Oregonian

[prideofprewett]

I don't have any intelligent questions to ask at the moment Vicki. But I just wanted to stop by and tell you that I too, got distracted by yard work last weekend. And if yard work = buying pretty plants, naming them, and then deciding to put them in the ground another day, then yes, that's what I did hah. Now I'm regretting it (but alas, time is limited with a one year old) because the next two weekends will be cold and rainy here, so maybe that's a sign writing needs to happen. I think sometimes we need to enjoy the outdoors stuff when the weather allows us to, and as you mentioned it can be very inspiring for brainstorming writing pieces. (I totally do that too while doing household chores). 

I look forward to hearing more about The Crofter and the Snake and seeing chapters of it pop up here (assuming that is your goal ). I always feel like you have such unique takes on HP moments and write great OC characters in that universe. 

Happy gardening/writing to you! 

 Courtney

[Oregonian]

Hi, Courtney.

Thanks for writing something in my novel nest.  I'm afraid I don't have any intelligent answers.  After church today, I went out into my back yard to rake all the windblown pinecones and twigs off the lawn, so that it could be mowed, and my next-door neighbor stopped by and said that the Mormon missionary girls who live in an apartment next to her would come by tomorrow evening if I wanted, to mow it for me.  I said, "Fine." I think that the various pairs of missionaries, who are always housed by their church in that apartment during their 2-month stays in town, are required to give some hours of service to the neighborhood, so my neighbor always steers them in my direction to do yard work.  Nice.

So I spent all afternoon digging grape hyacinth sprouts out of the lawn before it gets mowed, because the grape hyacinths are easier to locate when they're not cut short.  So it goes.

What I've actually been writing on for the past few days is an assignment from a laid-back YouTube writing course produced by a friend, the subject in question being 'The Smart Detour.'  That's his name for a brief digression from the tightly plotted outline of a structured story, like a little detour that you might take during a strictly scheduled road trip when you come upon an unexpected but intriguing-looking roadside attraction and decide to veer briefly off your planned travel itinerary, just to check out this attraction for a bit before resuming the trip.  So I thought I'd write a little insert of an early event in the story of Tiramisu, fitting in between chapters 2 and 3, expanding a bit more on some features mentioned more briefly in the main story -- not essential, but adding a bit more characterization.  Ten closely-written handwritten pages, probably about 6,000 words; I'll know exactly when I type it up.

I have more of Crofter/Snake to type up also.  Here's something really weird (or maybe not).  It's much easier for me to write male characters than female characters, though that would seem odd, since I'm a female person myself.  But it's harder to get inside the girls'/women's heads, so my female characters seem to be much more flat.  (Not good.)  That's what's slowing me down on Crofter/Snake.  Will have to just keep working on it.  But I did those 6,000 words on the Smart Detour in just a couple of days.

Yes, doing a NaNoWriMo in spring, when all the yard work calls and has it own deadlines (get those weeds out before they go to seed!  Got to get those veggies in before the first frost of autumn!) is hard.  I know I won't get 50,000 words like I did last fall; it will take longer.  

So nice to talk with you. Thank you so much for writing.

Vicki

[Oregonian]

Well, I just finished typing and sending out a 6303-word piece labeled Tiramisu Chapter 2.5 as a response to an assignment to write a Smart Detour (side trip along the Main Highway of one's well-plotted story line).  It is an interesting vignette that expands on characterization or more fully establishes aspects of your characters, setting, etc., without necessarily advancing the plot line.  But I'm sure it's not supposed to be so big, big enough to delay the pace of the story or confuse the reader, who can be forgiven for believing it to be the genesis of an alternate story line.  Eep.  I'm sure that my instructor will say, "Um, this is very nice, but I don't think you fully grasp the purpose of the Smart Detour yet," and I will say, "I expect you're right."  But it's an interesting little episode reinforcing some characteristics about Martin/Gerard, answers a concern of a reviewer, and a couple of concerns of mine, concerning the text of Tiramisu.  I don't know if it counts for NaNoWriMo to be working on other stories than one's announced story.  

Will get back to work where I should be working.  You get too many irons in the fire and you end up being pulled in all directions.

[Oregonian]

Hi, guys.  I decided to submit my new piece as a separate story, entitled In Solitary: a Tiramisu Vignette, to the archives because it's a nice little glimpse of Martin's life at St. Guthlac's Abbey, fitting into the rather thinly-recorded section of his life at the abbey between the time he arrives at age seven and the time, five years later, when he gets his pet fox Tiramisu.  So the fox is not in this story, but there is a dead fly, and it shows some of Martin's character at an early age, and I really like it.  I haven't heard back from my writing instructor or from the three family members with whom I shared it.

