New Calf! Cute. And I Messed Up a Hard Drive...
Now one last caft to go. Hoping this rainy weather makes that momma and her baby agree it's a great time to drop. Meanwhile, I had just finished OCRing a long-out-of-print book, transferring files...
Hi,
Glad to have you open this once again (or even for a first time). Yes, life (and writing) goes along on this farm with trials, tribulations, joys, and marvels. And my daily/weekly writing continues as well. Glad to share this all with you .
Farming News - Well, one of the last two arrived. Rainy again this week, which keeps us optimistic for the last one. That cow in the barn is getting better and nearly ready to rejoin the herd.
Writing News - Scanning an old book into digital lost me part of a part drive. But I continue on until I have time to recover it.
Fiction News - Last round up - final episode upcoming - and the surprise happy ending shows up this week to that ongoing serial…
Expectancy Tips - Visiting relatives helped me consolidate what I knew about happiness and optimism…
Farming News
One more new cute calf this week.
Her momma, “Big H”, is also known for having a cartoon cat on its side. But her new bull calf has no side markings. Just face and some white on his feet.
This was another nice day out - between rains.
And being surrounded by hot fence has kept the herd respectful of the barriers I’ve left for them.
The old cow and her calf up at the barn are doing better. Her swollen ankle has gone down considerably, and her calf is joining her at the feed pan and hay to get his nourishment in addition to her milk. That might help us if we have to wean the calf early for any reason. I’ll keep spending my feed mix and stored small square hay bales on her for now. She’s certainly earned it by giving us a good calf every year for nearly two decades.
The next work is to see how I can let the other cows come visit her so the herd can help her not be too lonesome without them.
Tiny Home News
Got the last round of elderberry picked and up to the house. Mother’s making another set of jelly from them. Since she only needed 4 cups of berries, the rest goes to my daughter-in-law for her syrup-making.
The green beans are coming along fine. So that’s on the canning schedule this week. Sauce tomatoes are still coming along, but certain other determinate varieties have done their job. We’ve got at least three watermelons doing well, plus one cantaloupe. The foxtail got away from us (typical for August) and so I spent a morning tramping it all down as mulch. Probably will need some more tramping in a few days.
We’re finalizing our land purchase and financing for that (private loan) while we tighten up our design for a little shed that will enable us to get basic utilities up and running. Our local water board surprised us with bringing our water onto the property (that we don’t own yet) and we’re trying to get a local contractor to fit us into his schedule with an estimate.
That shed will need to tell us where the waterline needs to show up, as well as where the electrical needs to drop. For that, we need to stake out the foundation - which means getting the contractor to give us an estimate.
Everything in its turn.
Writing News
Two books arrived from the library this week, and I set about scanning and OCRing (optical character recognition) them into a digital form to keep a working copy after I have to return the two print books.
And, in transferring files, that computer hung as I somehow did something I shouldn’t have. As I was moving, not simply copying-and-deleting, the original files were temporarily lost (but, being Linux-based, I have tools to learn that can help me recover both the original files and the one’s I deleted - in all my copious spare time.)
It meant I had to re-OCR one of the books again, which was on my faster machine, so it only took a couple of long afternoons. Only.
These were the two Foster-Harris books. As covered last week, this was an instructor who worked with Campbell in the early days of the Professional Writing Course at the University of Oklahoma. He had a complimentary approach to writing which augmented Campbell’s own, and influenced his successor - Dwight Swain.
Harris was the counter-balance to Campbell, according to one student’s write-up. He was filled with Aristotelian principles and taught writing from feelings. Those two points do counterpoint Campbell’s drive to teach students the pragmatic work practices of studying and emulating other authors. Harris had some 800 published books, articles, and short stories to his credit, and a lot of practice as an editor - so he had a daily time for interviews with students where he would dissect and red-pen their latest work (much to their nervous chagrin) as each student would sit in front of him, nervous and pensive.
But that’s all background I find as I research.
