Riding around - Research for Images and Background

I haven't had a chance to ride the Shadow the last few days. Seems like every time I started to, one of those passing (small) thunderstorms would start up, or at least threaten. Today, it looked better, and it seemed not quite so hot, so I set out. I needed to go West to McDade and check the post office, but I also had been intending to check out a couple of small ghost towns running back to the East from here. I picked up a fairly good map of Lee County last week at the county clerk's office in Giddings. I rode to McDade, very pleasant ride as usual, got the mail, snagged a fountain Coke at the Valero, and consulted my map. (McDade is actually in Bastrop County on Highway 290, a few miles East of Elgin.)
I could see a series of county roads running back through the boonies leading back toward Moab and Fedor. I took Marlin Street North out of McDade and followed it to Paint Creek Road. Small problem, I passed it up, since it was un-marked by signage. I figured it out, though and back tracked a bit. I followed Paint Creek quite a ways, then a left on Stockade Ranch Rd., and a right on Roberts Road. Good riding till Roberts. From there on the county road was only about one lane wide, and gravel. Pretty soon, possibly around where Roberts crossed into Lee County and became County Road 333, I found several stretches of deep soft sand. The road wasn't much more than two tire tracks through sand. I was truly wishing for a dirt bike at this point, but I kept going, very slowly. Intermittent stretches of gravel and dirt were actually welcome after the sand. 
This kept on till I reached the junction of 333, 331, and 334. This cross roads was my first checkpoint, the community of Moab. Nothing could be seen there except a thicket of trees and fields, although my reading in The Handbook of Texas mentioned two cemeteries. If there were any buildings, I didn't find them. County road 333 became 331 and continued on to the East till it met 309. A right on 309 led me to FM 1624 and the community of Fedor. 
Fedor, at least has a few houses around, a church, and a volunteer fire department. The Handbook of Texas says the community had 86 residents in 2000. A quick turn on 324 and I found the old feed store. 

Fedor Feed Store

My goal reached for today, I headed back North on 1624 to Lexington for fuel and drink, then back home by way of 696 West. It was a very pleasant ride, except for the sand.

The Shadow - My Research Assistant

Catching Up

   It's been a good while since I posted here. I've been busy. Avatar has been going well. I just took a new student through an intro, and half of a Resurfacing class, (she'll take the second half soon), as well as helping with other students. We're planning on taking some students to Colorado in a month or so, and definitely planning to take the Wizard's course in Orlando in January.
   My '84 Honda Shadow was down for a few days, and I put some time in fixing that. I've got it going again. I'm enjoying riding around and exploring this part of the county. Some of that is taking pictures and research for my books. I enjoy seeing old cemeteries and small towns. 
   In addition, a few days ago the slave drive on my desktop computer crashed. It is a 120 gig drive, and I had been using it for overflow until it was nearly filled, then it died. It's not too horrible, and I may even be able to get some of it back. My more critical stuff was on my main drive, all my writing and reference stuff stays on a 4 gig flash drive, so I can use it either on my desktop or laptop. So, I still have that safe. It took me a few days to get the desktop back online, re-install a few things that I needed that had been on the second drive, and so on. But, I'm using it now. A friend in Austin thinks maybe he can revive that second drive for me, get my data back. I guess the worst part is all my music, and much of my drafting files were on that drive. 
   Still looking for a paying job. Unemployment insurance has ended, again, although I read that congress is trying to extend it some more. Here's hoping. With construction still at a low, there doesn't seem to be any demand for 60 year old steel detailers. In the year plus since I was laid off, Texas Work Force Commission has come up with exactly one job referral that fit any of my qualifications, and I didn't get it. Oh well. 
   Anyone need a draftsman with background in steel construction, a bit of structural engineering, permaculture, handymanology, farm/auto mechanics and writing skills?
   Actually, I wondered about hiring myself out as a mentor of sorts. A lifetime of "jack of all trades" and so on. I'm not physically up to a lot of the heavier aspects of, say, re-building a farm tractor, or an old car. But I could mentor someone who wanted to. I grew up in a rural garage, I've done most of my own work on cars and tractors, etc. all my life. There's not so much I want to tackle in cars and trucks since they grew computers and such, but most of pre-1980's vintage I can help with. 
   The ideal situation would be a rural intentional community, where I could exchange knowledge and skills for living/working space for Cat Dancing and myself. 
  Actually, through Avatar, it is impossible to get down about any of it. It is more of a "glass half full" situation. 
  Boogie on.

