Poetry Inspiration

Yeats, Long Walks & the Influence of Reading Widely

I don’t know if there’s a place left in the world for nature poetry. I would like to hope there still is, although I don’t know what it would look like. Surely sprawling pastoral verse is gone. It seems trite to continue celebrating a natural state we have abandoned so long ago. There are microplastics floating in the very air we breathe and the water we drink. The world is on fire and underwater more now than ever before. The earth is sick and we are the disease. Maybe there’s a place for nature poetry, although it must adapt to the current state of things. Instead of celebratory in beauty or wondering in mystery, maybe we should lament; elegiac poems have a place for what once was. Maybe the fantastic can take hold, showing what could be or what will only ever be imagined. I want hope to be the foundation even in the midst of cautionary and dire warnings.

I guess my point is that I feel drawn to the natural and to poems about the natural, even as we become a relentlessly artificial society. I want big, shady trees, and grass between my toes, and the promise of place I may never go. Yet those places should remain unreached by all of humanity. I hope to achieve a deeper connection with the natural world, and in so doing, I want to recognize when to leave well enough alone. Just following this thought process inspired me to write the following:

Blue Marble Blues

It is home, and not quite home,

and as I stand alone—alone

beneath the sky and breathing air

that all the world and creatures share—

I know I share in this great earth

which we’ve valued as less than worth

the effort it takes to spare its ruin

(yet I know it’s all our doing);

this fever, this madness, this slow decay

will bring us, with Earth, to the end one day.

I always skew darker than I’d like when I consider turning these thoughts into a poem. I take comfort knowing that many poets revisit and rework their poems throughout their careers. Perhaps more experience and practice will allow me to shape the above poem into a more hopeful version of what it is now. We shall see (I swear this is my tagline now).

These thoughts were prompted by my recent reading, and a big trip out West (which I talked about here). I’ll be doing an in-depth review/analysis of A Conspiracy of Stars in the coming weeks, but this book, my current reading of W. B. Yeats’s work, and a new obsession with hiking (frustrated by too many obligations this summer) have led me to focus on poetry inspired by, and responding to, the natural world. Not that Yeats would be the first poet one would think of when considering poetry on nature, but I’ll get there. My reading up to now has been quite sharply focused on nature and how we view it, and react to it, especially in nonfiction. I suppose this is a consequence of being a Park and Resource Management student. Lately I’ve read, split by genre (sort of):

Nonfiction

Coyote America

The End of Night

Mountains without Handrails

The Wild Muir

The Origins of Creativity

How It Ends: From You to the Universe

O’Keefe (art book)

The Genius of Birds

A Walk in the Woods

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

H is for Hawk

Poetry

Leaves of Grass

Fiction

Phantastes

A Conspiracy of Stars

Next, I’m jumping into Ravens in Winter. I’ve got a few other good ones on the TBR pile. A Conspiracy of Stars is the last book I finished, and while fiction it delves into a lot of what I was rambling about at the beginning of this post. It also touches on the question: Knowing what we know about our planet and how we’ve damaged it, would we do any better if we had a chance to start over with that knowledge? Like I said, I’ll get into that question in detail in my next post.

Here also is where Yeats comes into the discussion. Instead of the pastoral flavoring of Romantic influences, Yeats threads his poems with almost a kind of yearning for that earlier (e.g. mythic) past, which he knows is only really existent in his mind. Like longing for an unrequited love or expecting the glorious return of King Arthur, there is beauty in the memory, but no real hope of the thought achieving reality. It’s not so much of “what once was” as “what could’ve been,” wrapped up in the tone of Yeats’s work. Take a look at “Adam’s Curse” for example:

We sat together at one summer’s end,

That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,

And you and I, and talked of poetry.

I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

Better go down upon your marrow-bones

And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones

Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;

For to articulate sweet sounds together

Is to work harder than all these, and yet

Be thought an idler by the noisy set

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen

The martyrs call the world.’

