Setting

It’s cloudy here this morning and the wind is blowing. Rain is predicted today. Sixty percent chance the weather person told us.

I’ve put the windows up a bit. Letting some fresh air flow through the house. Anyone with a dog knows that’s a treat. The dog enjoys the air too and she can hear the noises outside so much better! So much to smell and bark at.

From time to time when the wind picks up, I find myself looking out the window in this room to see what is blowing around outside. I had an idea to take my kite out to the parking lot and fly it, but not sure I’m in the mood for that this morning.

Setting is time and place in your story. I have often written about settings so that if I need or want a certain setting, I can recall details.

Weather and time can be two stress invoking aspects of your writing. Have you ever noticed the rain in some dramatic scenes? How about the time crunch? Both are useful in adding tension and excitement to what you write.

I mentioned the time of day in the scene above. I was thinking if I forget to close and lock a window, I might be inviting trouble later tonight. A closed, locked window does not really protect you, if the window is glass, but it does slow down someone trying to come in . The rain that is predicted would disturb footprints or evidence of a person who took advantage of an unlocked, open window in the dark of night.

Just sharing this morning. Now the sun is peeking out, but it doesn’t fool me. I know from those dark clouds above that rain will fall here sometime today. Then I’ll need to close the windows . . . all of them.

Designated Time To Write

My life is not structured like it once was. I am retired now and get up when I wake up. I sometimes have appointments I have to go to. I have phone calls I have to make. I manage my time, but my time no longer manages me.

I have not been spending as much time writing as I feel like I should, so my new goal is 2 hours per day working on work that I plan to publish or sell. It is harder than it sounds.

I read one time that Ernest Hemingway wrote exactly 250 words a day and then stopped. Every day. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that would not work for me. This morning I wrote almost 2000 words in 50 minutes. A friend I have called me a prolific writer. I just know once I get started, it’s hard to stop.

I have tried to make my recent blogs be 500 words long. Sometimes I reach that number and other times I don’t, but that’s the goal of my blog length.

It has been a struggle to write the second hour today. Maybe I should cut it down to one hour? I guess I’ll learn by trial and error.

One of the good aspects about writing for a certain amount of time daily is that I include research, proofreading and editing in that time. It’s not strictly writing, although it mostly has been today.

I continue to work on Stories of a Public Schoolteacher. That was one focus today. I also sketched out (outlined?) a children’s book idea. I researched and wrote about the difference in a novella and a Bookshot book and decided which one I wanted to use for a special project I’m doing. I also worked on an animal story project.

There is no scarcity of writing to be done. But with my writing so much so fast sometimes, it has been exhausting today.

I wonder if others have certain times to write or if they write a certain amount daily, or how they manage their writing output?

(This is 364 words/ 7th-8th grade reading level.)

Chapter Eight Two Times

I just uploaded 704 words of Chapter Eight. Then when I looked at what came next, I saw a 374 word version of the same scene. I added that. When I go back through and do the first edit, I’ll combine those two versions, but I cannot do it now.

I did think about all those words I’ve written and how it looked like I’d have 162 chapters. I also thought how most chapters so far average 500 words. 500 words are 2 pages. There are approximately 250 words on a page. When you stop and think about it that way, even if I had 162 chapters (I won’t),. it would only be a little over 300 pages. So that worry is gone.

The next set of chapters I have worked on a lot and they should be quick to upload. The hard part is reading through them. I didn’t even read through those 374 words I just pasted at the end of the 704 word version of the same chapter. I’ll do that when I work to combine them. I could see some of the same things were included in each version. Chances are, I’ll delete the duplicate things, choosing the best written version of the sentence and then make sure it flows when it reads and move on.

I must move on right now. Although my kids have encouraged me to write this book, they’ve said they want this book published, when I shared the latest chapter . . . just mentioned it, not reading it to him, to one of them a couple days ago, it upset him. If it upsets him, just thinking about it, I wonder what it’s truly doing to me?

Well, writing has often been theraputic for me. I didn’t write all these words for this book so I could not publish it. I’ll get it all together, offer to let any of my kids read it, who want to, and off it’ll go to kdp self-publishing, unless one of the publishers I’ve pitched it to shows an interest. If one of my kids changes his mind, I won’t publish it, but I am going ahead as if they won’t change their minds.

We do what we can do in this lifetime, and then we move on and we’re done here.

It Is Done

I just finished adding the Z chapters to the Blindman book contents. It is done. Now I will go back through and begin editing. As I read through, I’ll add any necessary transition chapters, although I don’t think any will be needed.