Recent Reads and Synchronicity

Within the last couple of days I finished reading 3 books I had started at various times recently. I'm not sure how it happens, I often have several books in progress. Usually it's a book I'm reading that someone gave me, or I've had kicking around for awhile, then I get one from the library that of course I need to read and take back soon, or it's one I just got from one of my favorite series or author's I'm more interested in, so I jump into that one and then later go back and finish the previous one. I also often have one book in progress by my bed for night reading, and another in the bathroom for, well, you know. The bathroom is my branch library, what can I say?
It's usually non-fiction writing-related books in the bathroom, or magazines. (The two magazines I read regularly are "The Mother Earth News", and "The Backwoodsman".)
Regardless, the three fictions I just finished are, in no order, "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell", "The Jamais Vu Papers" and "Slave of my Thirst".
A bit of an eclectic mix, I admit. I did enjoy all three. "Jamais Vu" was a pretty wild ride, but oddly, it fit in interestingly with the Avatar Master's course I just finished. I always find it fascinating how something like that takes on a whole new meaning after you have a viewpoint shift like that.
There was one of those odd synchronous moments also, when I realized, even though "Slave" and "Jamais Vu" were vastly different subject matters, the author Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) made a cameo appearance in both.
I run into that now and then. It's always an interesting "whoa!" moment when two very different genre books I just happen to read in sequence just happen to mention the same idea. Sometimes it's an obscure quote, sometimes it's a fictional character or real person. But it happens too often to be random chance.
Just a couple of weeks ago I read two books, one a fantasy by Lionel Fenn (Blood River Down), another a mystery by Bill Crider (Booked For a Hanging). The two were written in different decades, different authors and different genres. I picked both at random to read, one from the library, one I had bought. Yet, both mentioned the fact that the same quote from Shakespeare, "Lead on MacDuff", was actually a misquote, the original being "Lay on, MacDuff."


Okay, it's a trivial thing, perhaps, but the part that got me was the synchronicity of the same thing appearing in two very different novels I read at random.
Synchronicity is a great subject all its own. Nowhere does it crop up more often than in the study of genealogy.
Guess it all just illustrates the principle that "there are no accidents."
As to the books. I enjoyed all five.
"Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" took a little getting used to. For me, it was one of those books that start a little slow, but I think it was necessary to truly set up the premise involved. It was well worth reading. The size is daunting to some, no doubt, but for those of us who Stephen King and Stephen R. Donaldson, that's not such an issue.
"Slave of My Thirst" was an interesting take on vampires, and worked in a lot of plausible fictional background on Dracula, Sherlock Holmes and other true and fictional issues of the late 1800's. Again, an interesting read.
I already mentioned "Jamais Vu" and how it meshed with my Avatar experience. The book came out in 1989. It reminds me somewhat of "Godel, Escher, Bach." (Another book on my "to finish" list, as soon as I find my copy again.) . "Jamais Vu" covers a lot of territory, and I don't know exactly how to describe it. I suppose most of all it touches on the relationship of "reality" and mythical universes. A lot falls within the realm of the movie "What the (bleep) do we know?" If you missed THAT, it concerned ramifications of quantum physics and mysticism. Not as dry a subject as it may sound.
I may as well talk about the other two books I mentioned above.
I find Lionel Fenn (Charles L. Grant) to be a truly funny fantasy writer, somewhat in the vein of Piers Anthony's Xanth series.
I stumbled across a few of Fenn's books by accident some time back at Half Price Books. I think my favorites are "Once Upon a Time in the East", and "The Mark of the Moderately Vicious Vampire", although every one I've read has been just as much fun. I recently got copies of "Blood River Down" and "Seven Spears of the W'Dch'Ck". Both are earlier works, I believe, but still very funny. All of Fenn's works are well worth finding and reading.
As far as "Booked for a Hanging" is concerned. My esteem for the Sheriff Dan Rhodes series of mysteries by Bill Crider is also very high. I don't know if "small town colloquial/folksy" is an actual genre of mystery, but this would be a prime example of it. Maybe a cross between "Murder She Wrote" and "Andy of Mayberry". Whatever it is, I love it! Growing up in small town Texas myself, every corner Sheriff Rhodes turns awakens a new "Oh yeah, I remember that!" from myself. I think I've already said I'm a bit envious. I hope my own planned series set in Central Texas is as good.