                                          And thereupon

That beautiful mild woman for whose sake

There’s many a one shall find out all heartache

On finding that her voice is sweet and low

Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—

Although they do not talk of it at school—

That we must labour to be beautiful.’

I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing

Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.

There have been lovers who thought love should be

So much compounded of high courtesy

That they would sigh and quote with learned looks

Precedents out of beautiful old books;

Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;

We saw the last embers of daylight die,

And in the trembling blue-green of the sky

A moon, worn as if it had been a shell

Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell

About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:

That you were beautiful, and that I strove

To love you in the old high way of love;

That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown

As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

                                                (1902)*

 

There’s a melancholy here, and a sense of time gone past and chances lost. The scene is “one summer’s end,” the close of a season and the turning toward the end of another year. “Since Adam’s fall” conjures up the perfection of a long gone past and the ruin that followed, up to the present. The phrase indicates the Biblical fall from grace of humanity, after which Adam and Eve were banished from the Edenic paradise. Following this pattern of language, the time of day is evening and the speaker watches as “the last embers of daylight die.” The summer is ending, the day is dying, the speaker and his companions are fallen creatures, subject to death and decay.

Then there is the consideration of the “old high way of love,” the courtly romance as lionized by stories of knights and ladies and noble deeds. The speaker calls up images of courtly behavior her and his companions only know from stories, from long forgotten history, and even here there is the sense that this history is more of a mythology (Arthurian archetype, again) viewed from the present through a lens which glorifies the distant past beyond reality. The speaker seems to acknowledge this, but speaks of it nonetheless. The last two lines betray this knowledge of time marching on and memories of the past not being what they seem. And the speaker admits, “That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown/ As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.” They’re perhaps yearning after something that is no longer there, and worse, may never have been.

Now is the “so what” of this whole thing. I said I’ve been thinking about long walks, and these in the woods. Follow my thoughts. What we view as the wild isn’t the real wild. The closest you can get to that is the back end of Siberia or somewhere above the Brooks Range in Alaska, or maybe not-yet-mapped tributary of the Amazon River. Humanity’s fingerprints are everywhere; we’re good at shaping the world around us, for better or worse. But! when we consider that what we view as wild now is not the true wild that begs the question: What is? Is it any remaining wilderness pre-Industrial Revolution? pre-Transatlantic exploration? pre-Christianity? Pre- pre- pre- all the way down to prehistory. But what then? Humans were shaping the world before writing existed, and what we know isn’t known from experience or memory, but from written and archaeological records.

Following this distance from the first humans, huddled together in a shallow cave through the night sometime before fire was known, we return the question I asked earlier. In response to reading A Conspiracy of Stars, with distance from the ruined earth, but knowledge of how it was destroyed and the ability to do better, will we do better? Or will we long for the imagined past, where we gloss over the ruination for a dose of nostalgia and longing for what it never really was but how we choose to remember it? I’m looking forward to diving deeper into this book in my next post. The second book in the series, An Anatomy of Beasts, by Olivia Cole, is out already and I’m looking forward to reading it too.

I hope you can follow my thoughts here. They’re a bit scattered, reaching back to pre-fire humanity and forward to the stars beyond our Earth-bound home, and trying to connect some important dots in between. Maybe we should act like getting off this rock is not a viable option, quit worrying about what’s gone, and start trying to do better by what remains. We don’t know exactly what we’ve lost, but we do know what is left to lose. Let’s value it a little higher.

 

*from William Butler Yeats: Selected Poems and Four Plays, M.L. Rosenthal, ed. (4th ed.)

Eating the Elephant: Editing Scene-by-Scene

The phrase “Kill your darlings” makes any writer want to run and hide when it comes time to edit our work. I’m here to tell you: it hurts, it certainly does sting like the dickens to kill those darling scenes you’ve written, those turns of phrase that speak beauty to the soul of the writer but which serve no purpose in the present story. I’m also here to tell you that time heals most wounds.