There were only three Z chapters, so it was quick to add them. They were extra info for chapters already written and in the book chronologically.

I am tired. I am tired like I haven’t been in a long time as I look at this book and all it contains.

Oh, wait. Didn’t I say I wanted to check my word count? I want it less than 90,000 words. Let me do that right now.

114,624 Words. Too many. Editing may correct that problem. It took so long to copy/paste all those words into the wordcount tool I use that I thought I’d have a seizure as the lines and words flashed by me while I held down the key to copy the words and it scrolled from the bottom to the top. I had to look away. I got a headache. It took the word count tool so long to count the words that I got up and warmed up my cup of coffee. Let me digress, because my head is spinning (and hurting) . . . I drink from a cup I bought a few years ago. It has a heart and a pawprint on the front. Inside the heart are the words “Everything Tastes Better With Dog Hair In It”. For some reason everyone else refuses to drink out of this cup. I absolutely love it. It’s large enough that I don’t have to refill it. I like that everyone else makes sounds of disgust when they read it, and I can always count on it to be clean and waiting for me when I want it. It’s a cup. What’s written on it should not affect them so strongly, but it does. Ha, ha. Their loss. It’s the best cup I have.

Ok, now . . . and I’ve had to take mini breaks like that the whole time I was writing this book. This book started out as a memoir. It’s the reason I took the Memoir and Truth Telling course as an elective at UNCW. I was there to get a Masters in Education degree. That was my chosen life’s work. I didn’t know how to succeed as a writer and ECU, where I got my undergrad degree, had no journalism degree available. I did work four years as a student helper under the work/study program at ECU’s News Bureau. I did proofreading, among other tasks, and was exposed daily to excellently written articles by staff writers. I read them all and noticed the tightness of the writing and the phrasings they used. I learned a lot while I worked to learn a lot. I loved ECU’s New Bureau and Mr. Shires (boss) and Lorena Sawyer (secretary/lady who acted like a mother to me) and Marianne Baines (photographer) and George Threewitts (writer) and Francine Reeves (writer). There were other employees who came and went while I worked there. One was a nice lady named Barbara. She had red hair. She was very nice to me also. She was a friend. Carolyn was there when I began, but she moved away. Lovely memories.

But the memories of the Blindman were not lovely. It was a traumatic time in the lives of me and my children. It plays over and over all over America today. The story needs telling. It seems I have told it, and what’s the term for using many words? I cannot find it. I find terms for using more words than necessary and talking too much. My brain is fried. This book can affect me that way. But the story has been told and when I dress it up in its “Sunday Best”, I will self-publish it at kdp publishing on Amazon.com

114,624 take away 90,000 equals 24,624 words that must be cut. I don’t think that will be too difficult. I saw some duplicates of scenes/chapters. But it will take time.

The next time I sit down with this book, I will start with the first chapter and edit. There will be rewrites. I may be crazy from time to time, but this is the exciting part. I have the book completed. Now let me dress it up, edit it, revise phrases and perhaps whole chapters, write in any needed transitory sections . . . and let me try to do it before this year 2020 is over.

I also need to let the son who said if I don’t publish it, he will, know that it is completed and waiting for editing. I’m not getting any younger. My health comes and goes. My physical health. My mental health is what it always has been, except for the lapse in remembering words that are obscure enough I can’t find them when I google the term.

 

Edits and Revisions

Edits and revisions are my two least favorite things about writing. When I sit down to write, I type quickly because I know what I want to say and the words usually come to me. Then comes the part that I detest. That’s how much I don’t like to look again at the manuscript and change words or punctuation. Gone are the glorious days of snatching a piece of paper out of the typewriter, balling it up and throwing it towards the trash can. Now my words sit and stare back at me from the computer screen, and I cannot even have the good feeling tantrum from the past. If I get up and leave them, the words will still be there exactly like they were before. I suppose I could delete them, but many times I’d get up and get the balled up paper and smooth it out and start over. Back in those days I could use a pen to insert, mark through, change things. Now I feel like a snail has taken over and I have to backspace and delete and replace and move this and that until I want to scream!!! But I don’t. I get up and walk away, or I close the piece of work and come back to it another day.

I know edits and revisions are very, very necessary. Our written creations are like our children, and when we send them out into public, we want them dressed well with every hair in place, as much as possible, and with a clean, crisp appearance.

