It’s not like me to struggle for words. At least not when I’m
writing. I sometimes can’t put a whole sentence together when I’m speaking.
There are days when I think I’m only a few incoherent comments from becoming
president. How frightening would that be!
But my struggle this month has been putting words on paper.
I put on a real press at the end of July to finish the story I was working on
for Camp NaNoWriMo and get it off to my editors. The last couple of days of
July I even ripped off a few thousand words of the new story I’m working on.
Then August 1… Nothing.
Of course, I could go through another month of not writing
and still be on track with my 50,000 words per month goal for the year. But I
don’t plan to do that. And I have all kinds of excuses.
It was hot.
I chose the hottest day of the year—a record-breaker by 13
degrees here—to go shopping in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene. Because I needed
stuff. And because my truck was cool, I had good music, and I hadn’t been out
for a couple of weeks. I noticed that most of the rectangular bales of hay had
been trucked out of the fields and a couple were showing green again. I was
pretty amazed at the round bale fields, though.
These big round bales weigh just under half a ton each and
about 3-6 tons per acre are harvested. But hay was not the only thing on my
mind when I set out. It’s great to feed the cattle and horses, but we need
bread as well.
It’s been amazing to watch the hay harvest in one field and
the wheat ripening in the next. I was pretty sure that the wheat harvest was
about to begin and later in the day, it was confirmed.
If it hadn’t been so hot out, I could have sat on the roof
of my truck for an hour, watching these huge combines bring in the food. Pretty
amazing. And wheat isn’t all that’s ready to harvest. Remember those yellow fields
of canola?
Well, this is what they looked like on my little journey.
I didn’t see any of the canola harvesters out. They are a
different beast than the combines for wheat and I’d love to have seen them in
operation. Ah yes. But I wax poetic about food and forget my purpose here…
which I will remember shortly.
Editing. I’m writing a sequel to one of my most popular
adult serials. It started with a challenge from a reader to write the story
from the perspective of the parents of the kids coming of age in original
serial. So not really a sequel. Nor is it a prequel. I’ve decided to call it an
equel. The story runs parallel to the original and sometimes to itself as it is
narrated by several parents whose stories overlap. Since those parents are of
my generation, it is also giving me an opportunity to explore some of the
things that made us tick and influenced our lives back in the sixties and
forward. A lot of people have offered me stories and expertise on various
aspects.
But in order to maintain consistency through the story, I
needed to read the original (1.4 million words in nine books and 471 chapters).
As long as I was reading, I decided to make corrections in both the
proofreading and timeline to be be sure everything was consistent in the new
book. I sent the first five books off to my editors as a reference with the
first twelve chapters of the new work.
I've been other interesting places, too. It didn't fit in the story but I figured you needed an eye-break.
It was when I hit the third parent’s story that I realized I
needed to look at the remainder of the books in the series. That happened to be
August 1. Over the past twenty days, I have done almost nothing but re-read and
edit the last six books of the series. And, of course, those four books were
longer than the five I’d taken two months to edit.
I discovered a fair share of problems. Names that were
wrong. Ages that were wrong. Homonyms. Really lousy sentences. And tears. There
were a lot of sad parts to the story and I wondered as I read it what had
sparked so much anger and passion in my writing. In its serialized version
online, these last four books had garnered 811,000 downloads and an 8.96 out of
10 reader rating. My highest ever.
To make a long story even longer, I decided the whole thing
needed a timeline in the last appendix, so I started going through each book to
indicate what month/year it began and what month/year it ended. All fine until
I looked at Book 3. The ending just didn’t look right. I searched through older
files and, sure enough, it was missing the final three chapters! No one had
noticed!
That meant another half a day of editing, revising, and
trying to make this behemoth hold together. What I’m trying to say is that I
have done nothing in August but edit 750,000 words so that sometime before the
end of the month, I can release a second edition. Just wish me luck, okay?
Now I can pick up where I left off writing Book 10.
I took a break in the middle of writing this to join some
friends at Coeur d’Alene Casino for breakfast. We had a good time, but driving
out we all realized how smoky it had become. The winds shifted late yesterday
afternoon and in a matter of an hour we went from clear blue skies to a gray-shrouded
smoky county.
The air quality is bad enough that state road crews were off
the job on US 95 where they are resurfacing from Coeur d’Alene to Moscow or
thereabouts. No equipment, no trucks, and no people to be seen along the
six-mile stretch that is currently being worked on. Of course, that didn’t keep
county crews from coming out to oil our county road. Messy.
I’ve had a lot going through my mind lately but the bulk of
it is that I shouldn’t be wasting so much time editing and should, instead, be
cleaning my trailer. When the smoke clears and I decide I can go outside again,
I’ll even consider mowing and trimming around my site.
The view out my window is normally bright and cheerful at 6:00 in the morning. This morning it looked like the sun hadn't even risen. It's too smoky to sit outside and smoke a cigar!
It appears at the moment like I will be in the Seattle area
the first week of October and will then start south to Quartzsite, AZ for the
winter. I don’t know the exact location yet, but I plan to take US 95 south to
Boise, I 84 east to Twin Falls, and US 93 south through the Great Basin to Las
Vegas. From there, I rejoin US 95 through Needles and on to Quartzsite.
I plan to be back at Sun Meadow the first of May and have
volunteered to help for the AANR National Convention next summer. Margie said I
can be the camp host. Next time, I’ll keep my big mouth shut! On the other
hand, I’m really looking forward to meeting more people and doing a little
something for the place that feels like home to me.
More plans and interesting things next time!