I am (even still) in the throes of edits with my first novel. I have cut my little book baby up, and pastiched it back together with found parts. It’s not a monster for all the nips and tucks I’ve performed on it, however, far from that. My story is improving with each pass and each brutal cut excised from the saggy middle, and I’ve been adding bits here and there as well. I was, admittedly, very intimidating by the prospect of editing something as gargantuan as my whole novel. I had every right to be; it was unwieldy, I was close enough to be crushed under the weight of purple prose and extraneous scenes, or lost in swirling plot holes—a mile wide and bottomless as the abyss. Then I found some advice on the lovely internet (lovely that day, as I was seeking help and found it, miracle-of-miracles) that, though intended for the outlining and planning of as-yet-unwritten novels, still served me well in organizing the mess that was my current draft.

Here I will share the link to the original post, and how I adapted it to suit my editing, rather than planning, needs.

I didn’t do sticky notes because I wanted this to be portable. The writer of that post recommended focusing on specific key moments in the story, and building from there. They are nested within the three-act structure, as follows:

Act I

Hook

Inciting incident

Door

Act II: Part One

Midpoint

Act II: Part Two

Slide

Act III

Darkest moment

Help from an outside source

Climax

Resolution

These are the catalyst moments of a novel. The scenes are the individual steps that bridge the spaces between them. The number of scenes between each of these key scenes can vary widely depending on your pacing, plot, and style of writing. I happened to write seventeen scenes each for Act I, Act II: Part One, and Act III. Act II: Part Two only has ten scenes. Don’t ask me how that happened. It is what the story wanted to look like as I went through and really figured out where things were going and how quickly they were getting there. I think it’s because the tension ramps up after the midpoint, as the plot begins to unravel toward Act III and the climax of the story. All the story arcs are coming together. I wrote scenes based on what stuck out in my memory from my story, without consulting my draft at all. I allowed myself to forget some things to leave room to create new things. I’m confident only the essential parts remain.

Now that I have a solid look at what each scene contains and where it lives within the larger narrative, I can drill down and work on a scene by scene basis for now. My draft is still rough enough that I can do spot work and leave the rest relatively unscathed. In fact, I can make more improvements! My novel edits aren’t so intimidating anymore. After all, what’s the easiest way to eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

I went through my scenes list and located all the completely new scenes, ones that had not existed until I did this exercise and learned what was missing that needed to be included to fill major gaps in the plot and further character development. Those will be my first task: writing these new scenes to fit into the rest of the novel.

Next, I’ll isolate scenes that I’ve changed in some way, or that need to be changed to keep the narrative flow intact or that will improve the story with some change. I call these broken scenes will need to be corrected or edited to go with the direction of the novel as a whole. Lastly, I’ll go through the draft and remove the scenes that didn’t make it to the scene list. These are dead weight. I’m hoping after working so hard to clean up my novel with new and improved scenes that it will hurt less to cut the ones that aren’t necessary, no matter how much I labored over them.

But!

Don’t delete those scenes entirely. I’ve said it before: create a folder for these orphaned darlings. We don’t have to go killing wantonly anymore. I have a dedicated homeless scenes folder where I go for inspiration on new projects by sifting through the detritus of previous work. You never know what darling may make an encore appearance.

Just don’t let it come back to haunt you…

 

That’s the recap on editing, and some helpful hints and tips I’ve picked up on the journey. Let me know if you try any of these or have other tips you’re willing to share with fellow writers.

Keep on scribbling!

Revision: One More Time

I’m slogging through edits on my novel. It’s been quite the interesting ride, molding this decade-old idea into the semblance of a book, and I have some thoughts on the process as I dial in to the bitter end of working on it.

First: First novels are hard. This is not a secret. Even after writing a few others and getting a better feel for how to tell a cohesive story, it is hard. It’s even harder to go back to my first book and gut it in order to tell the story it was supposed to be when I began it so long ago. I didn’t have the tools or the knowledge then that I have now. Hopefully in another ten years I can say the same thing about, say, a fifth novel that I’m editing. I want exponential improvement. I’ll be happy with incremental progress.