I tried to make it sort-of stand-alone, but if someone who hasn't read Tiramisu reads just the first two chapters of that novel, they'll have all the background they need.  I submitted the story today, and  hopefully it will appear in the archives soon

[Oregonian]

Hi, guys.  I did hear back from one family member, my niece who lives in New York City and is my proofreader par excellence, and also from the writing instructor.

My niece says:

"Dear Aunt Vicki,  I just read your chapter tonight and I really liked it. It was fun to get a glimpse into Martin and Tom’s friendship and childhood, and Brother Hiram’s care for the boys and willingness to bend rules. I had never heard the concept of a smart detour before, but for sure I do see the value in taking the time to let readers get to know the characters and their setting in moments that don’t feel fraught with danger, and instead can just be part of the gentle rhythms of daily life. But I will say that having the reminder in this chapter of how Gerard/Martin was abandoned by his family was terribly sad. It is 10:02 pm here but it makes me want to go wake my own kids up just so I can hug them and promise I will never do that." 

And my writing instructor says (using more instructor-speak): 

"Hello Vicki!  Thank you so much for sending this and for all of the thoughtful background. I'll take your word on it not fitting in the context of the larger story, but I enjoyed it. It's tough to write about boredom/sparse settings in a way which can hold a reader's attention, but I found the combination of the bells as a time-telling device and the fascination with a fly to be very useful in drawing me in, and moving me along. The world feels rich, as does your lead character. The world here is solid and the details feel lived-in, concrete, and carry with them a satisfying confidence in conducting a scene."

"Conducting a scene" is not a phrase I have encountered before, ditto for "the details feel lived-in," but perhaps some of you have heard these phrases before.   At any rate, these were good reviews. 

 

[Oregonian]

Okay, guys, I bit the bullet and posted the first chapter of The Crofter and the Snake, even though I don't have all the umpteen chapters in final-form documents yet.  This is my new strategy for forcing myself to quit dinking around (I hope that doesn't mean something risqué in 2021; slang evolves ) and really knuckle down on all the half-formed chapters and the inter-chapter gaps that have been slowly swirling around in my brain like dead leaves floating on the surface of an eddy in a pond.  Last night I was dreaming about this story, coming up with ideas that seemed great in my dream, but of course I don't remember them now, and they were probably pretty daft anyway.

As far as what odd topics I have been Googling, I spent a fair amount of time yesterday trolling the internet, reading about the Scottish Isles, quickly straying from the small fact I wanted to verify into the wide expanse of information about all the 900-and-some-odd islands, from tiny to fairly large, that make up the Scottish Isles, focusing on the tiny remote ones that have history or archaeological evidence of having been inhabited in the past.  Really interesting!  But not what I needed to know.  *sigh*

[Oregonian]

I've been typing tonight, getting more of my handwritten chapters of The Crofter and The Snake into the computer.  Spell-Check has been diligently checking my spells.  It has been changing  Lumos into Lumps and Accio into Acacia.  No wonder things aren't going so well for my poor hero!  It's ten o'clock now, so I will go to bed.  Perhaps I can dream some more really good plot elements again tonight.   

[Oregonian]

Finished typing another chapter (from manuscript) of The Crofter and the Snake, now have 19,142 words of the manuscript into documents.  Plus the 6,636 words of the Smart Detour, In Solitary.  Not 50,000 words yet, but not too bad, could have been worse.

[Oregonian]

1527 more words, and now to bed.

[Oregonian]

Here it is May 2, and I didn't write 50,00 words, but with The Crofter and The Snake and InSolitary: A Tiramisu Vignette, I did get 27,056 words and have started posting the initial chapters of Crofter/Snake.

More importantly, I have now developed a much clearer chart of Crofter/Snake by taking all the plot elements, scenes, and 'neat stuff' that I have scribbled onto scraps of paper over the years and have written each one neatly on a square of colored paper and taped it onto a master chart; the x-axis is a list of the main plot and subplots, and the y-axis is chronological time.  This has been invaluable for organizing what happens when.  For a low-key online writing course I am taking, I have to write assignments every 2-4 weeks; the last one , the 'Smart Detour,' turned into In Solitary: A Tiramisu Vignette, which I posted as a separate story.  The present assignment is to write about a meal that is significant for your hero, so I puzzled over that (how can you have a special meal at Hogwarts?) and decided to write about a special meal at Howard's home on Skye at Christmas break, so now I need to note that on a square of paper and tape it to the chart (while also writing it up this week for my course).

