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A Stock Photography Tour of the Southwestern United States

I’m off to New Mexico and Arizona in the first week of October. I’ll be gone at least seven days, possibly ten, looking at rock shops, places to collect, museums, and natural wonders. Along the way I’ll be taking photographs for my book. What photos are eventually used is up to the publisher but it’s better to take more images rather than fewer. They advise me to take portrait oriented photos as well as those oriented in landscape view.

——————- for stock photography. The publisher told me to gather any photos I may need in a Shutterstock folder which they can review when they design the book. It costs nothing to do this assembling, and the publisher will eventually buy any photos they decide upon. Shutterstock has an immense, amazing library.

Looking up  items as diverse as Arizona’s Mogollon Rim, Utah’s Monument Valley, or New Mexico’s Mount Taylor, brings up serviceable images nearly every time. This assures me that I will have publishable photographs for everything important. If I don’t find an image then I will be sure to photograph that place in person. Using this stock photography site also allows me to see up ahead, to give me a better idea of what to look for when I get into the field.

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Poetry Thoughts on writing Uncategorized Writing by others

A. E. Housman’s Minimalist Poetry

A.E. Housman was a minimalist poet, whose spartan lines are matched by only the best Haiku writers. He bitterly and wryly welcomed death, romanticizing its inevitability. He was extremely popular during the First World War and his poems reflected the emotion of the time, with soldiers shamelessly slaughtered in places like Gallipoli. These selections are from A Shropshire Lad, whose poems make up a slim volume. Some editions are beautifully illustrated.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Oh, when I was in love with you

Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.

And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they’ll say that I
Am quite myself again.

Is my team ploughing

‘Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?’

Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.

‘Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?’

Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.

‘Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?’

Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.

‘Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?’

Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.

Far I hear the bugle blow

The Day of Battle

‘Far I hear the bugle blow
To call me where I would not go,
And the guns begin the song,
“Soldier, fly or stay for long.”

‘Comrade, if to turn and fly
Made a soldier never die,
Fly I would, for who would not?
’Tis sure no pleasure to be shot.

‘But since the man that runs away
Lives to die another day,
And cowards’ funerals, when they come,
Are not wept so well at home,

‘Therefore, though the best is bad,
Stand and do the best, my lad;
Stand and fight and see your slain,
And take the bullet in your brain.’

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books Thoughts on writing Uncategorized Writing by others Writing tips

Progress Report on My Book

With eleven months to go before my deadline of August 1, 2019, I’ve written approximately 28,000 words. My contract calls for a total of 50,000 to 60,000 words so I feel good about my progress. Ideally, I’d like to submit the work a month before my deadline, so that I do not procrastinate. Or, failing that, I can fill that last month with double checking telephone numbers and addresses, confirming permissions to use photographs and images, and making sure I’ve correctly spelled the names of all contributors. There is a tremendous amount of dreary detail work that accompanies non-fiction.

I’ve often thought that word processing software and the latest in computer gear does not make us any more productive. That’s because we can now endlessly edit. In the era of hand written drafts, manuscripts were so laborious to produce that an author would rewrite three or four times and then send the copy into the editor. Now, we can revise and edit a hundred times if a deadline is far enough away. Do we improve that much, though, with extra editing? And at what point do we say a work is finished?

Here’s a link to the site supporting the book: https://southwestrockhounding.com/

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Become a Dentist — A Way to Make Your Natural Tendencies Pay

I have a long history of major dental problems, made worse by the fact that conventional dentistry never gets me out of pain. General anesthesia is the only method that works for me. In yesterday’s operation, it was determined that an existing bridge could bot be redone and that because of that I needed two implants.

The implant base can be installed in a few hours but it takes four to eighteen months for the base to root into the jaw. The replacement teeth are screwed in much later, after the implant has successfully taken hold. For at least six months I will be eating on the left side of my mouth, praying constantly that the work will root in.

I will not be productive this weekend, indeed, exercise and driving should be limited for several days, as all the drugs and the medicines I received work their way through my system. I am now on antibiotics to guard against infection. And eight hours after the operation i am wobbly on my feet. Given my history, I expect to be back for another major surgery in ten years. The implants probably won’t fail, but all dentist work, like bridges, have only a limited life.

Thank you, Dave, for helping.

Caution: the video below is not for the squeamish:

Dentist Song

From the movie “Little Shop Of Horrors” (1982)
(Alan Menken / Howard Ashman)
Steve Martin

When I was young and just a bad little kid,
My momma noticed funny things I did.
Like shootin’ puppies with a BB-Gun.
I’d poison guppies, and when I was done,
I’d find a pussy-cat and bash in it’s head.
That’s when my momma said…
(What did she say?)
She said my boy I think someday
You’ll find a way
To make your natural tendencies pay…

You’ll be a dentist.
You have a talent for causing things pain!
Son, be a dentist.
People will pay you to be inhumane!

