Category: GKP Writing News

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GKP Writing News

Chemistry Investigations

The genesis for my Chemistry Project goes back decades to when I taught chemistry in high school. It was one of several subjects I taught every day. I developed chemistry investigations for my classes.

The advantage of school was my access to many chemicals and lots of equipment. That meant I could develop challenging experiments.

I considered these experiments challenging. The real challenge came later when I was developing the chemistry investigations for my new website.

Authors are supposed to have websites to promote their books and connect with fans.

cover of "The Pumpkin Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
Science is a ‘hands on’ subject using investigations and activities to encourage students to think about what they are learning and apply it to new circumstances. I use investigations, activities, pencil puzzles, trivia, stories, recipes and more in “The Pumpkin Project” to try to do this. And the supplies and equipments used are mostly things easily available.

My website did promote my books, only a couple at that time. What I wanted to do was attract people to my site. “The Pumpkin Project” was coming out soon.

To me, science is science. It is looking for why things happen the way they do and are as they are. Chemistry was a familiar subject so I decided to post chemistry investigations on my website.

Doing Chemistry At Home

At home I had none of the equipment or the chemicals I had used at school. The topics were the same. The challenge was to develop ways to suit these topics using equipment and chemicals anyone could find.

Why chemistry? One reason is how interesting it is. Another is that every other science has some relationship with chemistry. Yet another involves reactions, seeing things change form and color.

“The Chemistry Project” is taking shape using the posts I put up nearly ten years ago. A couple have needed changes. One Activity had to be redone entirely.

So far, the first part on the metric system is complete. The chemistry investigations are done for the second part on matter. I’m short a couple of puzzles, trivia and a Chem Story.

Importance of Science

Another problem has appeared. Putting “The Chemistry Project” together will take a lot of work. It is a science activity book. And science is now suspect.

People question the validity of science. They ban science books.

To me, this ignores the fact that most of those people would be dead without science just as half of all children died before the age of five only a couple of hundred years ago. Science created the materials in their clothes, the engines in their vehicles, the appliances in their homes.

And future scientists, the ones who will give us more technology, begin now with books like “The Chemistry Project” that challenge them to think, to use the knowledge they gain through experiments. There’s a lot riding on those chemistry investigations I’m developing. I hope they measure up.

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GKP Writing News

“The Cat Who Saved Books”

What is the power of books? Do you really love books? “The Cat who Saved Books” by Sosuke Natsukawa explores these questions.

The book is translated from the Japanese. The ideas it brings up should make you think, maybe re-evaluate your relationship with books.

Synopsis of “The Cat Who Saved Books”

Rintaro Natsuki is a high school student living with his grandfather who owns an old used book store filled with hard-to-find books. Rintaro hides himself away as a hikikomori burying himself in the books he loves and reads.

After the grandfather dies, Rintaro is left adrift. An aunt pushes him to close the shop and move in with her. He stands staring at the bookshelves thinking of nothing when he hears someone. All he sees is an orange tabby.

A tabby who announces the name Tiger Tabby and asks Rintaro to help rescue some abused books. Even as numb and uncaring as he is, Rintaro can’t refuse.

Three times the pair enter a Labyrinth. Three times they meet people who say they love books, but have somehow lost sight of that love. Each time there is a different approach to books and people’s relationships to them.

The fourth Labyrinth leaves Rintaro struggling to understand the immense power of books.

“The Cat who Saved Books” may be fiction, but books are under attack today because of their power. That power is frightening to those who would dictate to others. That power is why books are one of the first targets of such people.

Power of Reading Books

What is this immense power? Read “The Cat Who Saved Books” and find out even as you contemplate society’s changing attitudes toward books.

How do you access this power? By reading widely. It’s comforting to read only one genre or one author. By doing this you are robbing yourself.

Set a goal to read a book that stretches you out of your comfort zone once a week or a month or every fifth book. Try a book that challenges your view of the world or takes you to a time or place unfamiliar to you.

Open your mind to the power of books.

cover for "The City Water Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
So many people now seem to dislike or distrust science. In “The City Water Project” it becomes clear that we depend on science to supply, use and dispose of our water.
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Choosing Books

Choosing books to read is personal, a reflection of a person’s likes and dislikes. When I was young, nine or ten, my reading fell into two camps: Nancy Drew and Judy Bolton mysteries and horse stories.

The mysteries were on the shelf at home. I knew exactly where to find both fiction and nonfiction horse stories in the library. I read them, then reread my favorites.

Broadening My Horizons

One day my mother laid down the law. I was allowed only one horse story and had to take out some other kind of book each trip to the library. I was furious.

My mother encouraged me to read the classics. I met the Three Musketeers. I hated Gulliver’s Story and still do. Nature books came home often.

Teachers at school pushed my horizons even further with their reading lists. A list would have fifty to one hundred books on it with a requirement of four or five. Choosing books from the lists was up to the students.

