Creeks, Cliffs and Wildflowers

Lots to do! Deadline zooming toward me for my work in progress and the words are coming slow. Chores need doing! New floor going down in the kitchen and bathroom and new room. New floors going down need everything moved off them! Not enough hours in the day.

Sometimes it's hard getting everything done since I have to spend so many hours sitting with Mom and trying to convince her she is home and doesn't need to head out the door to that home that is just beyond her view in her mixed up thoughts. That home she wants is long gone but so much more real in her mind these days than the home where she's been living for the last thirty years.

All this to say that sometimes a person just has to ignore all the have-to-dos and take some time for want-to-dos. So come go to the creek with me.

That's what I did Friday morning. I gave myself the gift of a couple of hours and forgot about the deadlines and chores. It's wildflower season at my creek and I feel cheated if I don't get a chance to admire the wildflowers there every year. So I said the chores can wait. The words might come easier after a little brain rest time. And I went walking. I didn't let Oscar go. He's still recuperating from his broken leg and surgery, but I didn't totally miss out on dog companionship on my hike. The short-legged little neighbor dog went with me. His name's Peanut Butter, but I nicknamed him P.B.

And I saw the wildflowers and heard the creek running. I spotted a Jack-in-the-pulpit, one of my favorites. I got a great picture of some shooting stars. I saw larkspur and buttercups. I took pictures of wood poppies and bent head trilliums, another of my favorites.

The creek was full from the recent rains with the water singing over the rocks. I got my feet wet and practiced my balance on the rocks. And then I climbed back up the steep hill, came home and headed to Mom's. It's good to give yourself a gift now and again. Especially in the spring when nature has given us the gift of beauty.  

What are some of your want-to-dos that make you happy when you give yourself that gift of time? Reading? Time with the grandkids? A favorite movie? Writing in a journal?

Kids and Creeks and Other Summertime Fun

Summer time is a good time of year to forget what day it is. All week I've had to think twice about whether it's Monday or Thursday. And oops, it's Thursday and I totally let Wednesday slip past me without coming over to talk. I can blame it on the deadline rush to edit and pare and trim that had me totally in Shaker land. 

Or I could blame it on the grandkids who came out to spend a couple of days here. With my book off to the editor, this was supposed to be grandkid week with two here on Tuesday and Wednesday and two more tomorrow and Saturday. I finagled and figured and got Mom covered with the help of my sisters. It was all working out so well. Today is the twin's birthday and I would get to see them as they start being big three-year-olds and then bring the big sisters home for a visit. Plans don't always work out. The girls both got very sick with high temps and vomiting and blisters on throats. The doctor's verdict is a nasty virus, but it sure did throw a monkey wrench into our plans. Their mom reports that my eight year old granddaughter was throwing up and then looking up at her mom and asking if she was still going to get to go to grandma's. Guess I'd better start finagling and figuring and planning a new time, but next week is harder because school starts around here on Tuesday. That changes all the schedules. But where's there's a will there's a way. Or maybe I should say where there's a grandkid wanting to come grandma finds a way. 


The other grandkids had fun down at the creek 
on Tuesday. The water was mountain stream cool, but they jumped in anyway. They could thank all the recent rains that they had pools deep enough to wade around in. Sometimes this time of the year the creek is nothing but a rocky bed waiting for the winter rains. Here they are checking out the weird green moss on the rocks in the cave and finding fossils. The next day they got to go with their granddad to the Falls of Louisville and find out about more fossils. It was their granddad's first solo field trip with the grandkids, but I think everybody had fun. That's what visits to grandma and granddad's house is supposed to be in the summer when you're a kid. Fun. I remember going to see my aunt who was like a grandma to me and all my memories are good. And then we spent a week with our cousins. More fun. In the good old summertime.


Hoping you're having so much fun in these last weeks of summer that you're forgetting what day of the week it is too. Maybe I'll get back in the real world soon, but I don't know. There's another book waiting to be told. And I'll have to go off in to some other time and place again.


Thanks for reading.