You’re temperment’s wrong for the priesthood,
And teaching would suit you still less.
Son, be a dentist.
You’ll be a success.

“Here he is folks, the leader of the plaque.”
“Watch him suck up that gas. Oh My God!”
“He’s a dentist and he’ll never ever be any good.”
“Who wants their teeth done by the Marqui DeSade?”

“Oh, that hurts! Wait! I’m not numb!”
“Eh, Shut Up! Open Wide! Here I Come!”

I am your dentist.
And I enjoy the career that I picked.
I’m your dentist.
And I get off on the pain I inflict!

When I start extracting those mollars
Girls, you’ll be screaming like holy rollers

And though it may cause my patients distress.
Somewhere…Somewhere in heaven above me…
I know…I know that my momma’s proud of me.
“Oh, Momma…”

‘Cause I’m a dentist…
And a success!

“Say ahh…”
“Say AHhhh…”
“Say AAARRRHHHH!!!”
“Now Spit!”

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Thoughts on writing Writing by others Writing tips

How Bullying Structures Society

For anyone who suffered through school at the hands of bullies and a system that ignored or encouraged them, George Orwell’s writing rings true:

By the social standards that prevailed about me, I was no good, and could not be any good. But all the different kinds of virtue seemed to be mysteriously interconnected and to belong to much the same people. It was not only money that mattered: there were also strength, beauty, charm, athleticism and something called ‘guts’ or ‘character’, which in reality meant the power to impose your will on others. I did not possess any of these qualities. At games, for instance, I was hopeless. I was a fairly good swimmer and not altogether contemptible at cricket, but these had no prestige value, because boys only attach importance to a game if it requires strength and courage. What counted was football, at which I was a funk. I loathed the game, and since I could see no pleasure or usefulness in it, it was very difficult for me to show courage at it. Football, it seemed to me, is not really played for the pleasure of kicking a ball about, but is a species of fighting. The lovers of football are large, boisterous, nobbly boys who are good at knocking down and trampling on slightly smaller boys. That was the pattern of school life — a continuous triumph of the strong over the weak. Virtue consisted in winning: it consisted in being bigger, stronger, handsomer, richer, more popular, more elegant, more unscrupulous than other people — in dominating them, bullying them, making them suffer pain, making them look foolish, getting the better of them in every way. Life was hierarchical and whatever happened was right. There were the strong, who deserved to win and always did win, and there were the weak, who deserved to lose and always did lose, everlastingly.

Such, Such Were the Joys (1952)

http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/joys/english/e_joys (external link)

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The Peroration Was Magnificent, Though Difficult to Remember

He looked into his heart and saw that it was black. Perhaps that’s all we need to know about Heart of Darkness. But there is so much more. Ideas and thoughts first judged rambling come back as well structured sentences on a second and third reading. And what about Conrad’s paragraphs? An unbroken block of five hundred to a thousand words is simply unreadable on the web. For that reason I have introduced paragraph breaks where I thought them logical. This excerpt is originally a single paragraph of 1,100 words.

An Excerpt from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 

You can’t understand. How could you?—with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums—how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man’s untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude—utter solitude without a policeman—by the way of silence—utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion?

These little things make all the great difference.

When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong—too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil; the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil—I don’t know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place—and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won’t pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other.

The earth for us is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with smells, too, by Jove!—breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated. And there, don’t you see? Your strength comes in, the faith in your ability for the digging of unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in—your power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an obscure, back-breaking business. And that’s difficult enough. Mind, I am not trying to excuse or even explain—I am trying to account to myself for—for—Mr. Kurtz—for the shade of Mr. Kurtz.

This initiated wraith from the back of Nowhere honoured me with its amazing confidence before it vanished altogether. This was because it could speak English to me. The original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and—as he was good enough to say himself—his sympathies were in the right place. His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and by and by I learned that, most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report, for its future guidance. And he had written it, too. I’ve seen it. I’ve read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he had found time for!

But this must have been before his—let us say—nerves, went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites, which—as far as I reluctantly gathered from what I heard at various times—were offered up to him—do you understand?—to Mr. Kurtz himself. But it was a beautiful piece of writing. The opening paragraph, however, in the light of later information, strikes me now as ominous.

He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, ‘must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings—we approach them with the might of a deity,’ and so on, and so on. ‘By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,’ etc., etc. From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was magnificent, though difficult to remember, you know. It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence—of words—of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: ‘Exterminate all the brutes!’