Second: Sometimes, you have to go back to the beginning. I’m currently gazing on the chasm of a miles wide and infinitely deep plothole situation. My solution? Outline the thing. I’ve allowed myself to make critical changes and throw whole story arcs out the window in order to better the book. I’ve been a pantser for my entire writing career, but I have to say it is quite the relief to start tabula rasa and let the story form organically, yet with a critical underlying skeleton. I am having a much easier time handling various character arcs and narrative threads this way. It’s not a detailed outline, just a scene list to keep me on track.

Third: I still must be kind to myself. The more I learn, the easier this gets. The more I ignore what I’ve learned and return to old habits, the harder it is to hold on to the joy of writing. I love the creativity, but I have to force myself to adhere to structure when editing, and in making time to edit, and I sometimes get down on myself. This is the “business” side that some people do not like. I enjoy it best when I step back to see the bigger picture of my progress. I focus on the improvements made to the story rather than the often agonizing process of making those tough decisions.

It also helps to imagine seeing my novel on a bookstore shelf. That’s a goal I can get behind.

Speaking of goals…I plan to finish my scene outline this month, and develop a list of scenes to fix/add/cut from that so I’ll have a clear idea of what work needs doing in July. Wish me luck!

On Persistence

My posting schedule has been nothing but spotty and inconsistent since I started this blog. I always hoped to post once a week and delve into a variety of topics on regular rotation. The reality has been much different. I don’t think it’s a lack of ideas, or time, or even motivation. It may have to do with a lack of focus. I’ve been feeling down quite often lately. If I bothered to get a proper diagnosis I might find I have some situational depression at the very least. Armchair psychology aside, I want to do better at the writing business in general. To do so, I must find my focus. I have to look at why I continue to persist in this pursuit if it doesn’t seem to be enough in itself to keep me focused. Am I just lacking in self-motivation?

I want to write. I want this to be my career, alongside whatever I’ll be doing with my master’s degree. Writing is something I’ve always enjoyed, and I believe it is something I’m good at. I just haven’t hit on the rhythm that works for me, on what drives me to pursue the goal even when my focus is trying to go elsewhere.

Thanks for stopping by and listening. Habits are hard to develop, but I’m trying to put in the effort. That may mean more posts and longer hours at a computer every day. So it goes.

Wanderlust

National Parks, Reading Goals, & Walk to Mordor Update

I returned last week from a trip to three national parks in California. This was organized by one of my graduate professors, and was, hands down, one of the best camping trips I’ve been on. We visited Death Valley NP, Sequoia & King’s Canyon NP (SEKI henceforward), & Yosemite NP on a ten-day round trip through the region. We started and ended in Las Vegas, which was its own weird kind of magical when we first descended on Sin City, but the shiny wore off for most of us upon returning from the woods. A fake Eiffel Tower simply can’t compare to the magnificence of Half Dome, nor can a dancing fountain hold up to the thunder of Yosemite Falls. I’ll tell you what…

Better yet, in the same way that I shared my trip to Arizona several years ago, I want to show you. Behold! pictures:

~Death Valley~

 

Furnace Creek Thermometer at Death Valley NP

Badwater Salt Flats (-282′) at Death Valley NP

Badwater and Death Valley from Dante’s View

~SEKI~

 

King River at King’s Canyon NP

Moro Rock Summit at Sequoia

General Grant Tree through Fallen Monarch at Grant’s Grove, Sequoia NP

Big Trees on the Sherman Tree Trail at Sequoia NP

~Yosemite~

 

Meadow and Falls at Yosemite Valley

Bridalveil Falls

Grizzly Giant at Mariposa Grove

Meadow at Yosemite Valley

Wapama Trail at Hetch Hetchy

Wildflowers at Hetch Hetchy

Wapama Falls Mist and Rainbow at Hetch Hetchy

Resevoir at Hetch Hetchy

Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point

Mama Bear and Cubs at Yosemite NPS

Mirror Lake at Yosemite Valley

Tunnel View of Yosemite Valley from Wawona

 

I also posted a few related pictures with nice captions on my Instagram. Go check it out here:

