Category: GKP Writing News

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GKP Writing News

Editing This Picture Book

Finishing a picture book isn’t so different from finishing a novel. Of course, “Ducks Love Hats” has no text, but each and every illustration must be checked and rechecked. If I’m lucky, I will catch any mistakes while editing this picture book.

How the Illustrations Were Done

The Creating Picture Book course started with five young people. Family problems took three of them away just as we were starting to draw the parts of the illustrations.

What I was left with were the four ducks in a variety of poses and eight hats. I had already volunteered to do the backgrounds. What I lacked, and two of those who had to leave were good at, were the people. People are a big challenge for me.

All of the ducks and hats were scanned into my computer. All of the background pages were scanned in.

Next, I did people outlines. There were two family groups of parents and two children. They did various things so I needed lots of different poses for each one. One saving part was being able to reuse some of the poses as the families came at different times in the story. Once the outlines were scanned in, I painted the people.

Using layers each person, duck and hat were put into the illustrations. I like using layers for this as I can resize and move them as needed.

"Ducks Love Hats" page
A happy duck family swims away with their hats in “Ducks Love Hats” by Karen GoatKeeper and others.

Assembling the Picture Book

The layered illustrations are merged, saved and inserted into the book. The book itself is a Word document with 0.1” margins.

Then editing this picture book began. Hats were missing. Ducks were missing. People weren’t in the right places.

This is why I save the layered illustration as well as the merged one. I can open the layered one, make the needed changes, merge and insert the corrected illustration.

Final Touches

Title page and cover are the last things I do. However, editing this picture book will go on as several people look over the pages of the book itself without the title page and cover. I’m hoping they don’t find any more mistakes.

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GKP Writing News

Changing World of Writing

How the world of writing has changed! Writers today are very blessed with the technology available to them.

In the Past

I’ve just finished reading “Humboldt’s Cosmos” about Alexander Humboldt, a leading scientist around 1800 (review on Goodreads). All he had for taking notes was paper and pencil or, maybe a goose quill or fountain pen.

Over the five years Humboldt was exploring in South America, Mexico and Cuba, he wrote thousands of pages of observations and measurements. He was one of the last generalists, doing work that laid the foundations for vulcanology, meteorology, archeology, ecology and more. Plus he discovered and catalogued thousands of new plants. Animals were in his field of study as well.

His notes were precious as there was only one copy. Preparing them for publication was done in pencil or fountain pen giving only one copy.

All those famous writers of the past faced the same conditions. No wonder the typewriter was a big hit.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
This book would never get done on a typewriter. Using a computer I could add the illustrations correctly sized and do some fancy fonts for the cover.

Typewriters

The old typewriters were no fun to type on. It took lots of practice and strong fingers. An advantage was being able to make a carbon copy.

Don’t think there was this special paper. There was carbon paper. It had powdered carbon on one side. A sheet was placed between two pieces of plain paper and fed into the typewriter. When a typewriter key hit the top paper, it pressed a carbon letter onto that second sheet.

Correcting mistakes was very difficult. Accuracy was highly valued in a typist.

Typewriters improved. Paper improved. Electric models appeared. The scripts could be changed. But the writing was still one row of words, the same size, the same intensity – forget bold.

Today’s World of Writing

Typewriters gave way to word processers. Then came the personal computers. This opened up so many options for the writer.

Make a mistake? Back up and retype, no correction fluid or eraser required. Want to move a sentence or paragraph? Highlight it, click on it and drag it to a new location. Prefer a different font? Pick one. Bold it. Italicize it.

Illustrations? Import a picture already cropped, resized and enhanced right into the text. Add a caption, if you want.

I love the new world of writing, most of the time. When the electricity goes out, when the computer crashes, then typewriters have an appeal.

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GKP Writing News

Class Picture Book

Presenting the Creating Picture Book class was challenging, but I’m glad it’s over. Except it isn’t really over yet. The class picture book isn’t done yet.

Getting Started

The class was supposed to last five weeks. However, no one came the first week. There were many reasons. Still, I was left loafing in the room enjoying the air conditioning, reading and working on the first Agate and Opal picture book.

Five people came the second week. There were seven, if you counted the two mothers. Three were young. Two were high school age and serious. We spent the time looking at picture books, discussing the range of illustrations and text.

Then the class decided on a topic for their book. We started a rough draft of pages.

