Category: GKP Writing News

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GKP Writing News

Novel Boring Times

It’s happening in my Mindy novel: novel boring times. The run up to the storm and the storm had happenings every day. Now comes the clean up.

Mindy is all alone. The road is washed out. The phone and electricity are out. Water is in short supply. The fences are down and need to be repaired.

So Mindy’s days become much alike: checking for the road crew repairing the road and repairing fences. After one description, this is boring.

I suppose I could toss in a few snakes, broken posts, snapping chain. It’s still the same old stuff over and over. Clear the debris off the fence, back the tractor to the post, attach the chain, ease the tractor forward to pull the post back up, tap the post with the sledge hammer to secure it, release the chain and move on to the next post.

Novel boring times. They bore the writer. They bore the reader.

Novel boring times can use friendly faces like Nubian goats
Mindy is isolated from the human world, but not her place. She has her cat, her chickens and her goats to keep her company. Sometimes telling your animals about a problem helps you make sense of it.

This is an important time. Mindy has lots of decisions to think about and make. Thinking is really hard when a person is bone tired.

There is the livestock. Most of the routines were written about already. Little is changing other than not doing chores in the rain.

Up until now the novel has gone one day at a time. In these novel boring times, do I continue to do a day-by-day account, only hitting a few highlights? Or do I lump several days together?

And right after these pages comes lots of happenings. Writing advice sometimes says to write these events first and fill in the other later. It’s tempting.

My problem is me. If I write the end of the book, it will be that much harder to come back and fill in these novel boring times. I will be impatient and skimp.

Boring as these days are, they are important. Skimping will break the flow of the novel. Off to do the drudgery writing telling myself the novel will be worth it.

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Dent County Flora Books

I started taking wildflower pictures when I got my first digital camera. That was when I wrote Nature Notes for the Kaleidoscope, a local ad paper. These first morphed into “Exploring the Ozark Hills” and now are the basis for my Dent County Flora books.

Plants are interesting subjects to photograph. The best part is that they don’t disappear while I am setting my camera up. I can also get up close to most of them. (Water plants, stinging nettles etc. are given space.)

If you haven’t looked at plants much, you should. They come in a wide range of sizes, colors, scents and uses.

Plants are usually some shade of green. Indian Pipe, Pinesap and Coral Orchids aren’t green.

Wildflowers range from less than an eighth of an inch across to six inches around here. Some don’t have petals. Flowering dogwoods have white bracts (special leaves) with yellow green flowers in the center.

Dent County Flora books photograph of nodding spurge flower
Notice my finger tip compared to this flower. Many flowers are very small and difficult to photograph. There are two flowers in this picture. The white, four petal one is the male producing pollen. Below it is the green female with pistil sticking out. This plant is the Nodding Spurge, Euphorbia nutans, and will be in Dent County Whites.

Wanting to know what these plants were named, I needed several pictures of each. The flower, the back of the flower, the leaf, under the leaf, the stem, the fruit or seedpod and the plant adds up into a lot of photographs. And more than one of each thing is a good idea.

Every year I took more photographs and stored them. The stash got bigger and bigger, filling a 16GB key, then a second one. I hate having them sit unused.

An ulterior motive was an excuse to go hiking. This would add even more photographs to my stash.

A second motive was a challenge. How many kinds of plants could I find and identify? This had to be in my county as the goats keep me close to home.

Enter the Dent County Flora books. My list of plants found in Dent County has some 2000 plants on it. One book will not work. So there are the Dent County Blues, the Dent County Reds, the Dent County Whites, the Dent County Greens etc.

Will I ever find them all? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s enjoyable looking for the plants, getting the pictures and creating the pages of my Dent County Flora books.

I have assembled some pages from the Dent County Blues into a pdf found here.

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Admitting Mistakes

Admitting mistakes is hard to do. It’s especially hard when it is a public mistake, even when it was an accidental mistake.

I’m not a botanist, only an amateur. I study books, pictures, descriptions to identify the plants I find. There are huge folders of pictures labeled unknown on my computer.

Sunflowers are notoriously difficult to identify. I came across one that seemed so different, it had to be easy to identify.

Texas Green Eyes flower
I suppose I had wondered why these ray petals were spaced. The Helianthus sunflowers like the Ashy Sunflower have closely spaced and overlapping ray petals. Texas Green Eyes has the spaces between the rays.

Overconfidence breeds mistakes.

I studied various sources and decided this plant was the Ashy Sunflower and have believed this for ten years. And been mistaken for ten years.

There is an old saying that none are so blind as those who will not see. That was me.

The sunflowers are coming into bloom again. And I am taking pictures of them again. And putting most into the unknown folder again.

Meeting this old friend was pleasant until I took pictures and realized something I had blindly overlooked: the leaf arrangement.

reason for admitting mistakes
So many of the sunflowers blooming in mid to late summer have opposite leaves. I assumed this plant did too. But, if you look like I finally did, these leaves are alternate. Texas Green Eyes has alternate leaves. Ashy Sunflower has opposite leaves.

Simple plant leaves are grouped into opposite where the leaves stick out across from each other, whorled where more than one leaf sticks out across from each other, basal where the leaves are from a central ground source and alternate where one leaf goes off followed by another in a different direction further up the stem.

Ashy Sunflowers have opposite leaves. My familiar plant has alternate leaves. It is not an Ashy Sunflower.

Texas Green Eyes leaf
What’s really pretty about the Texas Green Eyes leaf is the scalloped edge. Most leaves have points on the teeth on the edges.

Admitting mistakes believed true for years is very hard. I didn’t believe what I saw. I checked other plants. The leaves were alternate. I was wrong and I had posted this mistake, insisting I was right.

My plant is a Texas Green Eyes. The pictures on www.missouriplants.com make this obvious. I have fixed this mistake in my botany project.

Everyone makes mistakes about lots of things. We can believe these mistakes for years. We blindly believe them even when presented with evidence we are wrong.

Admitting mistakes may be hard, but changing our mistaken beliefs seems to be even harder.

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Library Beach Story

The summer reading program at the library was about the ocean this year. This year one of the activities was to write a beach story.

Although the program is mostly for the younger set, some of the activities include us older people. Writing a beach story was one and a picture involving water is another.

Dangling a writing prompt in front of a writer begs for a response. I tried to ignore it. I was going hiking to photograph flowers, not plan out a story.

Walking is a good excuse for my mind to wander. After all, I grew up in southern California and spent lots of time at the ocean. There are so many memories.

At El Capitan State Beach one fall I found a mermaid’s purse. It was rectangular with the look and feel of a piece of kelp. Mermaid’s purses are eggs laid by a shark or ray. My tenth-grade science teacher set it up in a tank and it hatched into a six-inch swell shark a few months later.

There were two students I helped with snorkeling as part of their science project.

On yet another visit, the sand was covered with butterfly clams. These are wedge-shaped clams up to an inch long with lots of color patterns.

I’m not interested in doing memoirs. The memories were only to provide a stepping stone into a story. None of them seemed to work until another adventure came to mind.

Not all beaches have sand or rocks. I had visited two mud beaches. When the tide is in, there is a bay small boats can cross. When the tide is out, a vast expanse of mud is revealed. Under the mud live clams.

And I had my stepping stone to a beach story.

People often ask where a writer gets their ideas. Memories are one place, memories long forgotten until a writing prompt brings them back.

My beach story along with others will be posted on the Salem Public Library page. This is the Salem, Missouri, library.

Time to write is another factor. Read more in this post.

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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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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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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.