@rachel_ann_88

I also read nearly an entire book during my flights to Las Vegas. I chose Edward O. Wilson’s The Origins of Creativity because I haven’t gotten my hands on Biophilia yet, honestly. I wanted to get into the mindset of inspiration before getting into such inspiring landscapes. I purchased The Wild Muir: Twenty-two of John Muir’s Greatest Adventures, selected and introduced by Lee Stetson. Stetson is an actor at Yosemite who portrays John Muir for various programs in the park and around the country. I didn’t know this when I bought the book at SEKI; I happened to see a park ranger flipping through it. That sold me. I got the chance to see one of Stetson’s programs in Yosemite, but I forgot to have him sign my book when I spoke to him afterwards. Regrets! I really enjoyed his show, and how he interpreted Muir’s tales. I had only read a few of the stories before going, and it stoked me to finish reading the book, which I did on the return drive to Las Vegas. That book didn’t even make it to the flight. Fortunately, I bought another book! This one, Gloryland, is by Yosemite park ranger and NPS legend, Shelton Johnson. This one is signed! I own a signed book by an author I have met. Johnson earned a literature degree in his undergrad before switching to the park service as a career. Hey, this gives me hope. I met several rangers on this trip with a similar trajectory. I haven’t finished this one yet, however the writing is excellent and the story is intriguing. Shelton does a program as a Buffalo soldier, which is also what his novel is about. I don’t know much about the Buffalo Soldiers, but I will when I’m done reading. They are tied to the history of Yosemite, hence Shelton’s book. I’m finally getting some reading done.

I also got some miles in for Walk to Mordor. This trip occurred during the last days of May and the first week of June. I logged 22 miles in May. I logged 36 miles in June, with 14 and some change on a single day! I need just over 20 miles to get to Old Man Willow and 23.28 to reach Tom Bombadil’s house. That is also the 98-mile marker. I think a previous post said that was like walking to Wheeling, WV from my house. I’ll have to cross-check that.

Basically, I got a lot of walking, reading, and sightseeing done on this trip. It was wonderful.

Some Thoughts As I Struggle Through Edits

I’m learning to organize my writing process as I go along. This is my first novel, the first I thought of, the first I started writing, the first I finished, and the first that I’m editing into a readable shape. There’s a lot of learning going on with these firsts. I know the cautionary advice out there, too:

First novels usually don’t get published. They have first novel problems. The idea is overly ambitious for my lack of experience.

I feel all of those. Keenly. But I also know that it is good practice to finish what I start, even if it doesn’t quite turn out the way I envisioned it as a baby idea so many years ago. And it’s not so precious to me that I can’t take a scalpel to the broken bits during editing, or try entirely new ideas where I see an old one sagging and burning out. Sometimes it has to change shape.

At the heart of the story, it’s still my first novel, although the name and some of the core events have changed drastically. My main character hasn’t changed so much as matured, and the same can be said for his quest and the central themes. I’ve matured during the period of time it has taken me to fully flesh this novel out. I’ve done more work on it in the last three years than the eight before when I was simply throwing up ideas and seeing what stuck. I’ve sought out advice from those further along in their writing careers, whose novels I have enjoyed and whose words have resonated with me. I have circle of friends who are supportive of this pursuit, and who are willing to critique when the time comes. I’m certainly getting better at talking about my story as the ideas have coalesced into a true story, rather than bits of cool ideas floating about and otherwise unconnected except for the same landscape.

I want to write an excellent story, even if I end up trunking it. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s a fool’s errand striving for that end, but I want to learn how to stick it out through the whole process. That way, maybe my second, fifth, eighth novel may have a real chance to be published. Maybe I can return to the core of this first novel, when I’m at a better place to write the story it contains, and resurrect it into the story it was always supposed to be.

The point is, I won’t get there unless I work hard at finishing this beast of a first novel, and unless I learn from the process how to get better and more efficient, even. I’m currently plodding along slowly. Someday I hope to know what I’m about so I can get my books from idea to ending much more quickly. Here’s hoping someday is sooner than I think.