I feel much more confident now than I did at the beginning of April that I can do a story as complicated as I fear this one will turn out to be.  Dan/CambAngst wrote me a nice review for Chapter 1 of Crofter/Snake, so now I must keep going because I can't let him down.

[Oregonian]

Just checking in.  I had my first weekend online writing class (one weekend a month for a year) on May 15-16.  The instructor is just a little bit strange, but I suppose we all have our quirks that might seem strange to other people.  I am hoping it will turn out to be worth the price.  The jury is still out on that.

I have been doing mega yard/garden work on my property, having fallen behind on landscape and garden maintenance for the past two years.  In 2019 I went to France and ended up getting a total hip replacement there (not my planned itinerary for the trip!), and that cut the heart out of my summer as regards yard work.  Then last summer (2020) I was in a state of shock due to the pandemic and the toxic political situation here, so I didn't get as much done as I should have.  Now I am paying the price for my neglect, but I'm making good progress back toward horticultural civilization.

Good point about yard work.  I get good ideas for my stories while mindlessly putting weeds or pushing the lawn mower.  A couple of good ideas/solutions for significant points in Tiramisu came to me last autumn while I was cleaning up my garden beds for winter.  Yesterday I was thinking about Crofter/Snake while out in the garden.  My son said that since it was, among other things, a romance story, I ought to put some romance in it, and of course he's right, but writing romance has always been near impossible for me--it makes me feel so silly.  So yesterday I thought of a really good way to introduce a bit of romance into a scene, in a way that doesn't feel silly or hackneyed, is true to the characters, and has a genuine purpose in the plot.  Luckily I have a large piece of property and plenty of weeds to pull, so that should keep me in good ideas all summer!

[Oregonian]

As I said in my last Journal post, I have plenty of weeds.  Unfortunately that is still true, even though I have been working away at it.  My veggie garden is almost all in now; I just have to plant romaine lettuce, although there is lots of leaf lettuce already growing.  In maybe another week I will have all the southwest part of my property cleared out.  

My son telephoned this morning to say that he really liked the chapters of The Crofter and the Snake that I had sent to him a while back for his perusal and comment.  We discussed it for a while, he bringing up aspects of the particular incident that he wondered about, and I giving explanations for why I wrote it as I did (which I won't go into in detail because I don't want to give spoilers).  

But it made me think about how we can't give all that exposition and expansion within the body of the story itself without going off on tangents and bogging down the story line horribly.  That's really what the Reviews and Responses feature is for, when readers begin to speculate about the story and ask, "Wouldn't it have made more sense for Howard to do such-and-such?" or "Why didn't Howard realize the dangers of doing such-and-such?" or "What made him think he could do such-and-such?" and we authors can explain it based in large part on our own life experiences that have informed the way we have our characters behave.

At any rate, it's always a treat to have a nice long conversation with either of my two children.  Will pointed out that at one point in the manuscript, Auto-Correct had changed Howard's name to Harvard, which confused him for a moment (What? Did somebody go to Harvard?) until he realized what had happened.  So I will have to locate that spot and fix it. 

 

[Oregonian]

One more thought.  I mentioned to my son about the Status Update note that Brax @PinsandKneazles had posted last May 28 about trying to find balance between her writing muse, her running muse, and her drawing muse, and how I had answered that instead of hoping for a balanced day, one could try for a balanced week or even a balanced month.  Then, working outside on my property, I decided that what I had to deal with was really a balanced year.  There is "The Growing Season" and then "The Non-growing Season".  Each one is about six months long, and the Growing Season takes up almost all of my time each day (when not working at my job).  So my major writing of stories (not counting little posts like this one) can occur only during the Non-growing Season.  

For example, I wrote all of Tiramisu in a little less than seven weeks, from mid-October to the end of November, after the Growing Season was over.  My first novella of 44,000 words was written in two time periods, March-April and September-December back in 2012.  Will it be possible to break this pattern and actually get substantial work done on Crofter/Snake during the summer?  That would be nice, but there is so much work to do outdoors, and it always takes more time than you think it will. Like, will I really get all those invasive weeds cleared out it one week, as I predicted?  To be honest, probably not.  *sigh*

[Oregonian]

Okay, guys, here's the latest report from the writing front.  It is now 11:12 a.m. and my June Saturday-Sunday writing class (this one-year class I'm taking) starts at 1:00 p.m.  

