Lessons from the Yard

Let me tell you the story of a fountain. First, you should know that I love water. I mean LOVE water. But I live in a desert valley. I had this idea many years ago that I should add a water feature to my yard. And a friend had one for sale. Perfect.

So. I bought the fountain. It's made from a special resin stuff that looks like real granite and weighs like it, too. This fountain stands about 4 feet tall and has three tiers. It's fabulous.

My friend didn't have a working pump. No problem. I bought one. My hubby even installed an outdoor outlet so I could plug it in. I put it next to our garage in the back yard, where I could enjoy it from my patio or my dining room table. Three problems became immediately apparent. 1) It was hard to find the perfect power for the pump. One pumped the water so hard it just splashed all over the yard. Another was so little that it created barely a trickle. 2) My dog loves water, too. In fact, she drank out of the fountain and played in the water reservoir, thereby using up all the water, leaving the fountain dry. 3) I had little kids at the time and little time to go out to the yard to fill the reservoir, keep the dogs out of trouble, or remember to turn off the fountain when the weather got cold. Ruined the pump. Therefore, we unplugged the fountain until further notice.

The troublesome dogs.

But did I give up on it? Not at all. I always knew I would find the perfect fit for the fountain. Years later, when I tore up my front lawn and replaced it with a water-thrifty landscape, I decided to move the fountain out front. That solved one problem: the dogs don't go in the front yard. But, I also don't have an outdoor outlet in the front. I had a plan, though. I'd get a solar powered water pump and eliminate the need for electricity altogether.

It took a while--read: several years--to find a solar powered fountain pump. I could find solar powered pond pumps and other almost-fountain pumps. Finally, I found one. But I had another problem. The solar panel had a wire that only stretched about five feet, and I had placed the fountain under a giant elm tree, so I couldn't get the solar panel to a spot with enough sun throughout the day to power the pump for more than a couple of hours.

So we moved the fountain to a spot by the front door, which gets much more sunlight than under the tree. Problem solved. Bonus: get to enjoy the fountain every time I go in and out of the house.

But. . .turns out the solar panel wasn't really that powerful and even with more sunshine, it still didn't pack enough punch for me. Hubby noted that the thing weighed far too much for us to move anymore, and I would have to find a way to make it work in that location. Solution: buy a more powerful solar panel/powered pump. Again, it took a while to find one, and when I finally did, the tree had overgrown most of the front yard, blocking the available sun and limiting the solar power.

Okay. I'm not a quitter. We'd go back to electricity, so hubby found a way to run a power cord through a window with a weather protective box to cover the plug. I bought a new electric pump. Beautiful. Almost there.

Almost? The electrical works. The pump is the right power. The dogs can't bother it. What now? Little tweaks. The water tube sometimes falls down inside the fountain. The reservoir dries up in the 100-degree heat. Sometimes leaves and gunk block up the water intake filter in the pump. These are small problems. I keep tweaking them, because when the fountain is running, I can sit on my living room couch and hear the sound of water through the front window. When I go outside to dig in the dirt, the water trickles through and I can pretend I live along a creek. And now my kids are grown, so I have the ease of going outside to tend the fountain whenever I want, without the distraction of diaper changes, bloodied knees, and arguments over who gets the last popsicle.

Where I pretend I am when my fountain is running.

What does this have to do with writing? Creative thinking. Persistence. Revision. Problem solving. Working until you get it right. Making dreams and goals happen, no matter what.

by Neysa CM Jensen
in Boise, Idaho

How Marriage is Like Writing

 This week I’m a little caught up in a very important milestone—my 30^th wedding anniversary. First of all, I can’t believe I’m that old. And second, I’m pretty proud to have made it this far, seeing as how lots of my friends have been divorced. So even though I want to focus on writing, I’m distracted by this momentous occasion. So I thought, why not combine the two?

I've compared writing to gardening, parenting, and a host of other long-term occupations. Marriage has many similarities, as well.

Like, it’s hard. That’s kind of cheating; everything really worth doing is hard. But I think a lot of people enter into marriage in that deliriously happy stage of love where everything is sunshine and roses and they can never imagine how hard it will be at times. It’s all so easy in those new love moments. Writing is the same. I know hundreds of folks who think writing is the easiest thing in all the world. I mean, everyone does it, right? Facebook, twitter, everywhere you look, people are writing. Which is great. But they aren’t really writing that well, nor are they writing with a book length manuscript in mind. Nor do they have to revise (although sometimes they really should) or work with an editor or make sure their characters are consistent. Writing is just as hard as any other work, more so than some. No one would say playing the violin in the New York Philharmonic is so easy anyone could do it. Really good writers work equally hard on our craft as professional musicians or professionals of any kind. Because it’s hard.

Successful marriages don’t just happen. They are in need of constant attention and dedication. Same for writing (and any artistic form). You have to practice it, do it consistently, pay attention to it, and work on it. You don’t sit down, write one draft, and call it good. Just as you don’t recite your vows, buy a house, and that’s it. You have to think about it all the time. I’m constantly writing in my head, even when I’m not at the computer or with a pen in hand. I’m always asking my characters how they would react to a certain situation. I’m communicating with my work. Just as I communicate with my husband all the time about various things big and little in our lives.