Dreams, and re-connecting

I've essentially been away from the computer, the blog, writing and email for two weeks or so while doing the Avatar Master's course near Orlando, Florida. I did take my laptop, but time was a bit short to do other than log on now and then and see if anything more earth shattering was happening. I was doing a lot of very personal work, and that was top priority for this trip.


I did have a few pretty interesting dreams, and I wrote them down for later use. I have a nice leather-bound journal I gave myself last year for a "dream journal" as well as another one for class use. (I found a sale on them at BookStop not long before the last one closed here.) I use the journal when I wake up, or I often grab whatever other writing material is handy. I also use spiral bound steno books often, I buy packs of three and keep them around. I like the very handy size and the top spiral that makes them easy to use. I also use 3x5 index cards. It's very handy to keep a few in my pocket, jot down ideas, scenes, character notes, etc. They can be easily filed later, or, as I like to do, type them into that TiddlyWikiWrite program for filing. The same program also has a "journal" feature that makes a new page with the date as a header, for entering journal type entries. My dreams usually end up entered in that function. I like having it all available for searching and using later. (Check my earlier blog for that link.)


On this trip, one of my dreams specifically had a direct use in my mystery novel in progress, and another just begs to become a rather mystical short story. I learned the hard way not to trust my memory on dreams. If I don't write them down right away they tend to totally disappear within an hour or so. Cat has gotten used to me waking up at 3 a.m. and writing things down before going back to sleep. I also tell some of them to her, the act of telling sometimes prevents forgetting, sometimes. She usually promptly forgets what I told her, dream-wise, but it helps me remember. (She was only half-awake herself at the time, after all!)


So, back to work!

Writing by Outlline

In my previous post I talked about using the Tarot to outline your project. There is no doubt that having a good outline is the preferred way to tackle any writing project. It's very comforting to know which way the story is going so you can take it there. I read recently that writing without an outline is like jumping in the car and starting on a journey without knowing where you are going. That would be anathema to many people. On the other hand, for some, it would be the epitome of adventure. 


I read a book by Stephen King on writing a while back. I like what he said. I have to admit it's been awhile and I don't have it in front of me, so I may be sadly misquoting, if so, forgive me Mr. King! What he said was along the lines of "anything anybody tells you about writing is wrong, including me!" His point, I believe, is that you can read tons of books on writing, and I have, some of them agree on some points, disagree on others. You can become greatly confused unless you realize that what each  writer is suggesting  is what works for that one writer. By all means, read, get ideas, find methods to try. Don't be too upset if they don't all work for you. You will find tools that work with your project, and your own style of working. Writers are, if anything, different individuals. All of us have different viewpoints, different skills and different interests. Pick what works for you, toss the rest and don't feel too bad about it.


Another point, at least for me, is project specific. In my own experience no two projects have evolved the same way. One story grows from a character who appeals to me, another from a scene that appears full blown, still another appears with the ending already known. Each has its own problems, and requires different amounts and kinds of work to finish. You do what you have to do. Now and then a scene appears from nowhere, I write it down, another scene pops up later and it goes with that one. Not a very organized way to work, but it happens. Notebooks, file cards and/or the computer work well to contain those elements. Easy to enter them, file them (especially using the TiddlyWikiWrite tool I talked about in a previous post), and re-assemble them when the time is write. It's especially good when you are working on project A, and while you're in that creative frame of mind, scenes from a new project B pop up. You get them down, file them away, play with them later. By all means, get them down. I've forgotten whole encyclopedias of story ideas, thinking I'd surely remember them later!


A lot of writers, and some of them successful, do indeed start a story and just see where it takes them. They establish their characters and see where they go. No doubt, they waste some time doing that, although even scenes unused can be reused somewhere else, besides it all counts as good practice.


Be an organized writer, but organize it your way. Have fun, that's what it's all about. Certainly be willing to learn new ways, but don't agonize over it or try and force your round peg self into a square hole. Do what works.


Enjoy the journey, with or without a map!

Outlining by Tarot

So, here I am. I have three bonafide writing projects going, and a couple more in stasis. All have found new life partly because of  some very nice usable writing software I've reported on before. All three main projects are also now nominally outlined, at least as much if not more than I have ever done in the past, using my tarot tool.