At that time, I started out resenting such interference. I was happy with my few choices.

cover for "Waiting For Fairies" by Karen GoatKeeper
As in my reading, I stretch my writing to challenge my boundaries as with “Waiting For Fairies”, a picture book that I illustrated as well as wrote.

Reading Widely

Now I’m glad I was pushed out of such a narrow book focus. There are so many kinds of books by so many authors available. Many aren’t be to my taste. Others are welcome discoveries.

So many people seem to only read mysteries or thrillers or Westerns or romance or horror. Some even limit the number of authors they will read. What a shame. They are missing out on so many good books.

There are series I read all of. Tony Hillerman, the Cat Who books and Mrs. Pollifax come to mind. But these are not the only books I read.

I just finished “Zorro” by Isabel Allende translated from the Spanish. I’m reading “The Cat Who Saved Books” by Sosuke Natsukawa translated from the Japanese. Reading books from other cultures opens a window into the cultures of other countries.

“The Hate You Give” and “On the Come Up” by Angie Thomas opened a window into life in the inner city. “They Called Us Enemy” by George Takai taught me some U.S. history I was unaware of.

Choosing books from many authors, from and about many times and from many countries enlarges my life. Give it a try. You might find your world getting bigger too.

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Banning Books

An article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was about how banning books has become popular. For me, as both an author, reader and citizen, this is frightening, infuriating and frustrating.

An English teacher I had in high school told us about an incident in Arizona. It seems there were new literature books with selections from various time periods. A parent came to the school board decrying a story in which a knight put on his girdle and demanded the books be discarded.

Knights? Remember about the Dark Ages, Medieval Europe? Or maybe you don’t as so much of history seems skipped now.

At that time girdle was the name for a belt. It had nothing to do with women’s undergarments. What this parent was saying was that they were ignorant and wanted to punish everyone rather than learn something about how vocabulary changes over time.

How many other books are on the banned lists because vocabulary used in them is not today’s accepted form? Or attitudes? Use these as lessons in how we’ve changed, hopefully for the better.

Another book was a graphic novel about the Holocaust. A graphic novel is not a comic book although some are very close. This one is not.

I read a graphic novel “They Called Us Enemy” by George Takai. It was about the Japanese internment camps of World War II, camps ignored by history, denied by the government and educators. He had an interesting comment: We need to learn both the good and the bad in our history. The first makes us proud. The second is a way to do better, not repeat our mistakes.

Banning books is popular with dictators as a way to stifle thinking, knowledge, different viewpoints. Is that what we want here?

There are many books I choose not to read. Horror, romance and violent thrillers are among them. But I do not think I have the right to forbid those who like these genres to read them. And, yes, I’ve read a book or two in these genres before deciding to avoid them.

That is a most frustrating point about the present book banning. Most of these people have never read the books they want to ban. They heard about them on social media from some entity who may or may not be who they say they are.

We have many problems in our country. I choose not to write about them or politics or religion. But banning books thereby shutting off other viewpoints, facts we may not like, is not the way to solve those problems.

Problems are solved by getting them out in the open and listening, really listening, to each other. Respect is a two way street. And no one is always right about everything.

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Fast Novel Writing

I came across an article about writing novels for Kindle. It seems this author was turning out a book every nine weeks. That is fast novel writing time.

Now, I can write a novel draft in four weeks. NaNo (National Novel Writing Month) has taught me how to do that.

The steps are easy. I get an idea and think it through. Then I write down a bullet point list of plot ideas which may or may not appear in the draft. The last step is writing the draft of at least 50,000 words.

This is a rough draft. The characters aren’t really fully developed until half way through. Sometimes they even change names.

The plot has holes I can drive a semi through, if I drove a semi. There are side trips to places totally unrelated to the plot.

Facts are made up. I plan to check them out later.

In short, this is a draft, not a novel. It may be fast novel writing, but it isn’t ready for anyone to sit down and read.

cover for "Dora's Story" by Karen GoatKeeper
It took eight weeks to write “Dora’s Story”. It took a year to edit the novel. The draft timeline was wrong. The goat shows needed linking. I needed an illustrator. Then the grammar and spelling had to be checked. “Dora’s Story” was definitely not a product of fast novel writing.

Finishing Writing a Novel

Rewriting and editing can take months. All those facts need to be checked out. If I guessed wrong, the whole premise may fall apart leaving me writing an entirely new draft.

There is another reason I will never do fast novel writing for Kindle. I have a life outside of writing.

An author in my old writing group wanted to make it as an author. She raised sheep at the time. She sold all of them. Her husband joined her as they went to conferences.

The last I heard, she had made it as an author. All she did was research and write for her novel series.

I like my life. Going hiking and taking plant pictures. Milking the goats. Gardening. Watching the chickens.