Letters from Camp…NaNoWriMo!

Monday, April 1^st

Guys! Camp is great! There’s so much to do and they give us free time every day to explore. The writing cabin has so many resources and different rooms devoted to each genre. Did you know you change how you track your goals? You don’t even have to write a novel. I can edit my WIP or write a screenplay. It’s amazing.

My goal this year, in the spirit of doing things differently, is to edit 100 pages of my WIP manuscript. I want to finish it this year. I’ll give you an update in my next letter.

Happy Camping!

 

Saturday, April 6^th

What a terrible first week. I wandered off trail and got into a patch of melancholy ivy. I couldn’t shake the blues for days. I heard the poets’ room had some supplies to help with that. So, I dragged my sorry, sunburnt carcass over there and got some surprising inspiration.

My new goal is 50 poems. I’m on track to hit that, too. I’m already making progress. The poets also told me I don’t have to forge my own trail. I have a cabin full of new friends waiting to offer mutual support. What a day!

I also got my first care package. Things are maybe looking up after all.

Happy Camping!

 

Tuesday, April 9^th

I signed up for too many activities, and I’ve neglected my writing. I dropped macramé off of my schedule and slotted in critique time with my cabin counselor. That helped immensely. Now if only the weather would improve. There’s nothing like an invigorating hike to the Waterfall of Inspiration to get the creative juices flowing. I promise I’ll stick to the path this time.

Happy Hiking!

 

Wednesday, April 10^th

I found a book of poetry tucked under a log as I returned to my cabin yesterday. I read the first long poem last night and I couldn’t sleep for the sheer number of ideas pouring from my brain. I must get writing now.

Happy Rhyming!

 

Friday, April 12^th

Something strange is happening. I think trying out a different genre may have given me insights into editing my novel. The ideas keep coming. Don’t worry, I’m keeping a list for when camp is over. For now, I’m holding steady with the poems, and you know what? I’m halfway done at the halfway point.

I’m also getting along with my cabin mates really well. This is the chattiest cabin I’ve been in. I hope to have as much fun at the end of the month as at the beginning. Campfire stories are the best for inspiration and little scares.

Happy Camping!

 

Tuesday, April 16^th

What a productive day! I sat my butt down under a shady tree and wrote a ton. We had a rest day due to some wasp issues by the volleyball pith, so I grabbed some granola bars and a water bottle and headed for the pavilions across from the soccer fields. They were packed.

I ended up circling some back trails until I found a quiet corner to sit and write and contemplate the leaves. Twelve more pages/poems to go!

Happy Trails!

R. A. Opp

I Would Walk 500 Miles, And I Would Walk 500 More…

Walk to Mordor: A Footsore Journey

I mentioned in my last post that I started using the Walk to Mordor app as a fun way to encourage myself to log more hiking miles. So far, my work schedule and early darkness have made it hard, but now that spring is here, I’ve gotten some miles in. Here’s the thing about the app. Those hobbits walked a long way. Nearly two thousand miles. And I’m making this harder on myself by logging only ‘intentional miles.’ I don’t have a step tracker, so I can’t put in my daily mileage. This, in part, forces me to hit the nearby trails more often, and it also makes me consider the solitude of walking hundreds of miles through strange terrain. Here are some of the walking thoughts I’ve had since starting this journey:

1. Those short-legged, barefoot, portly hobbits walked nearly two thousand miles in a year. I can do that! Granted, I have a day job. But summer will afford me more free time and daylight to go hiking. I also have a few big and small trips planned just for hiking purposes. More details on that to come.
2. Getting to Bree is like walking to Wheeling, WV from my front porch. Shit, that’s a ways away. But I will prevail. I walked four miles on hot pavement to get my car out of towing on a blistering Tallahassee April morning. That was the worst.
3. I don’t have to fight giant spiders, sneak into a country where literally everyone is trying to kill me, and throw some jewelry into an active volcano. There may be snakes though.