Frustration

Any novel or picture book needs a plan. It’s possible to do a rough draft without one, but actually putting the work together requires some sense of what is happening. For a picture book, this is a story board.

That third week was supposed to complete the story board, but it didn’t happen. Without a plan, the class couldn’t do any prep work over the next week.

I spent the week trying to organize the ideas the class had into a storyboard. Luckily I knew two of the participants and saw them later on. We went over the plan I came up with, made a few changes.

Class Picture Book: Do Ducks Steal Hats?
The Creating Picture Book class picture book started as a cute idea and is turning into a cute book.

Disaster

Family emergencies happen. Still, this one took three people out of the class. The two remaining still wanted to do the class picture book, so everyone pitched in to draw the ducks, hats and people for the story.

The problem was time. Because there were so few of us, the class picture book was going to be mostly done on the computer. It takes a very, very long time to create 32 pages.

Our class picture book “Do Ducks Steal Hats?” (tentative title) will get done. It will take longer than the one week I had before the last class.

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GKP Writing News

Why My Books Are In the Library

Writing a book is hard work and takes lots of time. Publishing and advertising can cost a lot. Won’t putting a book in the library ruin sales?

“Missouri Biosphere” by Roy Shaw and Louise Harding

Although I rarely read dystopian novels, I would read this one. I know the authors. This is their first book. I read a book and post a review on Goodreads, something they want to happen.

But it won’t happen. I don’t purchase books now except rarely for research as I have too many books on my shelves and too little time to get them read and given away. My income is too limited to purchase a book solely to read it and give it away.

cover for "Edwina" by Karen GoatKeeper
This is one of the upper middle grade novels readers can find in my local library.

Other Readers

Lots of people don’t normally buy books, but love to read them. I see them checking out piles of books. They join groups and tell others about the books they like. This is free advertising.

Some of these people check out and read a book, then buy a copy. Often these are ones they will send off as gifts. More free advertising.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
Several people have read this book in my library, then purchased copies.

My Books

I depend on my library. Although I live out of town and must pay for my library card, I value it highly. It lets me use much better internet than is available at my house, read magazines without subscribing and wondering what to do about the pile of old ones, read books from over 50 libraries through a special consortium and write reviews for the newsletter and Goodreads.

My library gives so much to me, I want to give something back. When I publish a book, I make sure a copy goes in the library.

People check out and read my books. They buy copies to send to family and friends. Putting my books in the library is good for everyone.

When “Missouri Biosphere” appears in my library, I will be among the first to check it out.

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GKP Writing News

Preparing for Class

My Creating Picture Books class is now being advertised. I have flyers up. I left some at the local schools. The local paper carried a press release. The local radio station announced it. That leaves me preparing for class.

I procrastinated. There were no names on the sign up sheet. A feeling of relief vied with disappointment.

cover for "Waiting For Fairies" by Karen GoatKeeper
This was the first picture book I finished. The text was written years before I found the courage to do the illustrations.

Someone Signed Up

The first person is signed up. That leaves the class has an event. I am now preparing for class for real.

Anticipation is now vying with an intense desire to cancel the class. Yes, I have completed three picture books, three illustrated books and illustrated activity books. Does this make me good enough to teach this class?

Changes in the Course

The original course has worksheets to hand out. I was going to charge for the course which would pay for running off these worksheets. That turned into too big a hassle so the course is free. The worksheets may have to be cancelled.

Perhaps the library meeting room is set up for a powerpoint presentation. I haven’t done one in twenty years, but can probably manage one? Hum. Are my nerves and insecurities moving in?

Once I finished the first picture book, I dared to do the illustrations for the other text sitting on my computer for years.

Tackling the Fears

Such fears seem to plague many writers. Books never get finished or languish unpublished because of them.

Teachers can get these fears too. I always dreaded the first day of school. All those new faces, names to learn, new lesson plans were so terrifying.

My Creating Picture Book course will happen. There will be people taking it. The fears may be there, but they need to be squelched.

Preparing for class will help. Either a powerpoint presentation or poster board presentation is needed. A list of picture books to look through on the first day needs assembling.

The course is ready. I have edited and rewritten it more than once. All I have to do is hold on and walk into the room on that first day.

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GKP Writing News

Ending NaNo

I’ve participated in NaNo (National Novel Writing Month) every year since 2008. Many of my novels began as those mad November dashes. Now I hear they are ending NaNo.