I just read through the entry I’d written this morning. Actually I didn’t write it this morning. I uploaded it into the Createspace Format so it could have its place in the book that I hope to self-publish at Amazon in September. So that right there would need editing, if I didn’t want to leave it as an example. “I just read through the entry I uploaded this morning into the Createspace Format.” Actually I don’t know that it’s called Createspace anymore because Amazon has changed its Self-publishing site to KDP . . . Publishers? Should I look that up? If I wanted this just right I would. Ok. Done. Here you go:

Self Publishing | Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing

Oh, my. That certainly copied/pasted in a bright color. I’m leaving it.

The part I was annoyed by  was the word “boss” in my writing. I felt like I needed to change that to principal, so the reader would know who I was talking about. (Whom I spoke of? You can tell I’m very old schooled/old-fashioned in my thoughts . . . probably Archaic.)

As we have all seen, a comma misplaced can change the meaning of the written words. Here’s one: “Let’s eat Grandpa!” versus “Let’s eat, Grandpa!”

When I was a college student, I worked in the school’s News Bureau. There I proofread every article we sent out. When proofreading, you do not read for content, but for grammatical precision.

I also read my own work now. Besides grammar, I look for better, more descriptive words. The chapter I uploaded this morning (and there, I did a quick edit, as I wrote first “the piece” and switched quickly to “the chapter”, but I digress) that chapter had been read and reread many times. It says I wrote it in May of this year. It’s now July. How many times did I read the word “boss” and never think the boss’s title would be more descriptive?

I have belabored this subject almost (am I there yet?) to the tedius point.

But you must, you absolutely must! if you’re a writer who gets published, you must edit and revise several times. I let pieces / manuscripts get cold . . . I write and then don’t look at them for a couple weeks. Then when I come back and read them, I see them with fresh eyes. I hadn’t read the chapter in awhile. Believe me, before the book is submitted for publication, I will read it about five more times looking for edits or revisions to make it better.

When To Write

I write when I’m inspired, and I’m fortunate enough to be inspired throughout the day. However, I have noticed if I’m working on a book or something I’m editing for professional publication, I work better first thing in the morning.

I’ve been up over an hour now. I have worked on two different books. One is chapters of stories from when I was a schoolteacher. I taught school in low income locations, and some of the things I saw and heard are things I’ll never forget. I wondered if the public knew what actually goes on in some of those classrooms and what challenges teachers of Title I students often face?

The challenges were difficult and as I often do, I’d do quickwrites of things that had gotten to my heart during the schoolday. When I can’t forget something that is upsetting me, I sit down and write it out. It’s one of the ways I cope with all that I’ve faced in this life, including my teaching vocation.

I stayed with Title I students and worked in those schools because I seemed to have a knack for reaching them. If anyone needs a strong teacher who can connect with them, it’s the child in a Title I school. They have so much to offer the world, but frequently have so little opportunity for offering it.

I’ve gone back through the folder I kept these writings in and thought it would make a good book to publish some of these stories. I’ve worked in various schools around the state. The most important thing would be not to have any student be recognizeable to anyone reading the story. I thought with the vast number of students I’ve taught and the many places where I’ve taught, I could make that happen.

I’m also working on a series of hi lo books. I worked on the one I’ve been working on this morning as well. It was hard to switch back to easier vocabulary when I was writing the hi lo book after working on the other book.

I probably added 200 words to the hi lo book and 400 to the schoolteacher book.

I may come back to both and work on them some more today. Now it depends on how motivated I feel.

I find that I often dream about my writing and when I first wake up, the words are there waiting to be typed.

 

Tapes, Courtesy of Your Family

I watched an episode of ER today and there was a woman character in it who screamed obscenities from her bed to anyone who walked by. Many regarded her as unpleasant and blamed her for her behavior. I saw a woman who had been badly abused – probably as a child and teenager, and she was repeating the things that had been said to her.

No one wakes up one morning and suddenly has a head and a mouth full of ugly words. Those words are recorded in our minds by those closest to us who say the things we end up believing about ourselves. And we will repeat many of the same things to those around us.

The words you, or your characters, speak are the words that run through others’ minds when they are least expecting it.

Getting Serious About This Stuff

Two of my sons have convinced me I should switch from teaching full time to writing full time. I could return to a classroom this fall, but am going to take a leap of faith and write instead.

I’ve started a running record of what I do each day. I find the amount increases daily.

The first day I wrote 276 words.

The second day I wrote for 60 minutes. I see I made the comment, “felt like ten minutes” . . . well, good, maybe I’ll keep it up.

Third day . . . today, I wrote 1019 words in 42 minutes. These were words on four short books (may be short stories, not sure yet) that I am writing. There’s that grasshopper mind jumping from project to project . . . Then I spent twelve minutes finding a possible publisher for my bird poem.

