The Missing Milkweeds
So how’s this for a bit of irony.
In trying out a camera I figured I’d attempt to get some closeups of the milkweeds at the end of my driveway. I love that plant. It’s so full of textures: the plump velvety leaves, the sticky milky sap, the rubbery pink flower clusters of spring; the knobbly green pods, the black-and-orange beetles and monarch caterpillars that snack on it in summer; the soft downy fluff that flies from the dried papery pods in fall. So anyway, I got some okay shots, which you can see here. I figured I could see how they turned out and if they were dreck I could go back later to take some more. So here’s where the irony comes in.
It’s a good thing I took a picture of those milkweed pods because now they’re missing! The photos are all I’ve got left.
On (Canadian) Thanksgiving Sunday I drove out my driveway only to find a car parked crosswise at the end blocking my exit. Some guy was fingering a small pine tree growing at the side of my driveway and his apparent wife or female companion was bagging up the milkweed pods!
I rolled down my window and asked them what they were doing. Alright it was obvious but I had to ask.
The woman laughed sheepishly and said she was just gathering the milkweeds. Yeah, like I said, that was obvious. I could see she’d gathered quite a few in her bag. I asked her to leave some for us thank you. Meanwhile, the man had gone to his car and moved it so I could get out of my own driveway. I wasn’t moving. Not till they left. Nope. Not budging.
The woman continued to gather for a few more moments. I really was astounded. Then she got into their car and drove off. So now I hardly have any milkweeds left AT ALL! Like, maybe two or three pods (not plants) at the most. These ones in the photos? GONE!
I wouldn’t have minded so much if she’d only taken a few and then driven on down the road and taken a few from another patch and so on and so on leaving no patch destitute. But she pretty much cleaned me out. So now while we wait for the school bus we have no ghostly patches of down to filter the rising morning sun, no fluffy parachutes to launch into the sky. Milkweeds were kind of a fall ritual for me and my kids.
Okay, rant over and now I feel better. It’s a minor thing, I know. But sometimes it’s the little things in life that get to you, you know? Little things—at once both little and hugely important. And it’s the little things a writer adds to a character or to a setting that make for the best stories, I think. So go, and may you sow the seeds of your own milkweeds in your manuscripts.
© Lizann Flatt, www.lizannflatt.com
No part of this blog may be used without written permission from the author.
No part of this blog may be used without written permission from the author.
Still Slacking into September
I’ve been AWOL! How did that happen?
A story to illustrate the state of the union chez moi. The kids came home from one of the first few days of school last week with this story. Paraphrasing:
“Mommy, the exhaust pipe fell off the bus this morning so we had to get on the high school bus and she turned the wrong way on the highway and then we had to do the last part of our route backwards.”
Disclaimer: wrong way means not the way the route should go, not as in going south in the northbound lane, which sadly happens a few times a year around here.
What does that illustrate? It’s like a metaphor for my writing life the last couple months!
Yep, my exhaust pipe fell off somewhere. What writing have I done recently? Ahem, nothing. Between volunteer jobs taking over my life, going to work very part time (more on that in another post), dealing with regular family maintenance, and stupid allergies that make me look and feel like I’ve had about 2 hours sleep–oh wait a second, sometimes that might be true–I haven’t had an inch of head space for writing projects.
And now I feel guilty about that.
You know all that writing advice that says stuff like just write? make it a priority? you’ve got to treat it like a job? do it everyday? writers write? just plant your heiney in a chair and get writing? Yeah, I hear it and it makes sense but when I just can’t manage it I feel like a bit of a failure.
Sometimes your family has to come first. Sometimes they need to be fed. Sometimes they need you to help them put Barbie’s hair in a ponytail. Sometimes you have to work to make money to pay the bills. Sometimes you have to step up to help with extra curricular activities your kids love or they won’t be available. Sometimes you just have to catch a few moments enjoying the sunshine and your flowers and watch the vibrant green of summer turn to the mellow gold of fall or you’ll go insane.
But I’m trying to claw my way back to writing. Maybe now that the kids are back into a school routine I might have a bit more time to write some days. Maybe the volunteer duties will settle down for a bit. Maybe the first frost will come soon and kill all the nasal and sinus irritating pollen producing plants.
