I’ve started writing again. That is the good news. The bad news is that with 7 different novels in flight I’m all over the place…working on one for one week, and then jumping to another for a week then off to the third and fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh all in random order and for random durations. 

One of my major failings of late is not being able to focus. Needless to say I’ve not been able to stay focused for the last several years for more than a week or two at a time on any one writing project.

As an aside, my first novel — Youth in Asia — continues to sell surprisingly well given that it has been four and a half years since I published it. The novel has sold about 4,200 copies, and I’ve donated well over $2,000 from sales. Frankly, it is embarrassing to admit how long ago I published it. 

On a completely unrelated topic, my attempt at growing Giant Sequoias continues…

The Giant Sequoias

Of the thirteen seeds that came in the little kit I bought on Amazon for $7, we have three sprouts. I’m not sure if any more have started but are not yet visible, so I will prep six pots. In addition to what you see above, I added a healthy helping of sand.

As you can see in the photo below, the small tube in front of my computer is where the seeds started. I laid out a sheet of aluminum foil to empty the contents of the tube into so I don’t make a mess or lose any of the seeds.

We only found three seeds that had germinated, but we did find the other 10 seeds. As you can see below, the sprouts are small and very fragile. We are trying to keep as much of the original dirt around their root as we can.

We got the three sprouts into the pots. The other ten seeds we put on the top of the fourth pot and sprinkled the dirt that they came with over them. I marked each seed with a small white rock. Odds are low that any will grow at this point, but thought we’d give them one more shot.

I started this project on a lark, but now that they are growing I’ve been giving more thought to where to plant them on our property when the time comes. Though they reportedly can grow in central Texas, when full grown (long after I’m dead and gone), they can consume more than 500 gallons of water per day. Though we have a ‘wet weather’ creek behind our home, and I’m assuming the water table is not too far below it, and though I can plant at least one in reach of where our sprinkler covers, I can’t imagine pumping 500 gallons of water at it a day. I’ll let my descendants figure that out if it lasts that long…

Ifal

If all goes well, I figure I’ll put them in big pots next summer, probably of the 5-gallon variety. I’ll put those on the deck. Then after the trees are at least six feet tall, move them to the yard.  

Now that is done…on to Thanksgiving and more writing and editing. Hopefully I can focus on one thing at a time. 

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Melissa M. from Michigan (that is a lot of “M”s, and I’m not making this up) won this give away! She was randomly selected via the application I use to manage my giveaways.

You can join at the right. Everyone on my email list is eligible for my periodic giveaways, as well as free Advance Review Copies of upcoming novels. 

As a reminder, I only send emails to my subscribers about four times a year, it is never spam, and you can unsubscribe at any time. 

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I have no idea what made me think of this today, but while I was washing off the patio, for some reason I remembered one of the posters I had as a kid, and with a bit of searching found an image of it online. The copyright may be held by a company called Western Graphics, but they don’t seem to be in business any longer.

In the ’70s I lived in an old house in a small town. We had converted the attic into a living space, and I lived there. All told, the house was probably about 3,500 feet, not including an unfinished basement. So the attic was relatively large, with steep roofs and three dormers. Air vents ran along the ceiling and the floor near one wall. So the guy that finished it for us had to do all kinds of creative work to encase beams and ducts and structural supports.

One slanted wall was about 12 feet wide and rose to an apex of about 14 feet. Across from it another wall dropped straight down about six feet before making a 90 turn to the flat ceiling of the rest of the room.

On the big, slanted wall, I mounted a number of posters, this moon castle being one. On the opposite wall — because, well, you know, I was cool — I installed an 18″ fluorescent blacklight.

I had a number of bean bag chairs and would spend many a day sprawled across them reading science fiction and military history books (I know…hard to remember the days before the internet).

By night — often with my friends — we’d turn off the white lights and lay on those bean bags staring up at the posters looming over us, talking about life and the world as teenagers understood it.

This poster, though, was always my favorite. I would stare at it many a night wondering about its story and the many stories that unfolded within it. The kings and queens that reigned there, the dragons that flew over it, the knights that fought for it, the peasants that stared at it with envy.

Probably sounds like a starting point for a fantasy writer, but beyond this poster, fantasy has never been my thing.

Not sure why I thought of this today. It’s a mystery how our brain works and some memories forgotten for decades come back in a rush. But there you have it: The moon castle…

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The never ending “show vs tell” debate came up again in one of my writing workshops. I’ve written about it before (in fact, it is still one of my most popular blogs). To keep the story short, it occurred to me that when to show vs. tell, or perhaps when to show AND tell is also partly a function of timing and characterization. This is because we have to train the reader and make sure general perceptions about what body language shows are precise for our specific and distinct characters.

In this example we discussed, the question was if saying “Frank clenched his jaw,” showed irritation. It quickly became apparent that different people — readers — perceive a clenched jaw as showing a variety of different things.

If the MC clenching his jaw is a habit that is consistent with when he is irritated, then we have to make this clear early in the story. Clenching one’s jaw could suggest several things, so we have to be precise regarding what a clenched jaw shows about Frank. For instance…

His son handed him his grade card. Frank looked at it, clenching his jaw. After ten seconds he said, “You know, Billy, I’m really irritated with you. We talked about your grades before. We even got you a tutor, but your grades have not gotten any better. You keep bragging about winning that stupid XBOX contest like that matters in life instead of spending more time on your school work, even helping around the house.”

…later in the story we can be more efficient and write…

After Billy left for school, Frank walked into his son’s room, his jaw clenching as he looked around.

…and we have a pretty good idea what Frank is feeling (and why).

I’m sure there are better examples, but the point is that though showing leverages our common knowledge, like all things in storytelling, it is just one tool. To make our characters more distinct we have to finetune (and quickly) how our characters are really distinct and how they show their distinctness so that as the story picks up speed, we can show and do it efficiently. We don’t want to have to explain during the climax that Frank clenches his jaw when he is irritated. As a reader, that would be irritating.

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