A lot of what I do, I do during “down times”.  I will think about and mentally write stuff while doing dishes or some other mundane household chore. Sometimes I get inspiration while I’m outside. (If I had my “rathers”, I’d live in a tent. I love being outside.) I also will pick up the Writers Market or look through folders of things I’ve written and not count that time.

But for now, I am trying to document what I’m doing and when and probably half way doing it, because I can’t stop and jot down every five or ten minutes I spend.

I did not notice the time when I started this blog. I guess I won’t count it. No big deal.

Just trying to justify my new career. My goal was 4 hours a day, but it looks like maybe I’d be better off counting words?

I don’t think I can write for four hours a day. I heard somwhere that Hemingway (and I know I’m NOT Hemingway), but I heard he wrote 250 words daily and would stop when he reached that number of words.

I’m going to do it the way I’m doing it . . . do what I find interesting that day and write down what I did. I’ve been intending to submit that poem since the 1980’s when I wrote it. I guess that’s progress, whether they buy it or not, it’s been submitted finally.

I wonder how other writers account for their time and writing? Do they count the time or the words?

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The Words Finally Came To Me

I am writing two books. One I call my Blindman book for secret reasons that will be revealed once it’s published. The other I call my Horse book, which also has a private reason for calling it that, but it also will be revealed when it’s published.

I think I have finished or almost finished my Blindman book. I am still in the process of printing out all the pages and putting them in order. I tend to write like a grasshopper hops. I’ll get a scene in my head and quickly type the words. So my books are written out of  chronological order, but with passion and hopefully so that the reader feels as if they’re “there”. The task of printing out the Blindman book and organizing it is taking longer than anticipated. I do also have the other (Horse) book to finish.

This morning the beginning, or maybe it will be the back of the book blurb, or both? for the Horse book came to me. I’ve struggled for years to figure out how to begin this book. I wasn’t sure where the beginning truly was. I found it this morning.

I just typed those words, and using the wordcount tool online, I found it was 348 words/ 9th-10th grade reading level. That surprised me. For some reason, my writing usually ends up 7th to 8th grade reading level, and I wondered why this morning’s level was higher? But I digress. I do that when thoughts are too emotional, or when the passion is too high. It may be part of my “grasshopper writer syndrome” and I just coined that phrase, as far as I know . . . but it suits me.

I guess while I’m printing and organizing the Blindman book, I will start writing more on the Horse book. That makes sense.

I also have a poem I showed a friend, and she loved it! She usually politely says my work is “good”, but after hearing how much she loved the bird poem, I think I need to seek a publisher very soon. I’ve sold poems in the past. They don’t pay much, but they do pay something, at least the places I submit. My poems are written when I’m inspired. I don’t just sit down and think, “I’m going to write a poem about birds”. I spend time with birds and at some point, it may be days later, even weeks later, a poem will begin shaping itself in my head from that experience, and I’ll sit down and type or write up the words. Someone once told me I had a muse. There’s something that starts the poem for me and helps me through it . . . that’s for sure. Whatever it is, I’m grateful.

This morning’s writing was very rewarding. I’ve tried for years, strained for years, to find a beginning to my story. I found it this morning.

Finding the Right Word

I was just writing on my proudofeverywrinkle blog (at wordpress.com) and used the word “clamor” for a group of dogs who would run to meet me . . . I wasn’t sure that word was correct, so I checked its definition. No, clamor is more of a noise. While I expect a group of dogs would make a clamor, it wasn’t the clamor that might knock me down.

I went to the obvious word “group”, but that was too mundane, too ordinary . . . I tried hoarde and a hoarde is first defined as a verb, but later I saw it can also be used as a noun to express a stash of something valuable that you keep hidden. . .

That still wasn’t exactly the word I sought, although I used it and started to hit the “publish” button . . .

It suddenly occurred to me that I could put the words in google, instead of the word I thought might do and that would give me the word I was looking for . . .  so,

a large group of dogs is called “a pack”.

I changed the word hoarde to pack and it read so much better.

Isn’t it funny how one word in a piece of writing can bother you until you get it exactly right?

I proofread (I put myself through college proofreading . . . or the pay from it certainly helped) everything. When a word I’ve written “jars me”, I assume it will jar anyone else who is reading it.

So I’ll take that word and work on it until I’m satisfied that it’s exactly what I mean.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t used the wrong word at the wrong time, but I try to get them right.

That’s part of being a writer . . . not just writing, but going back over what you’ve written and making sure every word is exactly what you meant to say.

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