My return to writing feels awkward and sporadic and like I’m coming at it all backwards right now. But maybe one day I’ll find all this supposed distraction sowed some good seeds, gave me some fantastic fodder, for future writing. Or am I just kidding myself?
Time will tell. But in the meantime, if you’re a writer who sometimes feel like this, let’s not beat ourselves up too much. Okay?
© Lizann Flatt, www.lizannflatt.com
No part of this blog may be used without written permission from the author.
No part of this blog may be used without written permission from the author.
He Did What?
I just finished a YA novel and it was an interesting read. Except one thing bugged me. It was a little thing, a tiny thing even. But it jumped out at me and clobbered me over the head. And I swear I came across it three separate times in the book.
What was this tiny annoyance? It was this peculiar descriptive action I’ve never noticed in a book before. The descriptive action had a character doing this: sanding his hands together.
It stopped me short in my reading. Well, okay, that’s unusual, it brings to mind a carton villain, but I could get past it. The first time. But the second? Then the third?
I enjoyed the book for the most part, but for me this is now the book where the guy sands his hands together. It’s made the biggest impression on me. Can you overuse a quirky description or action or is it just me? I suspect it’s an individual response.
Do these types of tiny details ever take over a story for you?
© Lizann Flatt, www.lizannflatt.com
No part of this blog may be used without written permission from the author.
No part of this blog may be used without written permission from the author.
New Views, Two Views
I’ve been contemplating some info I learned through one of my volunteer activities. Although said activity has nothing to do with writing, the info itself can be useful to writers, I think.
I was in Toronto (Hi, CN Tower!) at the Skate Canada annual convention a few weeks ago and attended a workshop titled “New Web Strategies.” You can’t beat sports when it comes to expertise in fans and technology, right?
The workshop was given by Kevin Albrecht of iSport Media and Management. He went over the current landscape in consumption of sport product and internet usage, and how to make use of this to promote and build a community…to eventually make money of course.
The community being referred to was the community of skaters or skating clubs and organizations and fans, but presumably the community could be any group of individuals with similar interests. Maybe like, say, followers of certain books or authors.
First, it’s kind of obvious, but we were told the goal of any business is to produce content, distribute the content, and somehow make money from that. Whereas in the past the distribution channels for sport were limited to a couple options (TV mostly and only a couple channels at that) now there are hundreds of options for distributing content. Hey, sound familiar my publishing pals?
Into this new world of distribution options comes these facts:
- Canadians spend more time online and view more content online than any other country in the world
- Canadians spend more time online than in front of the TV
- Internet penetration in Canada is 72%; in the USA it’s 62%
Pretty obvious digital content is becoming very important. Add to this a study that found how people view websites. He said a study of 1.36 million internet users found the eye tracks a website this way: across the top, down the left and across the middle/bottom. You have 2.4 seconds to grab a visitor’s attention.
What does that mean?
- This dictates where your important information and/or big advertising spots on your website should go
- You need new content regularly to give people a reason to come back to your site (so quit taking blog holidays already, sheesh!)
Some interesting predictions were:
- live streaming from just about anywhere will become a reality as people live stream events from their own phones and send that to a website of their choosing
- apps to a closed community will be worth the most money (so eg. a skating club app with schedule, news, competition results, live streaming of competitions or events, etc)
So will we soon see author apps?
I bet it’ll start out with the big guys, those who are big enough to warrant interest in appearances, opinions, news of forthcoming books, etc. Maybe later on it will filter down or come down in price for those of us with a more modest presence.
Food for thought, no?
Sure made me think. It was fun to step outside my regular writing mindset. I was glad I went on a number of levels. Besides, this easily-fascinated-by-forms-of-transportation gal got to enjoy this view from my hotel room. Airplanes took off from the runway, and there are sailboats, ferry boats, and a water taxi. Yes, this view was pretty easy to take.
But at the banquet I kinda wish I’d never had this view. Who wants a big ole castor canadensis looming over an otherwise stellar dinner?
(Yeah, it’s standing on the floor and that’s the ballroom CEILING and part of one of those gargantuan projection screens on the right.) Apparently they’ll make a big inflatable anything these days.
© Lizann Flatt, www.lizannflatt.com
No part of this blog may be used without written permission from the author.
No part of this blog may be used without written permission from the author.