Yes, I like writing. But fast novel writing consuming my life is not the way for me.

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Teaching Basic Chemistry

Teaching basic chemistry was something I looked forward to when I was teaching high school sciences. Every year brought new challenges.

I suppose chemistry can be taught strictly from a book. That is so boring to me because science is hands on, experiments, seeing how things work. So my classes spent a lot of time in the lab.

There are lots of experiments available for a chemistry class. Most of them take lots of expensive equipment and chemicals. Small schools like the ones I was teaching basic chemistry in often don’t have lots of money for such supplies.

Some of those chemicals can be dangerous. Acids, poisons, fumes. These were not things I wanted to use a lot of in my classes. High school students aren’t always the most careful people.

Writing Science Activity Books

After I left teaching in a classroom and started writing books instead, science activity books seemed a good fit. Except I didn’t want a textbook, I wanted something more fun, more challenging.

I tackled botany first with “The Pumpkin Project” and found the concept of a science investigation, science activity, trivia, puzzles, stories and more fit the bill. But I also found writing such a book was a lot of work.

cover of "The Pumpkin Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
Fall investigations in “The Pumpkin Project” ask things like how to count all the seeds in a pumpkin (There’s more than one way.), just before you use the recipe for roasting them. How much water is in a pumpkin? Find out and make some pumpkin cookies too.

Instead of writing another book, I put chemistry projects first and motion physics later on my website. This brought up the challenge of how to do these without all the equipment I used to use from my storage closet. That forced me to take a good look at the experiments to find ways to achieve the same goals using everyday supplies.

This led to my second science activity book, “The City Water Project”. It has the investigations, activities, trivia, puzzles and stories I like to include. Lots of work went into doing all the investigations, activities and puzzles.

Tackling Basic Chemistry

Those chemistry projects sitting around bugged me. I started playing around with the idea for “The Chemistry Project”. Trivia and puzzles are harder for chemistry. Story ideas are harder too.

Still, there is the challenge of teaching basic chemistry for fifth grade up and all those projects using easy to obtain equipment and supplies.

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GKP Writing News

Writing Fear Procrastination

Many writers have this little voice inside that says their writing stinks. I have that plus a legacy of being told I couldn’t write anything worthwhile. These blossom into a writing fear procrastination that kills books.

At present there are four writing projects begging to be worked on. Two are nearly ready for a final rewrite as soon as I finish up another twenty to thirty pages of draft. One is a new attempt to finish up an old idea for a science activity book. The last is my Dent County Flora, a project I have little hope of ever completing.

I do love to go hiking and taking pictures. The Flora project encourages me to do both. It’s easy to immerse myself in this project, especially in the spring and summer when so many plants are blooming. This year alone has added at least a dozen new plants and completed the picture series for even more.

passion flower lure away from writing fear procrastination
Passion flowers are one of many Ozark wildflowers luring me away to go hiking and taking pictures instead of working on my novels. It’s so easy to justify writing fear procrastination.

Except there are 2,000 plants to find in Dent County. Many grow in places some distance away from home where I have difficulty getting due to time constraints.

This should be a fun hobby, not my main writing project.

All summer I have done little except the website posts and the Flora pages. My two novels have been ignored. Even worse, I see my writing fear procrastination in full force when I even think about them.

There is a cure, sort of. Nothing really makes those little voices go away. However, they can be shoved into a corner and ignored.

The cure? Sit down at the computer. Open the novel file. Find where I left off on the draft. And write 500 words every day. In two weeks the draft will be done.

Except today I have to finish the two posts for the website for tomorrow. This means downloading pictures. So much for another hour.

And writing fear procrastination wins for another morning.

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Choosing Fonts

Being a former science teacher, I still browse through several science magazines like Science News, Discover and Smithsonian. These normally ignore writing, except for a little article this month on choosing fonts to keep the readers’ interests.

What does font have to do with helping a reader remember a piece of reading?

Who Wanted to Know?

A psychology study compared how fonts affected a reader’s learning and memory when reading an article. I know. A psychology study. Highly subjective. Be skeptical.

However other experiments confirm this study’s conclusions.

Comparing Fonts

Anyone with a computer knows there are certain favorite fonts, default fonts. Times New Roman and Arial are very popular because they are easy to read.

These flunk the retention test.

Instead, fonts such as Bodoni, Comic Sans and Monotype Corsiva increase retention. They are harder to read and force a reader to pay attention to what they are reading. That gets the mind to focus on the article more.

choosing fonts has a new twist
Do you recognize these fonts? Each line is a different font. In line order: Ties New Roman, Georgia, Arial, Bodini, Lucinda Cartography, Old English, Comic Sans and Montype Corsiva.

Unfortunately, my favorite font, Georgia, is not the ideal font to use. It’s similar to Times New Roman only slimmer, cleaner looking to me. I happen to like serifs on the letters.