Confession: we had two homework assignments for the past 5 weeks.  One was to write little vignettes every day, writing as fast as possible for 5-15 minutes without paying any attention to typos or mistakes or even whether the sentences make any sense.  This is designed to  inspire creativity by have us just spew out random thoughts.  There was a specific technique to  apply to these hodgepodge vignettes each week, being, week by week, "Subjective interpretation of setting through the character filter," "Mutually exclusive agendas of two characters," "Emotional state change (person or environment, change emotions 3 times), "Person versus self (he is arguing with himself about the morality of something he is doing or plans to do)," and "Writer's choice (I chose various manifestation of joy that I had copied out of The Book of Joy a few years back)."

I had no desire to waste my time spewing out random garbage; I have no difficulty in thinking of creative ideas if I give myself the time and attention to do so.  So I set all these vignettes within the boundaries of my own stories, characters, and WIPs.  I also didn't do one a day.  Instead I did them all in a marathon session over a few days (see my post of June 10, above) on a roll when my brain was completely tuned in to writing and I did practically no yard work.

Man, I came up with some great stuff.  A fair amount was material from a sequel to Tiramisu as suggested by my son, who wanted me to write a story about Gerard's brother Richard having survived the plague and going in search of the fate of his little brother.  Will telephoned me last night, just to chat, on the occasion of my wedding anniversary, which he remembered even though his Dad passed away almost six years ago.  I told him about what I was writing, and he very much approved.  The 'vignettes" are much longer than my instructor had in mind -- the longest is almost a thousand words -- and some of them are real tear-jerkers; I can hardly read them aloud without my voice breaking.  But of course, in order to understand them fully, you need to know the whole story and what happened before.

The second assignment for this past month was to draw a time grid for each day, indicate what you planned to do during each hour or half hour of the day, and then indicate whether or not you actually managed to behave according to your grid.  I did that for about two days, and then bagged it.  That is so totally not me.  My days are not routine or predictable, and each day I have a general idea of what I plan to do in the day, but it's absolutely not the same every day, except for certain recurring things like my job, some meetings, church, and everything discretionary is subject to flexible change throughout the day, depending on circumstances and how I feel.  Or how hot the weather is, or how fast the weeds grew over night, or whether the raspberries suddenly all came ripe, or if some crisis occurs with a family member -- you guys know how it is.  The instructor freely says that he has OCD and AHDH, so maybe his system works for him, but I don't have those things, and my system works for me.  Hopefully he won't ask us to hold up sample pages of these daily time grids to the screen, because I don't have any, and I'd rather not get into an argument about it.

Now off to review the reading for this next lesson and get some lunch to tide me over for the class, which runs from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

My love to you all .

 

Edited June 19, 2021 by Oregonian

[Oregonian]

Hi, guys.  Here's the more detailed account of how my big writing day went.  Blessedly, it was not nearly as hot on Tuesday as it had been on Monday.  I woke up at about 5 a.m., when the sky was light but the sun had not arisen yet.  There was some high cloudiness that persisted throughout the day and kept the temperature moderate.   Ate breakfast, carried a folding table and a chair out into my front yard on the grass, brought out all my stuff -- dictionary, thesaurus (didn't use either of those things, but sometimes I do), stacks of paper, pens, pencil and red pencil, Scotch tape and scissors (for genuine cut-and-paste), a  dish of paper clips, my big storyboard chart, folders full of printed earlier versions of parts of this story, endless pages of event ideas, character analyses, what-does-Howard-want? pages, pages of alternate ideas dating back many years, small heavy cans of foodstuffs to serve as paperweights, a mug of tea...

The sun rose over the hill in the northeast about ten minutes before 6 a.m, and I sat down at 6 a.m.  Spent about a half an hour sorting through all my many pages of ideas before starting to write chapter 5 at 6:30 a.m.  There is a lot of non-vehicular traffic on my road -- early morning joggers, dog walkers, people walking for exercise before it gets too warm.  Families with little kids on bikes or in strollers.  Bicyclists, people just walking up and down the street.  Many paused briefly to ask me what I was doing.  A new neighbor from a little ways up the road stopped to introduce herself.

