and stopped. The mailman had obviously driven that far and, not having any mail down the road (one of two houses there is current vacant), just backed up the hill. He/she did a good job of staying within the downhill tracks as they backed uphill.
At the house up the road, my neighbor was out. Having just shoveled his driveway, he was standing there, in just a light jacket. We talked for a while, me at the top of the driveway and him just inside the open garage door. Then I continued my walk. I was surprised to find the next road plowed. It isn’t a main road, though it does connect to main roads at both ends. About an inch of snow had fallen since it was plowed, and only one set of tire tracks showed on the freshly fallen.
At the next road, it was the same. Plowed, more snow falling, and only a few tire tracks. No one was out, either on foot or in vehicles. My walk had been pleasant thus far. But when I turned to head home, the wind was in my face, driving the fine snow. It was biting, not all that pleasant. But, I had only gone .17 miles, so it was a short walk past five houses and lot and lots of woods on both sides. I reached home having not fallen and invigorated.
I then returned to my work for the day, a fresh mug of coffee in hand. I think that was my fourth. My work was reviewing edits to the church Centennial book suggested by the two proofreaders and uploaded to the document in Google Drive. They did more than just proofread it, however. They had a lot of suggestions for changes. We have a Zoom conference scheduled for this afternoon to discuss it, and I figured I should go through the comments before hand. So, in The Dungeon, Google Drive on one screen and the Word doc on the other, I went to work. By the time 3 p.m. came around, my brain was fried, despite having taken those breaks for the walk and for lunch.
On a snow day such as this, I would have then gone to the sunroom with my coffee and read and taken a nap. But yesterday, instead, I did that in my reading chair in the living room. I tackled my e-mail inbox, going through e-mails over 10 years old and deciding what to do with them. I made good progress and can see light at the end of that tunnel. Then I’ll get to tackle the sent box. Through the evening I went through another twenty pages of comments in the Centennial book.
Now it’s almost 8:30 a.m. on Friday. The sun is shining through The Dungeon windows. I have ten to fifteen pages of comments to go through. I have other writing to do, then the conference at 1:00 p.m. After that, hopefully, I’ll find myself in the sunroom, alternately reading and napping. It should be a pleasurable after-the-snow day.
This isn’t one of the premier books that every writer needs to read and have on their shelf, but it is a worthwhile read.
I have a fair number of books for writers in my library. I should read more of them, but, given the large number of books I’m working through, I tend to pick others over those. Recently, I browsed one of my bookshelves, the one tucked away in the storeroom, and pulled two out. I took them and no others on our recent trip to Texas, forcing me to read them.
On Wednesday I finished the first of them, Turning Life Into Fiction, by Robin Hemley. Since that’s what I do to a fairly great extent in my fiction, I thought this would be good to read. It was. I read the paperback edition, copyrighted 1994. My copy is a new book but I don’t remember buying it. Possibly I won it at a writers conference. That might sound old, but really it isn’t. The advice that Hemley gives works across the 90s and the 20s.
Take your life, or any part of real life, and figure out how to turn it into fiction. You aren’t writing history, and there’s no need to make your fiction exactly faithful to history. Begin with the truth. Add characters, delete characters, change the gender of characters. Start with the real setting; make some changes, but probably not as many as with the characters. But, if you change anything about a real place be prepared for someone very familiar with that place to call you out on it. That’s okay. For every 1 reader who knows the place you will have 1000 readers who don’t. So make a few changes. Maybe more than a few.
Hemley starts with journaling, and the importance of it, then moving on to memoir. He talks about the news and how to take virtually any news story and be able to develop a fictional story about it. He cautions the writer, however, that not every historical detail needs to be part of your memoir or story. The writer needs to take great care to see that the story has the right details, the details needed to pull in the reader and keep them reading.
The last chapter has to do with legal and ethical concerns. You don’t want to use real people in your books without permission. If you do, change enough so that the character bears only a little to the original. While successful lawsuits against fiction writers based on characters that resemble real people are rare, they do happen.
I’m glad I read this book. It helped me to see how I’m doing a lot of things right as I turn real life experiences into fiction. I’m not going to keep this book, as I never see myself re-reading it. But it’s a good book, a worthwhile read for any writer.
