Hot in Shirtsleeves, Then Ice Two Days Later

We don't have "slow news days" on the farm. Weather affects our production directly. Yes we enjoy 60-degree days in February, but not freezing rain 48 hours later.

Hi,

Thanks again for being here and opening this. For being part of this community.

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• Farming News - Unlike Mark Twain, we have to do something about this weather…

• Writing News - Regular forward progress on new book - and its courses.

• Fiction News - The Hooman Saga continues. Sue and Teacher can see and feel each other’s dreams.

• Expectancy Factor - Considering moving this to a podcast…

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Farming News

Here’s the cows as they’ve gravitated back to the hay bales after a couple weeks (it seems) away from them.

Note that the like to lay on the remaindered hay - which is part of their recycling it, while staying comfortably out of the mud.

Weather is shifting around and not staying all that predictable. We got that shirtsleeve weather two days ago and now I’m sitting here in our cottage nice and toasty working on this. Even though yesterday I was considering some fix-ups on my office trailer-to-be. (More just below.)

The cows are always telling me their preferences. And a couple of weeks ago, it was that they didn’t want those big round bales again. But now, they are all over them. They finished two off and so I move those rings around two more. But it’ll only be a few days to wrap up those other three. (Average consumption is one bale per day, per herd.)

Little Orphan Andy continues to be pot-bellied. He’s discovered the whole big round bale I left out for him months ago. And the nicer weather found him laying up against it, sunning. Of course, he’s always expecting me to feed him another pound of mixed feed. He even protests with a small bellow if I tease him. But he’s fine with me stroking his winter pelt. Probably ought to get a curry comb out and get some of those embedded cockle-burrs out…

Tiny Home News

The short bit of warmer weather got us out for a walk. We drive to somewhere it’s paved, instead of the cow paths I use for my daily pasture walks. Because she came from the city and we’re starting to get her exercise going on a slow gradient. Parks in the cities have paved paths, after all.

We’re still working on ideas for the summer kitchen. And now that the worst weather is gone, I’ll be able to see about a personal loan to finance it. Soon.

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Writing News

That refurbished Chromebook is working out nicely. As I mentioned, it keeps up with the same program opened elsewhere, so editing my upcoming book does well.

Essentially, this next book has expanded to four parts, each about 28K words long, with 8 or 9 chapters in each part. Those then get a text-to-speech audio version for the Substack site and also the course.

What’s interesting is that I’ve found myself working on this subject like I’m restoring a classic car. Every part of writing is being taken apart and cleaned up before its reinstalled. But that restoration project is more like I’m taking a classic sedan and turning it into a souped-up roadster.

The “new” stuff I’ve found was forgotten long ago. Like the merging of pantsing and plotting into a cohesive approach. And also, I’ve got a couple of books coming in that will tell me more of the writers who made their living during the time this course was running - the Golden Age of Magazine fiction as the world came out of the Great Depression and World War II.

More on that later. I could talk on it all day. But I’ve been doing some Live videos with another author and that’s where I bounce ideas off him. Yes, these are mainly on that Substack app, so you can get that installed and keep up.

Still working in the cracks on that Hondo book by L’Amour. And now I can see how the book is always better than the movie - even when they are written and filmed simultaneously. More on this later.

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Also published this week (ICYMI):

Writerpreneur Guideposts

How and why to build both facts and feelings into your sentences. Because these build continuity to keep your reader reading. All your writing should be riveting right through to the end - where they then look forward to your next one.

We’ll be on chapter three this coming Monday. Hint - there’s a pattern to all compositions, both fiction and non-fiction. Age old. Acid-tested. Writers who discover this profit well.

Know that these are materials you won’t see covered anywhere else. Well worth your setting aside time to catch them now. Newsletters and posts tend to get buried…

Fiction Posts

Sue and the Teacher find their dreams are very real, and able to be shared. Just a background scene, that again leads into that mysterious “Probe” she is supposed to undergo soon…

(If you can’t wait to see how this comes out, Here’s the book link to get your copy.)

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Expectancy Tips

One point I ran across this week is that being constantly creative improves your life and grants more life to everything and everyone around you. This is essentially how you enable your vision to become actuality. Without life, Nature decomposes into minerals for life to use. This also means that you can surround yourself with useless “stuff” that has to be maintained. Once you know your theme, your “river of interest”, you can then regularly prune away material goods that are not useful to your current or upcoming journey-stage.

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I’m considering creating a new, separate newsletter to handle this material. That I would be able to set a podcast on and get more promotion to that specific line of essays. Mostly Nightingale to start withHow. For now, here’s a good one:

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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…