Perhaps I should change to Monotype Corsiva. It too has the serifs. And there is that hint of italic slant. Even better, people pay attention more when reading it.

Dressing Up Fonts

The study did check into Bold and Italics. Both did increase retention when used sparingly. It seems using these to emphasize something makes the mind pay more attention to the words leading to better retention.

Choosing Fonts for Me

In spite of this study, I will stay with my favorite font. When originally choosing fonts to use both on my website and in my writing, I looked at all of the ones available on my computer at that time. Georgia is still my favorite. Although I used Lucinda Calligraphy on the pages of my Dent County Flora project.

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Finding Book Readers

All of my books are special to me. That doesn’t mean everyone else will find them special. Finding book readers interested in each book is part of marketing books.

Saying a book appeals to everyone is dreaming. No book appeals to everyone. How do you find those people a book does appeal to?

Determining Book Audiences

Finding book readers for my books will take some thought. Let’s focus on these four: “Waiting For Fairies”, “Capri Capers”, “For Love of Goats” and “Asclepias: A Study of the Living Plants of the United States”.

The first step toward finding book readers is taking a good look at the book. What kind of book is it? Who might want to read it?

Looking at “Waiting For Fairies”, I see it is a picture book to be read to a young child. It has a number of Ozark night creatures in it. And it has a bit of whimsy with fairies in some illustrations.

cover for "Waiting For Fairies" by Karen GoatKeeper
Fairies capture people’s imaginations. They do lure this young child out one night to watch for fairies at a ring of mushrooms called a fairy ring.

This book might appeal to parents of a preschool child, if the family is interested in nature along with fairy stories.

Both “Capri Capers” and “For Love of Goats” have goats in them. Both are humorous. The first is an over-the-top melodrama complete with dastardly villain, heroine and hero with lots of action. The second is fun short selections about goats, many filled with tongue twisters and alliteration.

These might appeal to people raising or wanting to raise goats. The first might also appeal to a reader who likes a fast-paced, humorous story. The second might appeal to people who like words and the sounds of words.

Nonfiction Poses Challenges

“Asclepias” is far different. It is a serious botanical work on milkweeds covering how milkweed flowers work, growing milkweeds along with the history and detailed descriptions of each species of milkweed found in the United States. It is highly illustrated with diagrams and photographs.

cover of "Asclepias: A Study of the Living Plants of the United States" Volume 2 by Dr. Richard E. Rintz
These are large, full-sized books with a total page count near 900 necessitating breaking the work into three volumes.

Dr. Rintz wrote these volumes so the serious amateur not necessarily familiar with botanical terms could understand what he was describing. The readers for this book might be these serious amateurs along with professional botanists interested in milkweeds.

The next step after finding book readers in theory is finding them for real. For me that presents big challenges.

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Marketing My Books

As a self-published author, part of my writing task is marketing my books. That is a challenge for any author trying to get their book noticed among the thousands of books published every year.

Those who claim to know how to do this tout social media, getting book reviews, paid advertising and taking part in various book promotions. All of these take time and a different mind set than writing.

Marketing my books takes me not only wanting, but actively doing promotions about my books. This is very hard for me.

marketing my books includes "Asclepias: A Study of the Living Plants of the United States" by Dr. Richard E. Rintz
Milkweeds are popular now because of the monarch butterflies. Some are. Most are not as they are small and little known. They can be hard to find. Dr. Rintz found them all and included them in this three-volume set.

When I was young, girls had very few options in life. All of them were subservient to men. Promoting any of your own endeavors was frowned upon, even actively despised and discouraged.

Times have changed, supposedly. My mind set has not. I can easily promote someone else’s book, but not mine. I do try by putting on an act and talking about my books, but inside I cringe at such unseemly behavior.

People are starting to think about buying things for gifts. Marketing my books as gifts is so tempting. Which of my books will I focus on? There isn’t time to promote my fourteen and Dr. Rintz’ five.

Perhaps I can focus on three of mine and one of Dr. Rintz’. “Asclepias: A Study of the Living Plants of the United States” is an easy choice. Even though the botanical world has either not noticed or ignored this work, it is an important one.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
I dare you. I double dare you to read these tongue twisters and alliterative stories aloud.

Which of mine will I choose? Picture books are popular. That would be “Waiting For Fairies”.

Among all my books, I do have two favorites. “Capri Capers” was such fun to write and is a romp of a book, a crazy blending of 1930s movie serial and melodrama. Thinking up all of those cliff hangers and goat antics was challenging and sometimes made me laugh.

The sounds of words, the cadence of spoken words as in Poe’s poem “The Bells” or Noyes’ “The Highwayman” delight me. Tongue twisters and alliteration abound in “For Love of Goats”.

Marketing my books is difficult both in time and determination, but I will try.