The curious part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that valuable postscriptum, because, later on, when he in a sense came to himself, he repeatedly entreated me to take good care of ‘my pamphlet’ (he called it), as it was sure to have in the future a good influence upon his career. I had full information about all these things, and, besides, as it turned out, I was to have the care of his memory. I’ve done enough for it to give me the indisputable right to lay it, if I choose, for an everlasting rest in the dust-bin of progress, amongst all the sweepings and, figuratively speaking, all the dead cats of civilization. But then, you see, I can’t choose. He won’t be forgotten.

Whatever he was, he was not common. He had the power to charm or frighten rudimentary souls into an aggravated witch-dance in his honour; he could also fill the small souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings: he had one devoted friend at least, and he had conquered one soul in the world that was neither rudimentary nor tainted with self-seeking. No; I can’t forget him, though I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly worth the life we lost in getting to him.

I missed my late helmsman awfully—I missed him even while his body was still lying in the pilot-house. Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black Sahara. Well, don’t you see, he had done something, he had steered; for months I had him at my back—a help—an instrument. It was a kind of partnership. He steered for me—I had to look after him, I worried about his deficiencies, and thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory—like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment.

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Eliot Never Too Common to Quote

Now that I live in the desert, The Hollow Men resonates with me more and more. Eliot was of course writing about a dryness of spirit. Still, connections hold. This vital poem by Thomas Stearns Eliot is widely quoted and analyzed. But if you’ve never read it, I quote it here. Read slowly and prepare for a devastating conclusion. Want more in story form? Read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Eliot did.

The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

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Not Only

Writers use “not only” to vary their writing but it can be wordy. It also brings in a negative tone with the word “not.” See how much more direct the second instances are compared to the first. In the first example I am editing a writer that I work with, in the last two I am correcting Orwell. 🙂

If you’ve been waiting for months, it’s reasonable to check every few days. This is important not only so that you can alleviate your worries but also so that you are promptly aware of any potential obstacle delaying your claim.

If you’ve been waiting for months, it’s reasonable to check every few days. This helps alleviate your worries and promptly lets you know of any obstacle delaying your claim.

In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides.

There is no agreed definition of a word like democracy and any attempt to make one is resisted from all sides.

Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality , as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader.

Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless because they do not point to any discoverable object and are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader.

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Oh! I Have Slipped the Surly Bonds of Earth

This film and poem was often used by television stations in the 1960s before signing off for the evening. It was written in 1941 by 19-year-old Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr, three months before he was killed in World War II.

High Flight

John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, –and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of –Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

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How To Make A Living As a Writer (Honestly)

How do you make a living as a writer? Get a full time job writing for a newspaper, magazine, or internet company. It’s impossible to make full time money stringing together part-time jobs. If you’re not regularly employed, view freelance gigs as supplemental income, not the way to pay your mortgage. There’s too much unpaid time looking for new work to prevent you from going broke. (internal link) Let me explain.

Query letters and book proposals take enormous amounts of time, only to have 90% or more of them rejected. A solid book proposal will take weeks, an article query (internal link) at least a day, if not more, to research and write. Travel may be required for both. A great deal of time is also spent investigating whom to send your proposal to, to see what title or publishing house you should approach. All queries must be well crafted and individually tailored to the person you are addressing. And all of this consistently rejected query work is unpaid. There’s more.

Right now I am waiting on a substantial check for the last magazine article I wrote. I submitted the article two weeks before last Thanksgiving. Yes, in 2017. The article has been published but I have still not been paid. While this situation is uncommon, you must be prepared for it to happen. You can only make a living at writing if you have money coming in to eat.

Aside from working for someone else on a regular basis, I have heard about another way. It demands that you have several book titles in print at once, and that each of these books needs revising every two years or so. Think computer books that go out of date when software comes out with revisions. Photoshop and Microsoft Word have undoubtedly provided many authors with regular income.

Writing as a profession is oversold, at least from a freelancer’s point of view. But there is no shame in writing for someone else. A guaranteed paycheck gives you the freedom to write in your spare time, without worrying if an article will be accepted, if it will only pay a hundred dollars, or if a check for it will come in soon.

Through my Vancouver employer I edit and post blogs and web pages for trial lawyers. I could see that kind of position being a full time job for someone who wanted it. Content creation jobs on the net are becoming more and more plentiful. Pick a profession that interests you and explore the possibilities if you want full time work. Otherwise, enjoy the tumult of writing part-time as a lower earning freelancer. Those hours and experience may eventually lead to the work you truly desire. Good luck.