• Tag Archives novel

  • The Week So Far

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                       Waxing Wild Moon

    Another day in the world of ancient Rome.  Translation continues to be fairly easy for me, though there are certain cases that give some trouble.  So far my learning has kept pace with the chapters.  I hope that continues.

    Kate got pretty weary at work on Monday.  She saw too many patients.  She’s rebounded today, though and I think that’s a good sign for the future.

    Kona, our largest whippet, has a fancy yellow bandage on her right rear leg after having what we believe is a benign growth removed yesterday.   She also has a water resistant sleeve over it, the Medi-Paw, that allows her to go outside.  A good thing.  Like most dogs I’ve known she simply ignores whatever discomfort she’s experiencing and does most of what she did before.  I was laid up for two months plus after my achilles surgery.

    Now a bit on the novel.  Decided I had to start writing again, even though I’m revising, too.  I feel too disconnected from its flow.  Revising is important, but it doesn’t feel like an organic part of the process for me, at least not yet.


    📂This entry was posted in Dogs Family Humanities Letters Writing 📎and tagged

  • Frosty Saturday

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                              New Moon (Wild)

    Outside temp is 11.6 degrees and the dewpoint is around 9.  With them so close together, we have two phenomenon at once: more hoarfrost as the water precipitates out on shrubs, tree limbs, fences, porch rails, then freezes and fog.  Visibility is low here and the same conditions which create hoarfrost makes roads slick.  An odd combination.  We also have what looks like snow, but I think is actually flakes forming near the ground as cool air freezes water vapor.  Fog is a cloud on or near the earth so we could be witnessing outside what usually happens in the skies above us.

    After printing out 40,000 words of new novel (redundant), which represents all I’ve written so far, I decided this was a good time to revise, go back, get familiar with its arc again after a week off.  That’s underway now.

    It’s also Saturday, grocery day.  I can go any day of the week I want, but my patterning about grocery shopping on Saturday is very strong.  I know it, but don’t change it.

    Kate has finished her second week of work.  She has come through them in much better shape than pre-surgery, yet she is not without pain.  Her neck bothered her last night and her hip has grown progressively worse.  She thinks digging the Celica out of the snowbank last week did some damage, so she’s not taking any of this as too bad a sign just yet.  She is visibly better than before, her face less tight at the end of the work day and her movements less stiff.  Still, as she says, she’s rather retire.  Soon.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Health Weather +Climate Writing 📎and tagged

  • Sunny Beaches. hmmm. what would that be in latin?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                             Waning Cold Moon

    Kate and I have gone through Chapter 4 in Wheelock.  Onto Chapter 5 with the future and imperfect tenses and their conjugation.  Doing this makes me wonder what other layers of knowledge I have tucked away, not called upon, yet ready to return to duty if asked.  As Greg, our tutor, said, “You learned this already.”  We’ll move out of zone of previous learning, but right now, the auld tongue has come back pretty well.

    Got back in the study today for the novel after the nap.  We do our sessions with Greg at noon on Thursdays, so we spent this morning on review, then in conversation with him.

    The novel has not gone anywhere.  It has not gotten longer while I slept or while I was at Blue Cloud Abbey.  I read much of what I had written, trying to get back in the groove and that took up my writing time for the afternoon.  Tomorrow morning I’ll put fingers to keyboard again.

    Buddy Mark has pics from the beach outside Puerta Vallerta.  The one below of an Aztec dancer has an interesting rattle.


    📂This entry was posted in Friends Humanities Letters Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • Back To School

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                  Waning Cold Moon

    The snow has stopped.  Our neighbors, the Perlich’s, had relatives visiting today with snowmobiles which they happily drove on the Perlich’s lot.  I hope it was to make Greg feel better.   By city ordinance snowmobiles cannot come below a street about a mile north of us, but in this situation I won’t complain.

    Chapters 2 and 3 in Wheelock completed.  That means I’ve copied declensions for 1st and second declension nouns, taken a shot at learning them, but count on repetition over time to cement the case endings.  I’ve also read about grammar, syntax and word order.   Then Wheelock has sentences from Latin writers like Horace, Catullus, Phaedres.  My job is to translate them.  At the end of the Latin sentences are sentences in English to be translated into Latin.  After this, once for each chapter, there is a paragraph, again from a Latin man of letters.  Today it was Horace.  I don’t recall yesterday’s.

    This work demands nose to the grind stone type studying.  Create flash cards.  Review flash cards.  Copy declensions.  Use declensions.  Learn grammar.  Use grammar.  Translate from and into.  It feels like real studying, which it is, I guess.

    So far, I like it.  A lot, actually.  In fact I’m a little surprised at how much I like it.

    The novel  keeps on spooling out, nearing mid-way or somewhere close.  I plan to write on it during the retreat using my handy net book and my take along keyboard.  I suppose I’ll study some Latin there, too.  Very appropriate at a Benedictine monastery where Latin is still a living language.  Sort of.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Humanities Letters Writing 📎and tagged

  • Kate

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                             Full Cold Moon

    Kate goes back to work on Monday, February 1st.  Right now I believe she’ll do ok.  Her hip injections–cortisone–have helped.  Her neck has been fine during this period, but she will have to return to odd angles while looking into young eyes, ears and throats.  The computer ergonomics in the office are not ideal for her either.  She’s gotten more and more exercise in over the last few weeks and I hope that means that her stamina is sufficient.

    We’ll take it, as they say, a day at a time.

    I wish I didn’t have the Woolly Retreat coming up over the weekend, but she’s not working weekends, at least not right now, so there will only be Thursday and Friday nights when I’m not here.  Of course, if she experience difficulty, I’ll give it a miss.

    The novel keeps on coming.  In retrospect I think it was the novel that kept me up the other night.  Since I write without much of a plan, it’s quite easy for me to write myself into a corner, or to realize that early ideas, some woven into much of what I’ve written, no longer work.  Both happened with this one.

    Since I’m nearing what will be the middle of the book in number of words, the arc of the story has to reach a certain dramatic point here and I had to fiddle with a good bit of the already written material to make that possible.  Part of the change, inevitable really, involves pruning excess characters, locales and plot lines.  When I did this, I reduced the plot lines to three, much easier for a reader to follow.  I also created a key  plot point that will allow all these plot lines to converge further along, and I hope, diverge again as I set up the second book.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Writing 📎and tagged

  • Time Enough

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                     Waning Moon of Long Nights

    I’ve had a long stretch of no tours at the museum, little direct work for the Sierra Club and, of course, no gardening.  That means I’ve had plenty of time to focus on writing and I’m well into a new novel and have the research underway for Liberal II:  The Present.  It’s nice to have extensive time at home, especially when the weather has been as brutal as it has been.

    The act of writing has a therapeutic edge, no matter what form the writing takes, but when the writing is fiction, something else comes into the act.  I don’t know what it is, other generations have called it the muse, inspiration, an angel, a devil but it does feel like there’s a second party in on the action.

    We got our mutual present to each other today, a Kitchen Aid Artisan stand-mixer.  Bread and pasta are on  my mind.  As Kate has been home since mid-October, I’ve noticed a tendency to put more time and love in to the act of cooking and to put more of a focus on the kitchen.  I enjoy it.


    📂This entry was posted in Cooking Writing 📎and tagged