Another Over-hyped Winter Storm Passes
My calm cows took it all in stride. Of course, they don't know English and have no TV or Internet. But I opened up my second set of bales, just in case...
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Thanks again for being here and opening this. For being part of this community.
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Farming News - About all the news is weather these days. Glad I had another set of bales with all this year’s snow.
Writing News - The reason I write up another book after I research is to learn that subject area all over again...
Fiction News - The Hooman Saga continues. Now the mystery deepens — Snarl is up to something…
Expectancy Factor - A new look at getting out from under “news” source influences.
And - a bonus down below….
Farming News
That’s all the snow we got out of a forecasted 4-7 inches. (Maybe two at best.)
With a tiny few exceptions, we’ve come to expect from the Weatherites more overstated and “looming disasters” than accuracy.
Meanwhile, if you prepare for the worst, it also seldom comes. And it took me something like two hours to reconfigure the electric fence around this new set of bales so they could start feeding. Main problem was keeping a fence around it while I restrung a new one - and put in a handful of posts to hold it up.
I don’t know if you know about the old riddle where the farmer had a bag of corn, a goose, and a fox, but had to cross a river with a rowboat that would only hold himself and one bag or critter. He could get ferry them across one at a time, but you couldn’t leave any two together which would eat the other. Fox/goose - no. Goose/corn - no. So? (Answer at the bottom of this newsletter…)
Little Orphan Andy continues to eat on that big bale. And I even found him out on the pasture one fine day. The same day that the rest of the herd were in a neighboring pasture away from their own set-out bales. Yes, that’s interesting. But he’s doing fine.
Tiny Home News
Valentines Day coming up. Spending it with my wife and three great-grandkids, plus her lineage in between. Life is great.
Writing News
An interesting development, not half-way into my studies of these 80-year-old texts based on thousands of years of published writing - from a recent Note on my Substack:
The great part of studying the classics on writing craft is starting to attain a professional point of view on all things written - even the movie and video versions.
Then these musty old patterns come alive - you know what should happen next - and so you then have a greater expectation. And more awareness of the feelings they evoke in you personally. With heightened appreciation, too.
Reading now becomes more that simply being swept away - more like you’ve got a paddle to help your own stream fly by. And reviewing or re-reading just gives you more enjoyment as you understand the exact craft they use and how they use it.
Picked up an older foreign English-dubbed movie and forwarded it almost randomly closer to the crisis - and was immediately transported right into the midst of it. Instantly. Even the faults of the storytelling and technical glitches simply added to its mystique.
Reading (and viewing) with increasing story craft just brings a heightened enjoyment. You are now fellow adventurers with the author and the production crew. For infinite viewings/readings.
Perfect.
Still working away on that book. Nearly have the second quarter edited. Two more quarters roughed in for after that. But I’m learning so much that mere book reading doesn’t cover on its own. That’s the third type of learning again - writing the text book so others can learn from your experience.
The book structure has:
Forgotten basics
Character building
Plot building
Non-fiction and devices.
Yes, I could dress these up for you - but the core points I’ve never learned (from studies of a couple hundred other books - that had no proven track record of training newbie writers into published authors) were just the tip. Any story gets its success from the character first, then the conflict. All while any plot is based on that character’s own traits and internal conflicts.
Meanwhile, this whole book is written from the view of learning fiction devices to improve my non-fiction writing. And I have found that those same key points of fiction do in fact apply just as well to non-fiction. That isn’t widely known because most non-fiction writers are far more untrained in their story craft than fiction authors. (Which doesn’t say they know very much more. As Ted Sturgeon remarked about his own Sci-Fi writers: 90% of everything out there is crud.)
My point was to take my training up to the next level. And leave a bread-crumb trail for others to follow.
And I’m getting there.
Plus, I’ll have enough to keep sorting through to keep writing about story craft almost indefinitely.
Also published this week (ICYMI):
Writerpreneur Guideposts
There is an ancient over-all pattern to all writing - and readers most appreciate stories that follow that pattern within an inch. Yet most people don’t know about that pattern. In general, the best writers do. They learned it by tons of reading from authors that appealed to them - who also learned their pattern that way. And this pattern is how they train screenwriters. But the bulk of published fiction - and most all non-fiction - ignore the complete pattern and used tricks and short-cuts instead.
This is ages-old. Acid-tested. You can trace who knows this by their income.
Fiction Posts
Now the story twists. Snarl pulls a fast one (he thinks) of stealing Sue’s hooman-smelling space suit rags, to take them somewhere out of the sentient wolves’ valley - but doesn’t see he’s being trailed…
(If you can’t wait to see how this comes out, Here’s the book link to get your copy.)
Expectancy Tips
A note from earlier this week, for those of you who don’t have or use the Substack app:
Picking your news - for sanity.
There’s a lot of “stuff” out there that has to be weeded out. Because only about 3% of everyone out there has figured out this process called life. Everyone else is winging it. What passes for “news” is seldom useful or uplifting.