The Challenge

Every November the goal was to write 50,000 words of a new novel before the end of the month. This is 1,670 words a day.

At the beginning this sounded like a huge undertaking. And it was. The result was a rough draft novel mostly done.

The purpose was to goad and urge the writer to write straight through the novel idea. There was no time to rethink or edit, only time to keep writing. The self doubts, the little voice saying the writing is no good, had no chance to make much headway as there was that 1,670 word goal to reach.

cover for "Broken Promises" by Karen GoatKeeper
This was my first NaNo novel back in 2008. The first year the novel fell apart. It did get me started and I completed the challenge every year after that.

Ending NaNo

I didn’t interact with the forums very much as I have little internet time each week. Rumors started up about people abusing the forum spaces and how NaNo was run.

How much of this was true? I don’t know and really don’t care. All that matters is that my November challenge is now gone.

Over the summer, my time gets split up in so many directions. There is supposed to be a couple of hours each morning to write, but hot weather pushes me outside. When I get in, I’m tired, too tired to write.

NaNo gave me a push to get my writing time back on track again. Somehow, it’s easier to have an outside push than to make the effort myself.

cover for "Dora's Story" by Karen GoatKeeper
This novel turned out to be much longer and more complicated than any I had done previously. I started doing CampNaNo to finish this book and later used Camp to work on picture books and other novels.

What Now?

Can I find another writing group to work with? Surely there are some out there, mostly on Facebook which I am not. And searching takes time I don’t have.

So, for now, I’m on my own. It’s easy to pretend to do NaNo in November or Camp NaNo in April and July. It’s also easy to let it slide as there is no set deadline looming.

And I have a history of missing deadlines so I will miss NaNo. Still, there are those books to finish this year.

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Foraging the Ozarks

I am not much of a forager. However, the Carduan Chronicles is forcing me to learn more about foraging. One book to read is “Foraging the Ozarks” by Bo Brown.

Ozark Survival

One of the ships in the Carduan Chronicles lands in a Ozark ravine. Those on board are stranded and must learn to live on this strange, new planet.

An immediate need is food. The Carduans must discover which plants growing wild in a ravine and old pasture are edible and which parts of the plants taste good.

Dandelions food on Carduan world
One of the first edible plants easy to find in the spring is the dandelion. Although it is an import from Europe and occasional near creeks and pasture edges, it could be found by the Carduans. Both the flowers and leaves are edible. The root can be roasted and used for a coffee substitute.

As a Writer

I am a gardener, not a forager. Many years ago I wrote a Nature Note column for a local paper and met an old woman who had grown up foraging. She introduced me to several so-called weeds that were good to eat.

Most of these plants were brought over from Europe and grow wild. But they prefer disturbed places like gardens and lawns. They are rarely found out on the hills and in the ravines.

Most foraging books focus on these common plants. I needed to learn about the others. “Foraging the Ozarks” is a book including many of these other plants.

amazing pawpaw cluster
One of my favorite wild edible is the pawpaw in late summer/early fall. Unfortunately for the Carduans, the pawpaw is a tree. However, sometimes the ripe fruits aren’t eaten before they fall to the ground.

The Next Step

It’s fine to read about these edible plants. The problem is that I must rely on someone else’s opinion about them.

This leaves me looking for and taste testing these wild plants. I’ve found many of them before taking pictures for my Dent count Flora project. Now I’m looking them up again to take a nibble of leaves and fruit. Many do have edible roots, but I hate to dig the plants up.

A final consideration is the size of the plants. The Carduans are only four inches tall. Trees might present very big problems for them.

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Finding Plot Holes

Finding plot holes is such a mess. A main character in Life’s rules has a birthday including family party. Except it never happened. Oops.

This is where a good plot outline would help, I suppose. Or maybe not. Sarah’s birthday wasn’t really part of the plot originally.

Finding Plot Holes

I write from a list of bullet points. These are a rough idea of what the plot looks like, but doesn’t really add any details.

None of these points is definite. Some get ignored. Others get added as the plot takes shape in the rough draft.

In Life’s Rules, there are several subplots. Some of these are being eliminated. Others are being expanded on. Keeping track of them is complicated especially as spring brings so many other activities fragmenting my writing time.

My method to keep track of them and find problems is to make an outline as I rewrite the rough draft. It’s not a formal outline, just a list of day events as the novel unfolds in days.