The writing was more slow and laborious than it often is for me.  Usually I know just what I want to say and have already written it in my head before I set pen to paper, but yesterday that was not true.  I kept shuffling around from one outline page to another, one chunk of scribbled and tentative dialogue to another, moving my paperweights all around as I searched through the piles of ideas I'd accumulated over the years, trying to come up with a coherent and organized Chapter 5.  Wasn't completely satisfied with what I managed to write; it will need some definite spiffing up.

Moved the table and chair into the shade because it was getting warmer, but thankful that there were no mosquitoes, as there were the previous day when I had been picking the first raspberries.  Took a break at 10:00 a.m. for a quick snack (peanut butter on a frozen waffle and a banana), went back to the job.  Later I had to move the table again to get back into the shade of the trees.  The maximum temperature was in the low 80's Fahrenheit (around 28 Centigrade), not bad in the shade if one is not physically active, and there was a breeze, and low humidity.

Got off chapter 5 and onto chapter 6, which went better.  Took another snack break at 2:00 p.m.  A hummingbird came close to me, checking out the big white blossoms of the African lilies for nectar. The hummingbird was not brightly colored, just sort of brown and gray, and it soon moved off.  Began watching my wristwatch because I was getting tired.  I could have remained there, writing, until about 8:00 p.m. -- the light starts draining out of the sky at 8:30 -- but I was ready to call it a day after 12 hours, so I finished up, counted my words on each page, added them up, and closed up shop at 6:20 p.m.  Hauled all the stuff indoors.

Disappointed not to have written more than 5755 words in all those hours, but it's true that sometimes the words come quickly and sometimes they just don't.  Sometimes you just have to keep slogging away.  Really pleased to know that I could plan to do this thing and then actually do it.  Being in the front yard made a big difference.  There was nothing else there to distract me, no little chores to do or bills to pay or letters to answer.

This afternoon I read through chapters 5 and 6 again, noting all the points where I need to spiff it up, but the bones are there.  I might do this again in the future.

 

[Oregonian]

After the fairly successful writing marathon of June 22 in my front yard/garden, where I produced 5755 words over twelve hours of hard-won writing (and greeted many passersby and neighbors), I have a modicum of confidence that I can continue to make some progress on this long-percolating story.  Let's say that my goal will be 25,000 words written in July.  Summer is a busier time than November, when I did 50,000 words on Tiramisu last autumn for the November NaNoWriMo.  I had a nice telephone call with my daughter last night and told her about what was in the 5755 words, including the bits of humor (even Tiramisu had bits of humor), and she said she was very eager to read the new material, and we talked about plot elements and how the story is unfolding, including the new minor characters who pop up in the story because they need to be there, and ones that might be developed more because they have good potential.  I feel good about this story, after all these years....

[inmyownlittlecorner]

I'm so glad you decided to do Julno! I have every confidence in you

You are so good at "missing moments" stories, and the Death Eater year at Hogwarts is such a HUGE missing moment. I'm very excited to see what you do with it.

Have you plotted out this story? If so, how did you go about that?

Which characters are easiest for your to write? Which are more difficult? Do you have a favorite and/or least favorite?

Does writing energize or exhaust you?

Good luck!

 

[Oregonian]

Hi, Noelle!  So glad to see your remarks here (and I just finished reading your Novel Nest a few minutes ago and was glad to see that you were doing Julno also.  Best wishes for progress!)

You're right.  The seventh year is a huge Missing Moment, and on MNFF there were quite a few stories about it, each one a little different, according to the individual author's take on what happened that year.  When I first built this head canon back in 2013, I had no idea how much page space it would take, and I had never written a long novel.  As for plotting it out, the plot has been developing slowly over -- what is it now? -- eight years, like a giant jigsaw puzzle slowly coming together, chunk by chunk.  But like the jigsaw puzzles that start coming together rapidly when most of the salient sections of the puzzle have been assembled, Crofter/Snake is coming together faster now.

 I am also taking a year-long online writing course, in which the instructor does not approve of waiting  for ideas to come to you; he teaches us to brainstorm all sorts of crazy ideas, random words juxtaposed in random pairings, and so on, in order to create a story (any type of story, just so long as it's salable) as fast as possible.  I suppose that if one is writing in order to make money to Iive on, one might do that, but luckily I'm not.

