[Living Sensical] Spring bounces a lot - temperatures. Books, like grass, grow slowly.

It's a good thing to have something you can focus on while the world turns. My current book continues, as does the farm life. A metaphor is in there, somewhere..

Mar 01, 2024

Hi,

Hope this reaches you well. It was almost summer a coupe of days ago, Then it froze overnight. As I write this, it’s a drizzle that is reputed to be snow flurries. The real Spring can’t get here fast enough. These “coming attractions” are just annoying.

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This is late as I was caught up in polishing a new addition to that last book.

Farm News - cows are eating bales and keeping whatever grass they have access to cropped very short.
Writing News - Where I tell you my ongoing adventures about this book and now, it’s torturous twists even at this late date.
Expectancy and Survival - the one thing you can change today that will give you a better future

Farming News

By my count, they should run out of hay just as I can start rotating them through pastures. Maybe.

There’s at least a couple calves getting their dinner in that shot. This is facing west, and the shadows are saying it’s late afternoon. Cows standing around means they are ruminating (digesting their food).

You can also see it’s been dry, as the litter on the ground is fluffy and not churned into mud.

I’m still working on the paddock redesign in my mind. Right now, a lot of my posts are tied up in the fencing you can see, so I haven’t done any test paddocks yet. More than likely, I’ll be swapping them out into large areas, which means a lot of exercise as I check perimeter fences for down trees during this last winter.

Yes, we had that 80-degree weather a few days ago. Then it got down to 19 degrees that night, enough to but a little skim ice on water pools.

Thick coats went on to survive the sub-zero wind chills, after just being out sweating in t-shirt the day before. (Sigh.)

Oh - I was reminded this week that we’ll have a new crop of calves arriving shortly (late March) . This means we need to get last year’s calves sorted out and shipped as needed, and the bull up to the home place for a few months. I call this the chess game. All moves pre-planned as much as possible.

Tiny Home News

Visited and enjoyed relatives, ate too much. The next day I rose early to drive back to the farm in my dusty truck. The cows didn’t seem to miss me, but our three dogs were all smiles and tralumpfing up to get their scratching. And fed.

We’re still feeding birds outside the window. And now have some little identification books in that sill. An unexpected design bonus.

Those stairs going up to the loft is really a ladder, since you always face it coming up or down. The railing is both protection and an assist. It’s steep by necessity in the space it had to fit into. But that railing is comforting when I get up early in the morning to go write and leave the lights off for my wife to catch more sleep.

And there’s a folded small rug at the bottom to both keep the chill from under your feet and tell you when you’re now back on the floor again.

Writing News

Finished an investigatory piece to add to the front, since I’ve needed to redesign the opening of this “WriterpreneurOS” book. It took me this week to write that 3,000 word addition - other than that trip to visit relatives, the regular farm work, and the research I had to do.

Yes, the front end of the book changing now means I have to update the courses. There’s are two, now.

The breakthrough was in finding the book’s theme. So that means another round of review to make sure I have the order of all those essays straight. It’s got to flow logically and also keep to a rhythm, pace, and that eternal 3-act structure - the secret of good non-fiction is that it uses fiction writing devices to get its job done. The reader transported from the opening line and kept as entranced all the way through. Most non-fiction books don’t. Just treasure the ones that do - and study them to find out how they pull it off. Then practice what you just learned. That’s the secret to writer-training.

Expectancy and Survival

Every 80 years, we have a major crisis. Those bad actors get out of hand and make things pretty crazy for awhile. Then, people get fed up and push it back over the line into sanity. The great part is the boom that follows.

Go back 80 years and it was WWII. Back 80 more, and it was the Civil War. 80 more, and the War of Independence. There’s a book called “Generations” by Strauss and Howe which describe this phenomenon. They’ve authored one just about this current mess (with some crazy predictions) called “The Fourth Turning”.

All interesting stuff. But outside of an army waltzing through my particular neck of the woods, living in rural areas has been generally safer than cities.

Still, all this noise in what passes for “news” these days can be annoying, even depressing.

And that is one thing you can always do about things - adjust your own attitude.

My own solution is to push forward and get this book called “The Expectancy Factor” out to you. I plan to have that for your in a pre-release form this coming week. It’s been “mostly” ready as a compilation for some months.

The reason for this as a book is because, since what you expect is what you get, once you change your attitude of what you expect, then that result starts showing up around you.

Sure, keep on top of what is happening, but know that “these things too, shall pass.” More on this later.

As I said, this book has gnawed my time to shreds this week. And I have another article to post before breakfast this morning.

At least life is interesting and not overwhelming.

Current Book Planning.

I reworked my lineup on the long drive back from relatives.

And this is nowhere near final, but one has to have plans…

The theme of this next book actually runs through the rest in its series.

“There are two types of outrageous success among published authors: those writers who learned how to market, and those marketers who learned how to write books.”

Writerpreneur OS (current) - tells the basics overview.
Probably the Writerpreneur Flywheel book will go next, as I’ve got the material ready for assembly - this tells how the natural entrepreneur system is adapted to the business of book writing-publishing.
Becoming a Professional Writer - the long-missing W.S. Campbell approach, revamped for our contemporary times.
Copywriting - the third leg of author craft. A thorough study of basics from 1905 to the present.
Writing non-fiction (Campbell revamp and update - 2nd leg)
Writing short story fiction (also a Campbell revamp - the first leg)

And you’ll see some sensibility in this, as by planning out a 6-book series, it builds an income stream from this research. And all along, trains both entrepreneurs (marketers) and writers in the craft of both.

After what I’ve gone through this year with this first book (the longest I’ve ever taken to get a book published) I’m not going to predict how fast these are going to come out.

It’s nearly Spring, and I have fencing to do, as well as gardening. There’s a full eclipse to attend, and keeping track of youngsters growing up. And a fair amount of cuddling to give. Meanwhile, I have another trailer to turn into my writer cabin…

As usual, I really believe life is great and getting better. And hope you expect yours is, too.

Thanks for being there, opening this.

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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.

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