Right now, I’m interrupting my OCR-file correction against it’s scanned page to bring his book back to a useful format. (OCRing is best with a decent program, but not something you can simply walk away with a nice ebook. Rather, you have lines that start and stop as they did on that scanned page - they do not flow, and “I”’s are substituted for “1”’s, Zero’s for 0’s and vice-versa. And some words are churned to gobbledygook if they hit the curve of the bound page just so. It’s a form of line-editing you have to do, and then careful search-replace of the codes that keep the single lines from joining properly.
Now, Dwight Swain worked with and after Harris retired. And his text became used for the course and is still in print - “Techniques of the Selling Writer”. His compatriot became Jack Bickham, who wrote his own books after his own retirement. I’m planning to study Bickham’s “Writing and Selling Your Novel”, even though his writing style isn’t as lively as Swain’s.
The trail winds down with Bickham. By that point, we have lost a great deal of Campbell’s original impetus for facilitating the writer becoming a professional craftsman through study of other writer’s technical devices.
Harris was known to say, “put a little parsley on the dish” as a solution to revamping or rehashing another author’s successful plot and work - just as Campbell devoted chapters and an entire book to the study of writing devices.
I don’t know where Campbell’s books quit being used as the core references for the courses taught at OU. This mystery is what pulls this research along - chasing the evolution of the most effective writer training in known history from it’s origins onto it’s height of success, and eventual entropic descent.
That’s the next and upcoming project that’s haunting me.
Along in this is a side-study of Shawn Coyne’s Story Grid. That book is a study of it’s own, and is purportedly for writers to become their own self-editors (although you can hire “certified story grid” editors). Frankly, this is a “story nerd’s” approach after the fact of writing, and nothing you’d touch to write your story with. Things perhaps - perhaps - to keep in mind while planning/outlining your writing. (I’ll know definitively more once I’ve boiled down Campbell/Harris/Swain above.) For now, it’s for the necessary revisions you have to do to polish up any book or story you’ve written into being a commercial success and a perennial-selling work.
And the more I study Coyne’s work as it’s evolved with courses, podcasts, and articles, I consider that you would be better off hiring such an editor and listening to their recommendations. Just as the word “plot” was borrowed by Academia to describe a book review as the “layout of the land”, so terms like “genre” - originally a description by marketing for Science Fiction pulp magazine editors to collect a certain type of stories for their readers - now has all sorts of technical details to it. (The term “genre” itself is only mentioned once in all of Campbell’s, Harris’, and Swain’s works I’m focused on.) I do think Coyne’s work can be distilled against both Dorothea Brande and the OU Pro-Writing crowd - to then come up with a more direct recipe for any writer. The essential point is like golf - to not lose the ball in the tall grass that lines the sides of the fairway. Keep your eye on the goal and use as few strokes as possible to attain it. Editors and marketers always push for more editing and more marketing. (As a note here, the book marketing genius of Tim Grahl is now a managing partner of Coyne’s Story Grid empire.)
The core use of this project is to thoroughly study a certain approach to becoming a professional writer - where all the authors are generally on the same page. I know Campbell’s stuff well by now, so seeing where others took it, plus writing it up into more modern prose, will then be my education in theory. Then I’ll be working all this into my non-fiction weekly, plus getting ready to start back into short story and serial fiction.
All while managing the farm, etc.
Upcoming Books
As I continue developing my understanding of what makes the best writing, I do go back to check my long-overdue books sitting there - waiting.
WriterpreneurOS: Cracking the Cashflow Code has survived my intermittent polishing well. I has to deliver the concept of a rudimentary operating system for writers as they develop as entrepreneurs. Last night, I check to see that there was a section on the discipline of writing - and it was there. I sighed and smiled at that.
Once this Harris OCR work is complete, I plan to see (in this next week) how I can do a soft launch with that first book above and get it out there.
Copywriting for Writerpreneurs will be next after that, since it is also mostly complete, other than some minor polishing. It, too, will be soft-launched and left to make its sales based on just it’s blurb, cover and preview. Mostly that’s letting SEO do the marketing work. (An advantage non-fiction still has over fiction.)
Then I’ll start the work in earnest of boiling down some 10 or so books into one or more reference tomes that revive the original OU Professional Writing training. Really, this is just scratching my own itch so I can take my own writing up to the next level. Both fiction, non-fiction, and that flash fiction called copywriting.
