{"id":2640,"date":"2016-11-04T22:05:50","date_gmt":"2016-11-05T04:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=2640"},"modified":"2016-11-04T22:15:36","modified_gmt":"2016-11-05T04:15:36","slug":"up-from-the-depths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=2640","title":{"rendered":"Up From the Depths…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bubbles rise to the surface of the murky water…the water-lily pads bob up and down…somewhere something is moving, but nobody can quite see what it is…until a large blob, crowned with two water lily pads and a glob of slime that drips down a face obscured by a wetsuit hood, rises to the surface.<\/p>\n

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Well, it’s like this.\u00a0\u00a0 September did not go as planned (you might have seen that<\/em> coming)\u00a0 and the plan to cut back on the novel’s daily wordage to allow wordage for the story due November 1 was derailed by a novel itself, all the political stuff (including multiple phone calls a day which–even if unanswered–mean I jerk uncontrollably when the phone at my elbow rings),\u00a0 having gone back to singing at church which meant the extra weekly trip to\/from the city even though I left for home in time to get there by 10 pm (meaning I cut part of choir practice, which led to, naturally, some stress on Sunday mornings.)\u00a0\u00a0 I didn’t sing the All Souls requiem service this year;\u00a0 couldn’t summon the energy.\u00a0 They did Cavalli…a rarely performed but gorgeous early baroque requiem that fits in well with the liturgy of our church.<\/p>\n

For a more colorful view of how writing went during October, please wander over to Universes<\/a>\u00a0 to read about it, because it’s really long and I didn’t want to copy it here.\u00a0\u00a0 I think it’s funny. \u00a0\u00a0 In brief, a train wreck between competing stories and deadlines.\u00a0 Three steps back in the recovery process because of having to stay up later than I should to try to get the story due finished by November 1.\u00a0 This week has been getting that done and then recovering (partially) from the strain.\u00a0\u00a0 On the bright side, the novel is over its snit at being ignored completely for 9 days and today delivered unto me a lovely scene which will need a lot of work, but has good bones.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It’s at 77,400 (approx, actually a little more) at the moment.<\/p>\n

Someone elsewhere asked if I was doing NaNoWriMo this year, and as usual I said No, because I’m partway through something.\u00a0\u00a0 I will, however, be writing diligently at least 5 days a week, as usual, and some weeks 6 and 7.\u00a0 Hopefully without having to stay up past midnight, night after night, again, because that’s bad for me and it’s also bad for my writing.<\/p>\n

What else:\u00a0 Well, over 100 bur oak acorns have now been planted on our place.\u00a0\u00a0 80 acres that’s mostly not trees has plenty of room for more trees.\u00a0 We know most of them won’t sprout.\u00a0 But we also know some of them probably will, and bur oaks have all the advantages.\u00a0\u00a0 Native, drought-tolerant, disease resistant, providing\u00a0 habitat for a wide variety of wildlife from the invertebrates (specific butterflies) to mammals, food for the same range,\u00a0 somewhat open shade,\u00a0 survive grass fires if old enough (very thick bark), long-lived.\u00a0\u00a0 We also plant seeds from other native trees, shrubs, forbs, and grass, but the bur oaks are the largest, potentially, and one of my favorite plants.\u00a0\u00a0 This year the acorns we collected (are still collecting) are from trees we planted as acorns…the new trees will be grandchildren of the first acorns we brought home from bur oaks we found here and there, all within thirty miles of here.<\/p>\n

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\"bur-oak-acorn-cluster-yg-tree-10-10-16\"<\/a>\"13-yo-bur-oaks-10-10-16\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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This cluster of acorns is on a tree whose acorns were planted 13 years ago.\u00a0 They’re still green here, image taken a couple of weeks before they matured.\u00a0 Tree it came from is in right hand image.\u00a0\u00a0 Bur oaks stay tiny for years (and need protection against deer or cattle at that stage)\u00a0 but these 13 year olds don’t need a\u00a0 chicken-wire surrounds now.<\/p>\n

\"100-bur-oak-acorns-11-1-16\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"bur-oak-dollar-tree\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Left: 100 bur oak acorns in a basket, mostly from the older yard trees.\u00a0 The day before we picked these up, one of the same yard trees yielded 40 acorns.\u00a0 The day after, there were more.<\/p>\n

Right:\u00a0 This is the only bur oak we planted that wasn’t grown from an acorn:\u00a0 my mother bought a pitiful looking seedling from a roadside seller–one of its two little branches broken, wind-whipped and dry–for one dollar.\u00a0\u00a0 The remaining branch turned into a a true “leader” and the tree is now straight,\u00a0 tall, and doing well.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s now about 28 years old.\u00a0 We have two other\u00a0 acorn-planted\u00a0 bur oaks in the back yard just as tall, and another just outside the back yard a little taller.\u00a0\u00a0 And a young seedling that will someday replace (some of) the trees we had to take out last winter.<\/p>\n

Cold Welcome<\/em> is now proceeding steadily through the production process, expected to make its April debut without a hitch.\u00a0\u00a0 New Novel doesn’t have a confirmed title yet, though I made a suggestion to Editor (in mid-October) that she liked, but it has to pass the other elements.\u00a0 So there’s that.\u00a0\u00a0 The book after this is beginning to suggest itself but not yet with any energy.\u00a0\u00a0 I need to stay healthy to write–that much is clear–and therefore schedules must be arranged that promote it.<\/p>\n

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Bubbles rise to the surface of the murky water…the water-lily pads bob up and down…somewhere something is moving, but nobody can quite see what it is…until a large blob, crowned with two water lily pads and a glob of slime that drips down a face obscured by a wetsuit hood, rises to the surface.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,53,5],"tags":[112,20,107],"class_list":["post-2640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cold-welcome","category-life-beyond-writing","category-the-writing-life","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-progress-report","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2640"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2640"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2647,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2640\/revisions\/2647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}