Marriage is a partnership, and sometimes others are needed to help the marriage thrive: counselors, friends, family. Writing is a collaborative process, in the end. Sure, we all sit at our desks and write as solitary beings. But to bring that work to the world requires the help of critique friends, editors, agents, production staff, sales staff, etc. It may feel like a lone wolf profession, but even self-publishing authors should seek the help and support of all those people in order to produce the best work possible.

Delayed gratification is a hallmark of both a successful marriage and a successful writing life. Or, as the Rolling Stones sing, “You can’t always get what you want.” You know what I’m talking about. There’s rejection, over and over again. Even when your work is acquired, there are often years of work still ahead before it hits the shelves. Marriage works the same way. It’s not a finished product, ever.  It’s always in a state of revision or work in progress. You don’t just get married and have the white picket fence dream at once. Sometimes you live in your parents’ basement until you can afford a house. Or sometimes you put off having children until you are done with graduate school. Or sometimes you never get the “dream house” you have always wanted. Sometimes you drive a broken down car instead of a new one in order to send your kids to college. Life is full of delayed gratification in order to achieve a goal or a dream. I wish more writers understood this. New writers, myself included all those many years ago, are so eager and anxious to get published that they send work out that isn't even near ready for publication. Delay that gratification and work on the writing. The rewards are great in the end.

In marriage, as in writing, it is totally acceptable to celebrate every small step toward success. Our first anniversary, we celebrated enormously. One whole year. Wow! The first time I got paid to write, I was so happy. Yes, celebrate each milestone, knowing that many more will come your way if you keep working hard, putting in the time and energy, focusing on growth and renewal, and waiting for the right time to move ahead. 

by Neysa CM Jensen
(in Boise, Idaho)

NaNoWriMo--It's All About Fighting the Demon

By Julie Daines

NaNoWriMo may not be for everyone, but personally, I love it. All my published novels are the result of NaNoWriMo disasters.

It's one long month of painful, obsessive, and horrific writing. But in the end, I've got more than just the backbone of a story, I've got a whole manuscript. Then I spend the next year revising and sending it through my crit croup.

Writing a manuscript so quickly allows me to keep the characters consistent and the story more cohesive. It's like total story immersion.

It's an exercise in creativity. You sit. You write. You don't go back and delete. You wear a silver cross and garlic strands to keep that editing demon at bay. Revision comes later--after you've vomited your story onto the page in such a jumbled mess that it looks like this:

or this:

or even this:

Just keep that pinky off the delete key. If you write something you KNOW you won't keep, use strikethrough. You never know. I've changed my mind later, in January or even June, and kept whole paragraphs that I'd blocked out with strikethrough.

NaNo is about word count. So keep all the words because they count. No one else will see the disaster that is unfolding on your computer screen, so don't worry about perfection. Just get the words out however you can. 

If you don't know what to write next, keep extending the scene you're in. Eventually your mind will catch up with your fingers and transition to the next scene. Sure you've got a page of extremely boring conversation at a restaurant where they debate the merits of Mary Ann versus Ginger. That's what the delete key is for, AFTER you finish NaNo. 

Then, after lots of tender loving care and nursing your story back to health, you get something that looks like this:

or this:

or best of all, this!:

If you haven't tried it--or if you tried but failed for whatever reason--try again. It's oh so hard, but in the end worth it. 

If you do NaNo this year, find me there and we can be buddys!

Revision

Writing the story is the fun part. The revision phase is not as enjoyable. Unfortunately, it is a step that must be taken.

After months and months, I’m ready to move on to a next project. Yet the old one is still there, like a bad cold that won’t go away. I’ve put in my time. I had fun developing it. Can’t I just be done with it?

Not if I want it published.

My critique group looked at it and had wonderful suggestions. Some were the obvious, slap-your-forehead, yeah-I-knew-that type of ideas. At other times, I wondered why those guys weren’t getting it. It’s so obvious to me. Evidently, it isn’t apparent to everyone. That kind of reality check is why I keep them around.

The fixes should be easy, a piece of cake. A week, maybe two then I can send it off to someone. At that point it will be out of my hands with nothing more I can do about it. I’ll have time to work on something else.

But two weeks then three pass and it’s still not done. Revision takes time.

Moving a work to publication is new to me. I think I know how to proceed. Pretty much, anyone who would consider putting this on the market wants it to be good, wants it clean. I think I’ve got story but that’s up to others to decide. The cleansing part is all mine and a necessity to move forward.

The grammar and spelling are easy to fix, the missed or extra word as well. You’d think spell check would have caught it but my critique group found more.

It’s the other that takes so much time. Tightening the language takes time.

Comments like “too much exposition” require a decision. Is it really too much? Does it really slow the story? If so, how much do I keep, what do I pitch out? It’s these kinds of things that take so much time. And why spend all this time now? The agent or editor will just have me do it again, to their liking.

Okay, that’s off my chest. I feel better now. Need to get back to the revision.