Before and After

I took some of the grandkids to the creek on Friday. It's April and won't be summer for quite a few more weeks, but the day was warm. In the seventies. The creek is spring fed from underground so the water stays chilly, but the plan was to keep on stepping stones, see the wildflowers, and maybe spot a crawdad or two or a lizard. The older kids even took cameras claiming to want to get some pictures of the wildflowers. But when you're eleven and nine and four, the lure of the water wins out over the delicate sight of wildflowers. And even if you're extra careful, there's always that first slip on one of those slippery rocks and whoops! Your shoes are wet. So there's really no need in trying to keep your feet out of the creek. You might as well do a little wading. Then maybe the next time you fall right down in the creek and after a few more slips, if you're four, you forget to even say you slipped. You just jump right in to the deeper pools. And because you're with Grammy, it turns out okay and you end up splashing in a creek way before normal creek splashing time by the calendar.

A crawdad did get caught and has ended up being named Claw. Some wildflower pictures did get taken, but Grammy pointed her camera at the little flower falling into the creek. The first picture is the before. While the creek hasn't yet pulled her in. The second picture is when all pretense of staying dry has been abandoned. Thankfully she has understanding parents who haven't banned them from going anywhere near a creek with their grandmother - yet. Of course their father remembers having those "accidental" falls into the creek himself.

In trying to come up with a title for this post, I thought of the before and after angle. That's sort of the way I have to think about my characters and their stories. I need my picture of them before they start living in my story. I have to know about them. What they were doing before the curtain rises on my story. Then I have to think about them after the story gets going. What are they going to do? What are they going to learn? How are they going to change? What will happen? That's where I am with my story now. In the middle of wondering some of those things. I know what's going to happen in a vague, dreamy kind of way. But I need to come up with a word trail to make those dreams show up in vivid scenic colors. Maybe it will help if I think about taking my characters to my story creek and letting them fall in. Then we - me and my characters - can rush along with the creek and have an adventure on the way to the end.

On Facebook last week I asked my friends what outside fun things they did as kids. How about you? What did you think was the most fun to do outside when you were a kid? Did you ever fall in a creek - accidently on purpose?

Following the Story Trail

What is it about a creek like this that makes you want to keep on following it? To see what's around the next corner. To see where the water goes?

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This is my creek. At least as much as any creek can belong to anybody. I don't say it's mine just because it's on my land. I say it's mine because my feet like to follow its stepping stones. I say it's mine because hiking down through it or beside it brings me joy. I haven't been down the creek yet this year. I'm waiting for the time of the wildflowers and I suppose, time for the hike.

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I'm deep into edits on a book due out early next year and the changes I want to make in the story are more involved than my usual editing jobs. This time I'm having to whittle in places and enhance in other places. The story is there, but now I'm following down its creek and looking for some bright rocks I can point out or pitching out the dull rocks that are clogging up the flow of the story.

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A story is a bit like a running creek, at least my running creek. This creek, my creek starts with a spring of water spilling up out of the ground. A story starts with an idea springing out of one's imagination. The water begins rolling down the creek bed splashing past rocks and tumbling over little waterfall ledges. A good story too starts rolling along and twisting through the plot thickening rocks the writer throws into the stream. If the water stops running and gathers in a pool, it can get stagnant quick. The same with a story. No matter how beautiful the place, the story can't just sit there or it will be stagnant the same as the pool of water. It needs to rush on, find the next bunch of rocks, gather water perhaps from new springs as it keeps flowing to find its ending spot. For my creek that's a bigger creek and then the river. At least that's so when there's plenty of rain. When there's no rain, the creek just runs out of water and becomes a dry bed of rocks.

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I'm trying to keep my story from running out of water. I want it to keep flowing. I want it to be full of sparkling water/words that will quench the story thirst of my readers. And so I'm working over every page, studying my editor's suggestions, listening to every line of dialogue, testing every word in hopes that when the story is finally ready and in a reader's hands my story will look as enticing to that reader as my creek does to me in the spring.

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For those of you who might want another chance to win a book, I've got another blog interview up. I'm sure you've noticed that I've been talking to everybody I can about my new book Angel Sister. This time fellow Kentucky writer Karen Lange asked me some questons on her blog "Write Now." You can leave a comment on Karen's blog (see her posted rules) before Friday to have a chance to win a copy of what else - Angel Sister. http://www.karenelange.blogspot.com/

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And Friday I get to be tour bus guide for a day as I accompany a group of retired legal secretaries to the Shaker village near me. That may be interesting. Perhaps I should have told them that I sometimes get car sick. I'm hoping for smooth roads and few curves. I'll tell you how it goes Sunday and whether I had to have a barf bag.

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As always, thanks for reading.