So yeah, hiking goals. I incidentally, I saw someone ranting on Reddit about how many women’s online dating profiles say they love hiking, and how they can’t be serious, don’t they have other hobbies, etc… And I’m like, Sir, I’m walking to Mordor over here, and knitting along the way when I’m not editing my novel. Of course, I’m not looking for people to hike with, either. And that man was just an angry individual. I digress.

Mileage Update as of 13 April, 2019: 15.53 mi.

Next Waypoint: Encounter with the Black Rider (@ 32 mi.)

Goals & Timeline: I have 16.47 mi. until the next waypoint. I plan to reach it by next Saturday (April 20^th). Wish me and my feet safe travels.

“It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.”

The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien

Fantasy Worldbuilding 101: A Course in Making It Up As You Go

Part 2: A Closer Examination of the Tools at Your Disposal, Geography Edition

Part 1 is HERE

It is helpful to think about the physical landscape in certain kinds of writing. Fantasy lends itself to rich descriptions of the places the characters are living in or passing through. Science fiction, too. They say sometimes the setting can be a character. (Who’s this ‘they’ you ask? No idea; the writers through the ages, maybe? Moving right along…) For example, the house in Shirley Jackson’s classic The Haunting of Hill House is most definitely a character. It has a personality and a definitive presence. You can read the house’s mood between the lines of prose that make up the story. Sometime Jackson is more explicit in her use of house-as-character, sometimes she’s more subtle, depending whether we’re observing the house with the other characters or observing how the other characters move through and react to the house. In The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst, the landscape, the natural environment, is not only treated as a character, it is made up of living things. This makes the natural world a treacherous place, where the very trees can swallow a person, or the water actively drown someone. I’m not saying every story has to go this route, but it is helpful to think about place in your story and what effect it has on the characters. The landscape can provide obstacles to getting to the goal (Lord of the Rings), or it can be a clue to the way the world is structured and what people do in different regions (Discworld series). The following is my short list of references and tools I use to think about geography and worldbuilding, including ways in which I explore my own neck of the woods (literally) to better inform myself of the way landscapes look and are formed.

>The Writing Excuses podcast in spending a year on worldbuilding. I highly recommend giving them a listen. Last year was devoted to character, and I got a lot of useful tips from the authors who host the podcast and the guest authors that join them. The worldbuilding series is more varied and in depth than this post will be, however, it touches on some of the themes I’ll discuss here (e.g. the physical landscape).

>Google Maps 3D View

I just realized that Google Maps has this option and it blew my mind. Holy elevation, Batman! It can be fun, and geographically informative, to use this tool to explore our world. I left the labels visible to help me understand how the land informs (or doesn’t affect) national borders. Sometimes it matters. It definitely informs land use. I also left the satellite setting on. After getting an idea of how different geographical features look and transition, getting feet on the ground in different terrains is the next helpful step.

I spent a good hour (don’t tell my boss!) playing with this while at work. I also used it to look up hikes I might do while in Yosemite later this year.

>Hiking Apps

I use two different apps to track my hikes. I have used some others in the past. I may do a review/compendium at some point just for hiking apps. Currently I use the Hiking Project app before going out, to plan my hike. The Hiking Project allows user comments and helps build a comprehensive trail list for each state. Once the app is installed, you can download state-based packages. I have Pennsylvania, Arizona, and California for now. I hiked in AZ two years ago, and I’ll be in CA later this year.

I use the hiking function of the Samsung Health app to track my hike as I’m on it and to capture the real time stats: splits, elevation changes, distance, map, and time. This gives me a realistic jumping off point for estimating distances and the time it takes to travel those distances through various terrain, on foot. This is helpful when creating a quest/journey timeline, if that’s what your writing involves.

I have used All Trails app in the past, but it’s been a while. I may take it out this weekend and see what the features are, and try to remember why I decided not to use it. Either way, there are plenty of apps out there for tracking hikes. Sometimes the info and maps can be used to inform the physical traits of the world you’re creating for your story. It can also be a fun exercise in exploring the real world around you. I’ve found some really cool things while out on hikes in my area.