Howard and his family are easy to write, ditto for a few OC minor characters.  (For that matter, everyone in Tiramisu was easy to write.)  Canon student characters are definitely harder, although I don't know why -- maybe because they do not emanate from me, so I don't feel so strongly that I know them well.  Female characters are always harder to write.  My favorites would be my OCs or canon characters that are so minor that they are practically OCs.  That directs me towards Missing Moments.

Writing tends to exhaust me, even when it is  going smoothly and rapidly in a section already well thought out.  Even more so if the writing is not coming smoothly and easily.  Some authors' habit is to write rapidly without worrying too much about quality, and then going back later and doing some heavy editing.  My custom is to edit in my head before writing the sentences down, so it can be a slower and more arduous process, but each sentence, when written, is pretty close to what I want it to be in the end.  And progress on the path from "Once upon a time.." to "The End" can be so slow -- after 15K+ words, Howard is about 13 hours older than he was when we first met him!  The reality of Howard's world expands like a marshmallow in the microwave oven.  No doubt Sev and Miranda are in that same boat.

Thank you for your good luck wish.  I hope that the weather will allow you to make good headway on libera also!

 

[Oregonian]

My debut on the open mic night of Willamette Writers!  I just lurked at the previous open mic night 3 months ago, certain that every other reader's work would put mine to shame, but that open mic night proved to be not scary, so on June 28 (last Monday), I joined the Zoom session of the combined monthly meeting of the Corvallis Chapter and the Coast Chapter of WW and signed up in the chat box to do a reading.  Attendance was down a little compared to the previous time, no doubt because we were at the peak of the monster heat wave.  My name was second on the list, but when my turn came, I asked to be postponed to the last (because I knew my piece would run a bit over the five-minute time limit, and I didn't want to have the little bell ringing when I wasn't quite done, or worse, get cut off in mid- sentence!)

The other WW members read short excerpts from memoirs, short groups of free verse, I think there were a couple of snippets from short stories, but when my end-of-the-list turn came, there was still plenty of time.  What I had chosen to read was an excerpt from chapter 6 of Tiramisu, starting from the point where Martin has dragged the unconscious Tom from the kitchen back to the infirmary, and ending where Brother Gregory has died and Tom says, "Then it's just you and me."  About 6 or 6.5 minutes of reading, and since no other reader was following me, I felt free to slow it down a little and not spoil the effect by reading too fast.  It's a good, pithy section of the story; a lot of emotionally charged stuff happens within a short period of time.

When I had finished, the other participants gave a couple of positive one-word comments, and the moderator, who has heard me mention my medieval story during the WW twice-weekly morning Zoom "coffee klatsches' when the discussion turns to historical fiction, said that she was glad to hear an actual bit of the story.  One of the participants, also a "coffee klatsch" veteran, left a note in the chat box, "Hard to listen without crying."  It was gratifying to know that the short section of the story managed to convey the sense/feel of the story even though the listeners did not know what happens before or after in the story.

The next open mic is three months from now, September 27.  I think I'll read something again if there is space in the line-up.  It is good to get known among other amateur writers.  (Thank you, Zoom.)

[Oregonian]

After our monster heat wave here in the Pacific Northwest, today the temperature was 64 degrees Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celsius) at 5:15 a.m. and the sky was covered with gray, rainy-looking clouds.  Happy to see that because I will be able to write.  When it's so #*! hot, one can't do anything.  Will report again at the end of the day to say how many words I managed to write.    Lots and lots of good luck to all of you!

[Oregonian]

Yesterday I started off by writing 1099 words, some coming slowly and laboriously, some coming rapidly and easily.  It ws a cool day for us, in the 70's Fahrenheit (in the low 20's Celsius).  Am pleased so far.  Am about to leave for a 2-day camping trip with my daughter and granddaughter.   Happy writing to all of you!

[Oregonian]

Back from my camping trip.  After I got off work on Friday, I threw my stuff in the car, including my thick folder of The Crofter and The Snake. and drove 160 miles to Rainbow Falls State Park in the coast Range of Washington State to join my daughter and granddaughter at an annual Fourth of July group camp with people from her old job and extended families (and dogs).  I showed her what I had written for Chapters 5, 6, and 7 of Crofter/Snake, telling her that I wasn't satisfied with Chapter 5, which focuses on my second main character, with whom I have been wrestling to come up with a good characterization.  (Whenever this story goes slowly and with difficulty, that's why.)  She agreed with me and marked the manuscript with a pen in places where I was mischaracterizing this person, and we discussed at length how this person would think and act, given her background and experiences in the world.  My daughter is so wise and insightful about stuff like this.  Her observations and our discussion helped very much to show me a clearer path with this character, and that will be my next task: to rewrite Chapter 5, now that I have a much truer vision.  She liked Chapters 6 and 7, which focus on Howard.  She says I have him nailed.