I got an idea on the covers early this morning to make them a series with the same overlay artwork and different background colors. I’ll have to work these up and show them to you.
At least you have a front-row seat to all this. In addition to the beta-reader versions I drop for you occasionally.
Once these Becoming a Professional Writer series is ready, then the Kickstarter and marketing proper will launch. At least that’s the plan.
WriterpreneurOS Posts
I interrupted the Cashflow Code serial to bring you one on starting a paid subscriber service on Substack.
There’s 10 total, so only another three.
Fiction Posts
We’re on the downhill part of the Erotika Jones serial.
There are only one last episode to arrive in this serial. The surprise wrap-up and solution with the happy ending, despite the villainy afoot.
We’re running out of time on this gal’s adventures, so the next one shows up with her team running short on juice as she gets ready to confront the “big boss” of this crime syndicate she’s been up against.
I’ve some ideas of what serial-series to produce next. There are a couple which run independent of the Ghost Hunters long narrative. Of course, characters from that narrative tend to cross-pollinate the others. So eventually, I’ll simply start up with the Ghost Hunters from the beginning (any we haven’t already published) and start in laying these out in sequence. Mainly because they read far better as you meet each new character and they evolve alongside the existing ones.
Expectancy Tips
Visiting relatives reminded me of some old data I’d assembled. The old saw says that, “It always feels good to have visiting relatives, but it’s feels great when they leave again.” They were here to help celebrate my Mother’s 95th birthday.
Some have a habit of spreading gossip, which at it’s base is something bad happening to someone. So contributing to this type of conversation then makes you feel bad yourself.
I’m a great believer in Earl Nightingale’s saying, “We become what we think about.” And so allowing negative thoughts enter your mind can make your life worse, if only temporarily.
Now, happiness itself is fleeting. Nightingale calls it serendipitous - meaning you’ll find it while you’re looking for something else. This has everything to do with setting and meeting goals - that type of satisfaction. You won’t find it in the dopamine surges of social media “likes”. That’s something different - and addictive. Like other drugs (coffee, sugar) you try to encounter these in small amounts during your day.
But happiness can be encouraged to arrive by practicing having a good attitude. Like giving a free smile away to everyone you meet - the habit of being cheerful and optimistic. And avoiding stuff that makes you upset - like all news and politics. They’re designed that way.
Instead, put on a smile - and soon something will come to mind that is worth smiling about. And of course, review your goal statement daily and plan out what you need to accomplish that day which will help that larger goal arrive.
And along that journey, happiness will show up - if you’re looking for it.
Again, just a daily habitual practice in observing and expecting.
Still working on my bonuses in the paid subscription area. You can visit https://store.livingsensical.com for my numerous discount-priced collections of books, courses, materials. As usual.
Kickstarter Previews
Still need your feedback on the Kickstarter preview.
Please visit the preview and use their comment area to tell me what needs to improve - or just give me (needed) attaboys.
Kickstarter display page here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1481356435/1548894263?ref=a5wy7u&token=315549e4 (Feel free to share that preview…)
Sign up to be notified when it goes live: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robertworstell/writerpreneur-cracking-the-cashflow-code-non-fiction-book (Sign up now. Share that link with anyone you know who it could help.
PS. I discovered late pledges have been implemented by Kickstarter - so mine will have these for all who missed the initial roll-out. Lots of great stuff. When we get back to it.
A Special Offer Returns
Continuing along - the beta-readers version of Cracking the Cashflow Code is now available. It will be available at this link until I start the Kickstarter release, you can download the new and improved edition (especially if you already have it from earlier.)
That link is also Pay What You Want - a nice way to donate.
Here’s the link: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/CashflowCode
AN ASK: if you’ve downloaded it, please give some feedback. Leave it in the comments, send me an email. Something, anything. Like it, could be better.
NOTE: This will be a bonus for the Kickstarter. Publishing decisions will be in the next few weeks.
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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…
(Meanwhile, I’ve put my archived newsletters and articles all available as free on Substack, instead of behind a paywall.)
AND you can always buy me a coffee…
Here’s that new beta-reader advanced copy - still available:
What will you name him?