Category: GKP Writing News

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GKP Writing News

Completing Botany Pages

Completing botany pages for my Dent County Flora is challenging. You might ask: how hard could it be to take a picture of a flower and write a sentence about it?

That would be easy. That is not what I am doing.

One case in point would be the Wild Pink or Wherry’s Pink, Silene caroliniana. This is a lovely little spring ephemeral flower in vivid pink.

wild pinks for completing botany pages
At just over an inch across, the main way of seeing these little flowers is the vivid color, obviously the source of the common name. Wherry’s Wild Pinks bloom for only a week or two and each plant has many flowers on it.

The first step is to get pictures of the flower and plant. That assumes I’ve found the plant. I take a series of pictures including the plant, flower, side of the flower, the leaf, the stem and the fruit or seed pod.

Wherry’s Pink grows along one of my hills. I admire it every spring and take pictures of it every spring.

I sat down and began completing botany pages. There were the plant, flower, side of flower, leaf, stem pictures. And no seed pod.

A spring ephemeral plant grows quickly, blooms, sets seed and disappears. I’ve been trying to get that seed pod picture for two years now.

Last year I put up a marking flag by a group of plants. When I went back, other plants had grown over the remains of the Pinks. I couldn’t find them.

This year I found some other plants in a more open area. Lots of plants don’t like growing in the gravelly areas of the hill.

seed pos for Wherry's Wild Pinks
Like the plants, the Wherry’s Wild Pink seed pods are small, an inch or so long. As soon as these are formed, the plants start going dormant until the next year. Only luck and persistence gets a picture of these.

I went back and began to search. It is amazing how a plant can seem to disappear overnight. But I did find a couple with seed pods on them.

Now I can continue completing botany pages for Wherry’s Pinks. And for the wild peach trees as I went out to take pictures of the leaves. How I forgot to take a leaf picture, I don’t know, but I found I did last winter. Peaches are deciduous.

Once I have the pictures, choosing the ones to use, cropping, resizing and setting up the page can take an hour or more.

Maybe I should go back to writing my novel. That takes less time for each page.

I’ve walked the same hills for almost thirty years now. You would think this would get boring, but it doesn’t. Every week is different from the week before. There are always new things to see.

“My Ozark Home” was done on the twenty-fifth anniversay of my time here. It contains many of the things I saw over that time.

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GKP Writing News

Word Choices

My Writer’s Digest magazine arrived. I browse through it over days as time allows, but an opening ad caught my eye talking about word choices.

This program promised to have all possible word choices in front of a writer instantly. What happened to having a large vocabulary? What about a dictionary or a thesaurus?

Writing advice often includes doing wide ranging reading in a variety of genres. What do people do as they read? Skip over the words they don’t know? Or are the books they choose those with limited vocabularies in them?

When making word choices, there is more to consider than if a word sounds good. That word may be a disaster in your story.

Words have connotations and denotations. The denotation or definition may sound fine. The connotation or people’s perception of the word may sabotage its use.

How many words can you think of with very different meanings? Girdle? Gay? Queer? Dick?

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper required making word choices
I love tongue twisters and the sounds of words. That made writing this book fun as well as challenging. Do you think such things are foolish wates of time? They teach vocabulary and pronunciation in a fun way. How fast can you say “Goats Gallop Gaily” three times?

How about homonyms? Do you use to, two or too? How about weather, whether and wether? Spellcheck and Grammar check is little to no help.

I faced lots of word choices while writing “For Love of Goats” as it depends on not only the meaning, but the sounds of words. It’s a good thing I like dictionaries.

In “For Love of Goats” each letter of the alphabet is targeted for a tongue twister or story about goats. Both used alliteration.

I started by looking through the dictionary list of words for that letter or sound in the cases of c, q, and k. Did I know all the words? No. That’s what definitions are for.

Looking over these word choices, a story idea might come to mind. Some were harder than others. Q took several tries as did z.

Yes, the lists were valuable helps. But a large vocabulary was the biggest help.

You don’t have a large vocabulary? Try Qwilleran’s method (The Cat Who books). Flip open a dictionary and point to a word. If you already know it, try again. Read the definition and try using that word several times during the day.

And keep a dictionary near as you choose books with words you don’t know. Don’t skip them. Look them up. Your writing may get more interesting.

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GKP Writing News

Going to Camp NaNo

Hot weather, endless things needing to be done, lack of drive to write anything, all make going to Camp NaNo seem hopeless. Yet, they also give incentive to participate.

This year has been an endless parade of difficulties. The latest is the air compressor springing a leak as the pressure tank rusted out. Luckily there was little pressure in the tank as I was filling it to pump up a tire. Otherwise, things might have been messy.