Why only 3%? That’s a number that just keeps coming up. Look for it, and you’ll find some interesting facts and trends out there. But for now, take that Pareto Principle (originally: 80% of your crop production comes from 20% of your land) and then double that up - 20% of 20% gives you 4% of your land making some 64% of your production. So just find that tiny bit of acreage and focus you’re time and energy on that, saving yourself money and time while you figure something else to do with the rest of that land… (Of course, that principle also predicts 80% of your problems are coming from 20% of your staff - and 64% of your problems are coming from a tiny handful who work for you.)
Added to that is (Ted) Sturgeon’s Law - “90% of everything out there is crud.” (Another observation that’s found a lot of application outside that Sci-Fi observation about the the quality of SF writing.)
Anyway, back to our news sources. If you get back to the idea that 97% of everything out there is not useful, then you can carefully weed out the gems sitting out there in the rough. You can then focus on what is really useful - core principles that work all the time, in all circumstances.
Of course, that takes a little bit of work. The more you look for the real spun gold out there, then you can use those nuggets to help you find more.
Take “Think and Grow Rich”. Not because Napoleon Hill was such a great example in his own life, but because it’s probably the most widely-read classic self-help book in our modern age. And more successful people track their success back to that one book than any other excepting the Bible itself. Results are what counts.
And you know people by their actions. Not their words.
The current breakthrough is here on Substack, where people can express themselves freely and build an audience here based on the quality of their communication and usefulness of their data. Up to this point, we’ve had to accept what major “news” agencies delivered to us. Now we can pick and choose our sources and support these. So we can start our weeding.
Another datum: Your personality is formed by your five closest friends/family/associates. How they act rubs off on you. That goes back to Wayne Dyer, but has also been found in numerous studies.
Now, we have to also take up the Golden Rule. Treating people as you’d like to be treated. This is found in every single religious and philosophic system through history, in one form or another. And it’s inexorable. You can see this happen in your own life. Cut someone off in traffic, and - if your watching closely - you’ll find yourself cut off at some point, usually not too far down the highway.
The same thing happens with our interpersonal relationships: what your most haunted memories come from are where you mistreated someone, where you allowed your anger to get out of hand, where you didn’t return kindness to someone, or reply in restraint to their taunts. Because you could have.
Bottom line to this note: if the people you’re listening to or watching on your news feeds are always attacking something, then they are looking for a fight. Do you really want a lot of antagonistic people on your lines giving you life advice?
This is where optimism always wins out. Good eventually wins over evil. That’s proven through history. It’s what built our culture.
In our own lives, where we limit the antagonizing people and their fights off our feed, we then have more time to consider problem-solvers and evaluate what they’ve found that works.
The term “philosophy” is descriptive here. It comes from two words which essentially mean “love of truth”. If you dig down to the 10,000 year old Polynesian belief system (called “Huna” these days) you’ll find one of their core principles goes: “Truth is as valuable as it is workable.” So: real, pragmatic philosophy is “appreciation for stuff that works.”
And the more you fill your life and follow only tested and workable data and principles, then the more positive and constructive life you can live.
Meaning, you’ll find yourself solving a lot more unsolvable things, and helping people to find these solutions - so other people will help you with their solutions.
People in their “news” who are constantly fighting have to believe that constant strife is the way they want to be treated. They are building a living hell for themselves.
But the people who find peace in their lives on a growing basis are always in search of things that help people succeed and live peaceful, productive lives. And they share them.
Living this way is a lifestyle choice we all have. And I’m deliberately staying out of politics here. Because that’s a zero-sum game few of us can effect outside of our own single and honest vote. Meanwhile, we can start treating people around us with more help and respect and the most workable solutions we know. So we’ll get more help and respect and surprising solutions to problems we’ve had. This is a huge effect-multiplier.
The more you help people, the more help you get back. And helpful people are wired that way - even though they can get worn down by the unhelpful. The more you insist on being positive and optimistic, the more you encourage them to respond to you positively and optimistically. Win by helping others win. And it spreads this way. Massively.
As you keep going down this line, then this positive feedback loop earns you more peace, greater friendships, and a network of like-minded people you can ask for advice.
Just consider this when you get upset by “news”: Are they telling the bottom-line truth? Are they just trying to pick a fight? Are you more peaceful inside when you’ve finished reading or listening to them? Do you have something new to try out that might make your life more successful?
Then you can adjust your feed and subscriptions. Because that’s how Substack is built - and why people thrive here: free choice.
Thanks for being there, opening this.
Sharing is caring. You’re who I do this all for. I value your input.
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I hope your life is not too interesting to be overwhelming, but sufficiently engaging to keep you amused. (Like some of us here...)
Robert
PS. Again, you can always email me about anything.
PPS. Again, do upgrade to the paid newsletter version. That helps me keep the lights on - so I can keep all this coming to you. As much or little as you want… And you can always buy me a coffee…
PPPS. Riddle Answer: The farmer takes the goose over first, then goes back for the fox - but takes the goose back, returning with the grain. Then goes back alone to pick up the goose at last.
Bonus:
Here’s the roughed-in beta version of the book-in-progress above. (Smoothed out through the first quarter.)
Available for limited time as pay-what-you-want…
Hint: You can get a copy for as low as a buck.