Here's how it works. Some knowledge of the tarot in general is helpful, but not critical. I have been taking classes from my tarot-teacher partner, Cat Dancing, and it has been a great help. The information is available in a lot of places, however. I'll give some basics below. For the most part this is directed only at using the tarot as a writing tool. Reading the tarot is a whole different subject!


If you know nothing yet about the tarot, think of a deck of regular playing cards. Usually, the court cards have pictures of the king, queen, jack. The numbered cards only have groupings of the suit, 5 clubs, 3 hearts, etc. A "standard" tarot deck has those same cards with two big differences. The suits are swords, cups, pentacles, and wands. Also, the court cards have one more character with king, queen, knight, page. This group of cards in a tarot deck are called the minor trumps. In addition, the tarot deck includes major trumps, a group of twenty two other cards including: The Fool, The Lovers, The Sun, and so on.


I have a lot of tarot decks. Most came from garage sales, personal gifts, and the local Half Price Books store. I used to collect the decks just for the art. Only a few do I actually read with, and not all would be much help for writing purposes. One of the best basic decks for this would be the standard Rider - Waite - Smith deck. (Let's call it the RWS for short) This one can be found almost anywhere. The selling point for this deck is that every card is illustrated with a scene. Some of the decks available only show the groups of each suit, much like those playing cards. The RWS deck, as I said, has a scene for each card. It is this that can give a new tarot reader, as well as a writer,  some clues on meanings of cards. I would consider the RWS deck the basic deck for this, although there are several newer decks derived from that one that may speak to different writers even more clearly. One that I currently like is the Cosmic Tarot, by Norbert Losche. (U.S. Games). The characters appearing in this deck seem vaguely familiar, as if they were based on various classic film stars. This goes a long way for me in suggesting characters. Another interesting one is the "Flash Card Tarot" by Linda Nadeau. This deck has some rather unusual but often useful illustrations on one side, and the meanings and description on the back. It can be a useful imagination spark.


Now that you have your deck. You need some way to interpret the cards. First, try just studying each card, see what it suggests to you. Your first and best guide is your own intuition! Most decks come with their own little book, sometimes a big book, that explains the meanings. Let that be your second resource. Not everything listed in the card descriptions will be useful in your writing, but some will suggest ideas to you. There are many other books online and in print that give card information. The ultimate would be "Tarot for Writers" by Corinne Kenner. (See my link below). Ms. Kenner describes each card and what is useful for the writer, as well as giving many useful "spreads" or layouts to use. Corinne Kenner also has a useful companion book, "Tarot Journaling" that is just that, using the tarot to journal more effectively.


Now that we have those basics out of the way. Here is how I use the cards:


1. Outlining a book - Give some thought to what you intend to do. Let's say you want to pick a card for each division of the planned work. This might be chapters for a book, scenes for a play, perhaps steps in the journey. Come up with a usable number. I like to think it chapters, if I am working on a book. Forty-four is a sort of average number of chapters for many novels.
Shuffle the cards a number of times. Seven times is supposed to guarantee randomness. I personally shuffle three times, cut, then shuffle one more time. People draw cards in various ways. I like to just deal off the top of the deck in the order they are in. If we are outlining forty-four chapters, deal the cards out face up one by one in four rows of eleven.
Some of the cards will be upright, some may be reversed. If we want added complexity, we can take the reverses into account, or we can simply see them all as upright. Make a list of the cards. I use the novel software I'm using (yWriter5 in this case) and note the card into each chapter notes. As you note each card, notice anything that catches your attention about the card that may indicate character, or plot, or setting, anything, and write that down as well. You might then look up each card in one of those books or resources and make additional notes.
It may be that some of the chapters thus laid out may need to be re-arranged for better flow. It's okay to do that. You can even discard cards that don't seem to work, and draw new ones. The tarot police won't care. This is your tool, you use it however works best for you. In my initial layout for my mystery novel, the first card drawn didn't really work for me as first chapter, however, I put is aside as an indicator of overall story, and used the second card as first chapter, and the rest fell into place pretty well. Don't be afraid to deviate. This is just a starting place, idea material. Once you have the larger divisions, the chapters, laid out in this manner, you may want to re-shuffle and draw cards for minor divisions, like scenes. It's all up to you. As for meanings, you can be literal, or imaginative. The Death card may mean a literal death, in your story, or it may be a major transition of some sort. The Fool can mean an innocent stumbling into the scene, or it might be time to look at things from a fresh point of view, to use "beginner mind" as the Zen teachers put it.