April was difficult as rain or pretend rain (enough to be wet, not enough to do anything) came through every couple of days. My cleaned-out goat barn is now a morass. My garden is a jungle of weeds and summer crops aren’t all planted yet.

Good things are happening too. The pullets are growing well and are staying healthy, amazingly enough. The kids are doing well. I’ve taken lots of plant pictures and am busy with the Dent County Flora books.

Yes, books.

There are lots of single volume wildflower guides. They are not complete, offering only a selection of those flowers the author thought were most common.

Excluding grasses, rushes and sedges, Dent County has an easy 1500 plants. At one plant per page, that is one enormous book. So my flora is split into smaller volumes: Dent County Blues (blue, purple and brown flowers); Dent County Reds (red, yellow and orange flowers); etc.

So, I am going to Camp NaNo with two projects in mind. One is doing pages in the flora books. The other is to finish the novel draft I’ve been ignoring for one excuse after another.

That is one of the main reasons I do keep going to Camp NaNo and joining National Novel Writing Month. I want to make my goal in the allotted time and I get back into the writing groove.

Many of my novels, including “Capri Capers“and “Dora’s Story“, began as NaNo novels.

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Reading About Earthquakes

Growing up in southern California, earthquakes were just one of those things; kind of like tornadoes here in Missouri. They happen.

Tornadoes can be predicted a little ahead of time so people can get to a safe place. Earthquakes give no known warning.

My first remembered tremor was at home. I was sitting on the couch and heard what I thought was a sonic boom, except it came from the floor. The slight shaking came immediately after.

That sound, only the people thought thunder instead of sonic boom, was mentioned in many accounts of the New Madrid quakes. Yes, quakes. There were a series of them from December, 1811, to February, 1812.

Why am I reading about New Madrid? I write short book reviews for my local library newsletter and decided to raid the Missouri shelf for July. “On Shaky Ground” by Norma Hayes Bagnall sounded interesting.

The New Madrid quake is talked about in Missouri, although California is more prominent elsewhere. Two of the Missouri quakes are considered to be second only to the 1964 quake in Anchorage, AK, in strength. The San Francisco quake is further down the list.

One reason for the San Francisco quake being more remembered is that it happened in a populated area. In 1811 Missouri was sparsely settled. No one knows how many people were killed as most were swept away in the Mississippi River either when the river banks collapsed under them or they were swept off boats on the river.

Earthquakes are not uncommon anywhere in the country. Fracking and other underground activities have triggered quakes in areas not prone to them before. Natural ones happen along the East Coast and along the Mississippi river valley as well as in California. Most are too small to be noticed.

The big question no one can answer is when the next big one will happen. California has building codes to strengthen structures to resist damage. Other states do not.

Will New Madrid be repeated? Probably.

Will we be ready? No.

After all, earthquakes only happen in California.

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GKP Writing News

Never Be a Successful Blogger

I just finished reading “The Islanders” by Meg Mitchell Moore. It has convinced me I will never be a successful blogger.

That isn’t really the focus of the book. It follows three people, alternating between their points of view, as they grapple with secrets and life choices with attendant problems. However, one of the three, Lu, is a successful food blogger or becoming a very successful food blogger.

Lu’s first decision was the type of blog she would write. It had to be different, something people would want to read.

That is my first misstep. I write about things going on out here in the hinterland. My lifestyle is from years ago, simple and down-to-earth. It is alien to people today in their artificial, manmade world.

This alone makes sure I will never be a successful blogger unless it is as a curiosity.

Lu next makes sure she posts close to everyday. As she is writing a food blog, she is also cooking and testing the recipes she is using in her posts.

Out here in rural Missouri internet is challenging. My house has a hill on each side and behind it. Cell service is across the creek bottom and up on the hill across from the house. Both the phoneline and satellite service is slow and unreliable.

I go to town to use the service there. Except town is a half hour’s drive from the house so I only go in three days a week for the summer, two in the winter. That also makes sure I will never be a successful blogger.

Lu ends up going to conferences and other engagements because of her blogging. The farthest I go is town normally. I milk twice a day and must be home to do it. My day begins at the end of morning chores and ends at the beginning of evening chores.

I will never be a successful blogger. But then, I don’t mind. I like my simple life and don’t want to trade it in for the manmade world.

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Photographing Spring Wildflowers

The biggest problem with spring is the unending demands on my time. Between the goats, chicks, garden and photographing spring wildflowers, I seem to do nothing but work and run.

Each item on my list is important. This year they are complicated by the rain storms that keep rolling through. Most drop only enough to be annoying, if welcome for the moisture.