 I got up at 4:30 a.m. this morning (in our tent) to throw my stuff into the car and drive the 160 miles back home to Oregon (2 hours and 40 minutes, light traffic so early in the morning) to get home in time for shower, breakfast, church, where I had a role to play and could not be absent.  So I missed the town's Fourth of July parade, but it's pretty much the same every year, so not a big loss.

This will be a busy month for me.  My son and his oldest boy (6 years old) are coming out from Maryland some time in July, not sure when, to visit for a week, and my daughter will be moving to her new house in the latter part of July (she lives 2.25 hours from me in the Willamette Valley, so I will be helping her.)  So I don't know how much time I will be having for Julno and might not get 25,000 top-notch words by the end of the month, but I'm feeling good about it.  It will get done!

[Oregonian]

Hi, folks.  Back again.  It's rather later, 11:37 p.m., but I just woke up at 10:30 p.m. from a 3 1/2 hour nap, having been so tired after what seemed like days of non-stop major obligations and special projects (the latest being the Bastille Day party) that I just had to lie down and close my eyes.  So since the Fourth of July camping trip, at which my daughter gave me good advice for revising/improving Chapter 5, I haven't resumed writing except for brief comments here on the Forum.  But I hope to get back at it tomorrow.  My son and oldest grandson, whom I haven't seen since before the pandemic started, are arriving from Maryland on Sunday night for a visit that will be spread out between my house, my daughter's house in Albany, and old chums from his high school days.  But that doesn't start until I pick him up from the airport on Sunday evening.  No excuse not to write assiduously until then.

Here's something to bring a smile to your face.  The word 'assiduous,' meaning 'constant in application; attentive, devoted,' comes from the Latin assiduus, meaning 'sitting down to,' from the verb sedere, meaning 'to sit.'  So I mean to be assiduous in every sense of the word!

[Oregonian]

Here it is, August 3, and I haven't written any more on Crofter/Snake.  A combination of other obligations, chief of which was my son's and grandson's ten-day visit, and my helping my daughter get ready to move to a new house (driving back and forth to her house, 2.5 hours each way), plus the unseasonably hot and humid weather, plus the driving necessity to get pressing yard work done on the few days when the temperature was actually lower, plus working longer hours at my job, and all the usual chores -- it all combined to getting almost nothing done on my story.    

It is hard to change the annual rhythm of my life - I think of it as the Growing Season and the Non-growing Season.  Climate change is not helping.  Definitely a challenge in coming up with ways to deal with it.

Enough of feeling sorry for myself .  There's a way to fix all this; I just have to find it.

I hope that many of you did manage to get some writing done this July and are happy with how the month turned out.  Ah, the vicissitudes of life!

[Oregonian]

Time to write something again.  The non-stop chores and projects just keep coming, and I put in more hours per week at work that I used to.  There just seems to be more work, and we have been serving more clients since the pandemic began. 

But winter will come, and the garden will be "put to bed."  I'm really curious how many pounds of potatoes I will dig up this year, probably more than last year.  And I will be digging up a lot of plants (irises, daffodils, tulips, lilies, rose campions, raspberry canes) to take to my daughter's new house and get into the ground in October.

It's likely my church's Holiday Bazaar (first weekend in December) will be canceled again this year (like last year) because of Covid-19 -- too bad because it's always beautiful and fun, but it's less work for me to do because I am the person in charge of it.  Supposing that that is how it will turn out, I have no reason not to write!

Trying to catch up with the reading for my year-long online writing class.  The reading is really technical stuff about the analysis and development of tactic sets, dialectic pairs, scenes, sequences of scenes, movements, (you get the idea that there is a lot of technical jargon and theoretical stuff to plow through), so it is slow going.  I try to search my own writings, such as Tiramisu, for examples of these theoretical concepts, which I sometimes see and sometimes not.  It is possible for a piece of fiction to be so 'relentlessly plotted' that the writing techniques stick out like the wooden skewers holding an elaborate pastry creation together.  So I will see how this goes.  The final month of it will be next April.  A lot of good stuff in this course, but one must not allow oneself to become obsessed.