2. Character - You can draw cards to help define your characters, maybe even suggest names (with some imagination.) The court cards are most helpful for this, although any of the other cards can also suggest characters, or the character's traits. As you make a bio for your characters, use the tarot to suggest entries for those areas that aren't clear to you yet, background, habits, goals, that sort of thing. Simplest would be one card for one item, see what it suggests. Many times I use a 3 card spread. I do the usual shuffle, cut the deck somewhere near the center. The top card in the exposed half is the middle card. The card just below it is the third card, and the card that was just above it is the first card in the three card row. These three can mean many things, but I usually rank them in some sort of past, present, future context about whatever I'm getting a reading on. I just pulled three cards in this fashion. The Hermit, Justice, and the Chariot. I'm using the Cosmic Tarot deck. The Hermit shows a mystical guru type, almost a stereotypical hippy, sitting in the night near a lantern. A seeker. Also someone to seek out for knowledge, perhaps. Justice shows a woman with a crown between night and day. Scales of balance are in front of her, she sees truth. The Chariot shows a chariot, pulled by two wild horses, one black, one white, being driven by a kingly figure away from a castle. What might this mean to you? Perhaps it is a character, loner type, with a non-traditional education, seeks justice as society dictates, but is trampled by the established justice system.


3. Series - I projected my mystery novel into a series of novels with the same protagonist and settings. I spent a lot of enjoyable time inventing his hometown, and peopling it with interesting characters, why not make further use of it all? Besides, as I did all that background, I came up with a few ideas of other stories to tell. So, I thought, how about twelve books ? I did a twelve card layout similar to the "chapter" spread above. I let each card represent a book. Interestingly, the stories I had already thought of fit rather well into one of the twelve topics. In some cases titles were even suggested by the cards and the imagined situation. So, now I have a rough outline of where the whole series is going. That's good to have for any kind of series character.
For instance, The Hanged Man card came up. One of my ideas was a mystery involving genealogy. Bingo! Another card was the Wheel of Fortune. Ready made spot for something about the lottery!


These three techniques can give you a starting place. Enjoy!

Rainy Day Writing

Stormy last night. Slept pretty good. Pretty involved dreams all night. I didn’t remember any worth writing down this time. Well, okay, there was one. I was going along as an observer on a balloon flight. Huge balloon, made up of light clear plastic, like dry cleaner bags joined somehow. Wasn’t hot air or gas, we were riding inside the bubble somehow. Anyway, I didn’t really get inside. A couple of women I’ve known were going up and inviting me along. There was a rope ladder through a hatch in their ceiling that led into the balloon, but the opening in the trap door was too small for me to get through. there was a larger opening nearby, but that led to a different balloon they had. Somehow one of them switched things so I could climb on up through the large opening and still get there. Not sure I want to cogitate too much on the connotations. That’s about all I remember of that dream, anyway. It ended about the time I crawled into the balloon. It was a large open space with a lot of braces.
I mostly intend to do some work today on my Deputy Constable Penn Sadler story. It takes place in a precinct of mostly small towns in central Texas. A fictional county and so forth that bears a great resemblance to where I grew up, and where I live now. I’m planning a series of novels for the same area. I was a bit taken aback by Bill Crider’s “Sheriff Dan Rhodes” series. He has very much tapped the same vein. I love the books, though. Encouraging to see that it can indeed be done and well.
My main character, whom I’ve named Penn Sadler, is a native of the area, which I’ve called Shin Oak. He had been a county Deputy Sheriff, spent a little time as Acting Sheriff when the previous one left office under a scandal. Penn was defeated in his run for the office by some political chicanery and left the department, which pleased both him and his new boss. Penn is a good officer, so he got a job as Deputy Constable with an old friend, Constable Sam Hart, under his local Justice of the Peace, Sara Beth Adams.
Penn keeps up with matters in the Sheriff’s Department through his old friends there, as well as friends in other state departments. Contacts he cultivated through his previous career and a few high profile cases he had helped with. These contacts serve to draw him into many of the sorts of cases a Deputy Constable wouldn’t normally handle.
I've also been consciously using my tarot system for plotting/outline both the book and the series. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out, huh? As the man said, I can hardly wait to see what I write next!