One last one added an item to my list as it washed seven planks off the bridge. These must be found, collected and put back in place. In the meantime the goats stand gazing longingly over to the hill pasture.

I try to go out walking somewhere every day photographing spring wildflowers. Rain is not good for a digital camera so I pack a plastic bag just in case.

photographing spring wildflowers like Robin's Plantain must be done when the plants bloom
Robin’s Plantain comes up, blooms, makes seeds and dies back by mid summer. That is typical for a spring ephemeral wildflower. It makes photographing them challenging as you have to get out to find the plants while they are to be found.

Many of the early spring wildflowers are ephemerals meaning they come up, bloom, set seed and vanish until next year. That makes it important to get out often as the flowers may only be there a day or two.

Photographing spring wildflowers is the easy part. It’s easy if you don’t count the ticks, mosquitoes, fallen trees to clamber over, poison ivy, standing water puddles, slippery gravel, steep hills and other fun things encountered. Yes, there are snakes, but I am far too noisy for them to stick around so I can spot them.

Once there are a hundred pictures or so on my camera (one or two walks worth), there is the time to download all of them. Each type of plant must be put into the proper folder so I can find it later.

I’ve been told I can simply tag the pictures. Then I have to know the names as unknown number will do nothing for retrieval. It’s easier to sort them by families as even ones I don’t recognize normally do end up in the right folder to make identification easier later on.

photographing spring wildflowers includes trees like black locust
These white slippers are bigger than the ones on a redbud tree. They hang in numerous streamers from branch tips of a black locust. The trees grow wild along an urban creek, but can be planted in yards for shade. They are Ozark native trees.

The final step is picking out the pictures, resizing them and placing them into the botany project page for that plant. There are roughly 2000 plants in Dent County and that is a lot of pages.

I’m setting up all the pages. So many of them are still blank as I’ve not found the plants yet. Perhaps I never will complete this project.

The best part is hunting for and photographing spring wildflowers, both old friends and new ones. And I’ve already found half a dozen new ones this year.

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GKP Writing News

Getting Enough Sleep

Writing advice often includes sitting down daily and writing. When I’m not getting enough sleep, forget that.

I’ve been accused of never sitting still, always being busy doing something. There is truth to this. Sitting still makes me feel guilty as I have a long list of things to accomplish.

The entire day is spent moving from one item on the list to the next with a few minutes between to prepare. In hot weather this includes gulping down liquid.

Does this sound familiar? When I read about other writers, they seem to be on the move all the time too.

Orange Cat looks innocent
Cats are opportunists. Anyone trying to take a nap seems to become a magnet for any passing cat. It’s impossible to sleep being kneaded or walked on by a hefty cat like Orange Cat. If that doesn’t work, some object can be shoved onto the floor.

Usually, I do wrap up before midnight and get some sleep. There are times my schedule falls apart.

Some items on my list destroy getting enough sleep. Mucking out the barn is one. It is hard, physical labor even using the tractor for hauling the manure away.

Even with the usual amount of sleep, the next day drags. Being tired makes putting one foot in front of the other a struggle. The mind is hazy. The head is heavy. Time ceases to exist. Hurrying is a foreign concept.

Sitting down in front of the computer is a waste of time. The page is there in front of me. The words blur and make no sense. The eyes close between every key stroke. The head sinks onto the keyboard resulting in half a page of dots.

The cure is a morning nap. An extra hour or two of sleep is the prescription. Filling the prescription is a challenge.

box turtle crashing leaves to prevent getting enough sleep
Three-toed box turtles march through the Ozark woods crunching the dead, dry leaves. Anyone trying to snooze wakes up expecting a monster on the loose.

Knowing I need to sleep, I settle in. The cats thump by. The phone rings. A tick or two start digging in.

The resolution is to get to bed earlier than usual. Getting enough sleep is essential. I cannot function tired.

Then again, maybe I will go for a walk up the hill. I can settle in against a tree and sleep with only the creatures and wind to disturb me.

“My Ozark Home” visits some of my favorite places.

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GKP Writing News

Finding Writing Time

So many happenings occur in spring, I’m having trouble finding writing time. I know, excuses, excuses. Except it’s true.

My does are having spring kids. This year I have four bottle babies. The barn needs cleaning out again and it rains every two or three days.

That makes gardening difficult as the dirt is now mud. The only good thing is the lack of frost. I was tired of putting blankets over the tomato and pepper plants.

The wildflowers are blooming. I do have that ongoing botany project needing pictures. It is tiresome to get out on the hills and have rain start. Digital cameras hate to get wet.