Another Outline

There are many characters in Life’s Rules. Some are families. Parents, spouses, children, grandchildren all need names and an outline of relationships.

Each also needs a few details about each character. The ages, grades and interests of the grandchildren are important.

I didn’t do this outline once. One of the characters changed names over the course of the novel. Catching this mistake luckily happened before the final draft.

cover for "Dora's Story" by Karen GoatKeeper
This story too had a massive plot hole in it. It took several outlines to finally get the plot and timing done correctly.

After Finding Plot Holes

Once a plot hole is spotted, the rewrite begins. Since this particular hole is a major problem, the rewrite is like writing a new rough draft at this point until the other events can be placed on new days.

The frustrating part of this is how I keep rambling on with text full of goings on. Each has a bearing on the main plot, but one goal of this rewrite was to cut the word count, not add to it.

So, I now get to do another rewrite after finishing this one to try again to shorten this massive story.

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Writing Unknowns

One of the big annoyances in reading is looking through a book about a familiar subject only to find the author didn’t really know the subject. The book, often part of a series, was written by a freelance writer from research. They were writing unknowns.

Two Nubian goats are loud
Dairy goats have their horns disbudded so they don’t grow. This is safer for the goats and the goat owner. Rose and Drucilla aren’t show goats, but they don’t look like the common caricatures many people draw of goats.

Examples

The library shelved a picture book on goats. Of course, I checked it out. The text was suitable for a picture book. The pictures were sharp and clear. Except the goats.- dairy goats! -in the pictures had horns.

Anyone familiar with dairy goats knows breeders disbud their kids. Horned dairy goats aren’t shown or, if they are, have lots of lost points because of the horns. This goes back decades as dairy goat owners wanted a positive picture of their beautiful goats, not a billy goat gruff caricature.

My friend owned an old John Deere tractor for years. Reading through a book on such tractors no mention was made of a quirk of such tractors. The writer had never owned a tractor and it showed.

Writing Unknowns in Life’s Rules

I have no Facebook account for several reasons. I’m not online at home and don’t have a cell phone. Rural Missouri has reception issues and the hills surrounding my house compound them.

In Life’s Rules, the main character Stephanie must get an email account, a Facebook account, a credit card. She goes to places I’ve never been. She speaks languages I have little familiarity with. I am writing unknowns.

This is when a writer must depend on others to look over the draft. Is the description right? Are the conversations right? Should the names be changed?

In the meantime, I am writing unknowns trying to sound like I know what I’m writing about. After all, I need a draft for others to look over.

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Are You Obsolete?

I’ve been collecting books for decades. Many of them wound interesting, but I’ve never found time to read them. One of these came off the shelf the other day and made me think ‘Are you obsolete?’ about these posts.

Internet Writing

Millions of people write on the internet. Their topics are almost anything you can think of.

I’ve been posting to a website for over ten years. My topics have been on nature, hiking, science, goats and my books.

If the writers could go back and read something they wrote many years ago, what would they think about it?

John Gould

Back in the late 1940s to 1950s, John Gould wrote short topics that were published in newspapers, magazines and books. The book I read was “Neither Hay Nor Grass” published in 1951.

Gould lived in rural Maine. He wrote about living there, the people he knew, things that happened. This sounds a lot like internet posts of today.

One of the reasons I read this book was to find out more about the times it was written in. It certainly did that.

Gould’s wife was mentioned several times. Usually the mention was about her wonderful cooking. His daughter was to learn this.

Education was not very important. Rural ways and values were more important.

cover for "Broken Promises" by Karen GoatKeeper
I wrote this novel using the events of 2008. Do you remember that year? That was the beginning of the Great Recession when the stock market had a meltdown. It refers to a big Ponzi scheme that unraveled then. Is this trilogy now obsolete?

Are You Obsolete?

Gould was writing about a world about to see major changes. Most people would cut their ties to the land and become urban. Women would be able to be more than housewives and cooks.

Jobs were becoming more demanding, requiring better educations. Pollution was about to be confronted as “Silent Spring” was published.

My conclusion is that I am obsolete and many of my posts are not even close to mainstream. I may have grown up urban, but I’ve become rural to a great extent.

Will I change? No. My posts reflect my lifestyle. I can’t write about urban topics as I haven’t been in the big cities for decades.

Perhaps other internet writers and authors should ask themselves ‘Are you obsolete?” An honest answer might change what they write. Or it might not.