storyfires

Sorry for the blog silence again. I really meant to be good, but then fire season started up in Utah and my lungs responded by getting pneumonia. Not my favorite part of summer Feeling somewhat better now, so I'll be getting back to the blog soon. One good thing? Too tired to exercise or weed or clean or do laundry or play chauffeur, and lots of writing time on the couch with the laptop, so I'm finally loving my novel again. And I've read 1500 pages. That's two good things. Yes, storyfires. With way too much smoke.

Lately I'm interested in how people research for their novels. Rick Riordan: organized Rick Riordan's style, for example, seems all efficiency and organization. Before he sits down to write, say, a book based on Egyptian mythology, Rick claims to 1) toss off his research in about two weeks; then, when he knows everything he needs to know about his subject, he 2) jots down an outline, and 3) churns out a story. Which then, of course, is brilliant, funny, and makes your kid (who never wanted to read before) love both reading and Egyptian mythology. I'm in the middle of writing a fantasy novel, so you might think research would be kind of minimal. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha! This is my style: 1) Write the first page with a setting loosely based on reality. Realize you have no plot because your setting sucks because you don't know enough, and also you don't really want to know about that place. Love the first page, though! 2) Pick a new setting on which to lo...

It's April, so I was doing my taxes. Not my favorite thing on earth. Actually, I was gathering papers and checking my files and looking up figures and calling up my dentist so I could figure out how much I spent on family dental bills last year ($3,000, believe it or not. Yes, we do floss our teeth), and then giving all the results to my tax accountant, because numbers and my brain, they don't mix, and my taxes happen to be complicated. So, technically, the accountant   was doing my taxes, not me. I was just paying for it. Not my favorite thing, either. I needed more deductions. So I asked the tax guy if I could deduct writing expenses. Writing conference fees, travel expenses, the research trip I really need to take for my next book...because I had heard... Him ( sympathetic smile ): No, unfortunately, since your writing doesn't bring in any actual income, the government considers it a "working hobby." You know, something you just do for fun. I thi...

Some of you have noticed Storyfires has gone dormant around here this winter. Thought I'd resurrect for Spring. My tulips and forget-me-not are in bloom. Aspen and maple leaves have appeared. Bleeding heart. Cherry blossoms. I keep thinking I should xeriscape my yard since I live in a desert. Cactus. Yucca. Mesquite. So I went to the nursery and came home with thyme and irish moss and delphinium. My psyche thinks I live in England, where things are green because it rains. I am alive. I am writing. Just so you know. Free books will be coming again. More stuff about writing. More about the writer's life. Finding balance. More about barefoot running. Maybe a poem or two. Just to torment you. See you around the fire!

I haven't logged in many barefoot runs lately. One on Thanksgiving that got me all the way around the temple before my feet went numb. One two  days ago, late morning, when the sun was up and the frost had mostly thawed the grass in the drainage basin. Two times around the bowl before I couldn't feel  my feet. Perfect. What those two barefoot days reminded me: how little we feel of the world most of the time. How much we miss, walking around with our shoes on. "The soil is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod." That's Gerard Manley Hopkins. Too bad a barefoot run was out of the question today. I put on wool socks and my "barefoot" shoes and a hat and gloves and took Andrei the Giant up the mountain--next best thing to going barefoot. The dog agrees. The fog made everything look so ethereal: hoar frost sprouting from each blade of long grass, each branch of scrub oak, and the cloud sitting low on the rocks jagging up the ravine.  Tried to take a ...