So do I.

rain makes finding writing time easier
Well, the novel I’m supposed to be working on is about a flood and its aftermath. The weather seems to be reminding me. Our neck of the Ozarks has been getting rain every two or three days for over a month. The south pasture has standing water several inches deep along the hill above it which is different. Even the garden with its gravelly soil is getting muddy.

What excuses do you have?

Your excuses are likely as true as mine. At least we tell ourselves they are.

And it is so easy to keep putting off our writing. Until writing becomes little more than a vague dream.

Enough already!

It is Writing Time!

Repeat after me: Finding Writing Time is possible. I will make the time. I will use the time for writing.

What will I write? I have two projects competing for my attention.

My botany project is running hot right now because I am bringing in so many new pictures. This year I am participating in a citizen science project putting up plant pictures.

Virginia bluebells are one of the many Ozark wildflowers blooming
The many Ozark wildflowers like these Virginia bluebells make finding writing time harder. So many of these plants are spring ephemerals, blooming for a short time in the spring, setting seed and vanishing. The botany project makes heading out with the camera valid, but no writing gets done.

The downside is how much time it takes. The upside is the incentive to get out to take the pictures and a chance to have some help identifying some I don’t know.

The allure of the botany project is how easy it is to do the pages. Each plant page has pictures and a single sentence.

My novel is complicated. I’m about half through the draft and it’s getting sticky. It digs up emotions.

Finding writing time is only part of the problem. Tackling the tough parts of writing is part of it too.

Several Ozark wildflowers are essay subjects in “Exploring the Ozark Hills“.

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Doing Research

Making up a draft is easy when the writer just writes with no regard for facts. The problem with that comes when the book is out to readers who quickly spot all the mistakes. Before doing the final draft, doing research is vital.

That much is obvious, I suppose. My problem is that I spot all the places I need to be doing research while I am supposed to be writing that rough draft. And I don’t get the writing done.

Most people would say doing research isn’t a problem. Just Google it.

Except it is a problem for me as I live in a dead zone which officially does not exist. I can’t ‘just Google it’.

I do have one advantage. I’ve lived in many places and done lots of things. Each place, each job, every person and happening from my past is a source of information.

Memory can play tricks. And times change. So, I may use the past to write the draft. Then double checking by doing research is a good back up.

In my present novel this has come into play. I have one character who carries all his financial information with him in a briefcase. What information needs to be in the briefcase?

My past experiences with finances, good and bad, let me come up with a credible list. I went with that to write that chapter. Then I asked a professional and got confirmation of my list.

The next hurdle will be beyond my experience. I will write the scenes from what little I know to start with. This will let me know what questions and information I will need. Then I will ask a professional.

I suppose I could ‘just Google it’ and get the information. Asking a professional takes the guess work out of the equation. And that is the point of doing research.

Sometimes the research requires drawing a map as for “Capri Capers“.

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Flood Novel Starting

Writing about a flood:

What would you do if you were stranded by a flood for two or three weeks? Your phone, your electricity and water are off. Your road is blocked by fallen trees. Your world is only a hilltop surrounded by flood waters.

Could you survive?

This is the basic plot of the novel I am writing on right now.

Of course, there are other factors involved. Her husband is a problem even though he is off driving a truck. She must face her own insecurities.

As a homesteader, she has livestock and flood damage to keep her busy.

Ozark creek in flood
Would you dare to step into this raging current? In my novel Mindy must do so in spite of the dangers of being swept away and drowned.

The novel is a partially done draft right now. I don’t know how the story ends yet. I don’t have a title yet.

What I do have is another rewrite and edit as I delve deeper into the story and Mindy’s emotions. If I can’t feel the emotions, I can’t make them real on the page. And that makes writing the draft hard as I must sink into the story while I am writing and dig my way out to go on with my day.

Reading:

Those who have visited my site before know I do a fair amount of reading every year. I post reviews and ratings on Goodreads under Karen GoatKeeper, averaging over 70 books a year.

At present I am reading the last Mrs. Pollifax novel, “Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled”. This is a thriller series starring, obviously, Mrs. Emily Pollifax.

Mrs. P was in her sixties and bored with nothing but club meetings and raising prize winning geraniums. Her teenage dream was to be a spy, so she went to Washington, D.C., and applied for a spying job at the CIA.

Through accidental mistaken identity, Mrs. P got her chance and the series was born. It’s lots of fun reading, especially for older women.

My other book is “A Drake At the Door” which is interesting, but disappointing as it is more about raising cut flowers than about the animals mentioned on the cover. The drake doesn’t appear until the last fifty pages.