>Local Area Topo Maps

Nothing beats a good, detailed topographical map of a selected area. These can cost a bit depending on where you get them, but the information they hold is invaluable. I want to get my hands on one for McConnells Mill State Park. The place is a twisty, craggy, geologically significant gorge. I assume the map will be really intricate. I saw a topographical map of my county’s watersheds hanging in the local environmental center, and I was gobsmacked. It’s too big and too detailed to fit in one photo.

>A Free Weekend

Go for a walk in the local park, state park, a city you don’t frequent, or some place other than your own yard. Once there, pay attention to the trail, path, or sidewalk. Check out the plants, see how the terrain rolls ahead of you or note the way human infrastructure is built around the landscape. Take reference photos or field notes if that helps your creativity. If you get the chance to travel, go somewhere far away or much different than your neighborhood. Nothing can replace experience when it comes to inspiration for worldbuilding.

I walked a trail near my university (I’m an online student, but it’s only fifteen miles away) that I knew about but never took the time to visit. I had a couple of free hours, the weather was nice, and I happened to be driving by so I parked at the trailhead and checked the map. Sidenote: Always check the map, especially when everything is still dead and brown from winter and the area is unfamiliar. This practice has saved me several hours of aimlessly circling the woods on more than one occasion.

It was a successful hiking day. I explored the Wolf Creek Narrows Natural Area. I got a good workout. I saw a bald eagle and a great blue heron. The Narrows is a little patch of woods around Wolf Creek where it flows through a cut in the bedrock. It’s nestled into an area of farmland on two sides of a small country road, and consists of a floodplain/flat and a rocky ridge. The creek meanders through this landscape and is frequently used by kayakers and canoers. It’s not very wide or deep; you could probably cross it in hip waders once the snowmelt and spring rains have subsided. Riffles and Class 1 rapids break the surface here and there, although—novice kayaker that I am—I could navigate it with relative ease. It eventually wanders into Slippery Rock Creek which I wouldn’t kayak yet.

In one day, a three-hour spur-of-the-moment adventure, I went to a new place, gathered some inspiration and pictures from the landscape, and learned about the geological and natural history of the area. So, get your boots on, get your maps out, and start exploring. Then build that world out of your newfound knowledge!

Maintaining Sanity Through Creative Expression: Killing the Fear with Literary Dragons

I might not be the best person to ask about realistic goal-setting. I tend to give myself too much work and too much credit for my time management skills and motivation. Those who’ve been around this blog long enough have seen the pattern, I’m sure. I want to accomplish big things. I know there’s a significant level of effort required to do so. Still, I place myself in the same position again and again.

This time is no different!

What? Did you think we were going to talk about being kind to yourself and reducing workload?

Nah.

We are, however, going to talk about how some pursuits can mitigate the mental damage of others. We’re delving into the realm of using the creative process for healing our work/life brain of day-to-day stressors. My job drove me to mental health counseling. We discussed some of the things I like to do to destress and focused on those can help. So, let’s talk about this aspect of work/life/creative pursuits balance. I have words in store for you, too.

Time management.

Let’s break this concept down.

Time management is a learned skill. Some people are better at moving from one task to another with purpose, some are like catnip-fueled kittens with a giant ball of yarn. The key here is developing habits. And to develop a good habit, sometimes we must make room by abandoning a bad habit.

Procrastination:

Ah, the quintessential productivity killer. This is my great downfall. I get a lot of cleaning done when I have a deadline looming. I think this has to do, in part, with my habit of over-reaching. I make goals I know I can’t hit, I get discouraged, and I procrastinate. It’s a vicious cycle, folks, and one that leads to my next bad habit.

Self-Doubt:

There’s a difference between self-criticism and self-doubt, in my humble opinion, and one has the potential to be helpful while the other is nearly always a bad thing. Self-criticism (like knowing I have a procrastination problem and that it’s hampering my productivity) can help get me on the path to finding a solution or making necessary changes. It must be constructive to do so, but self-criticism can be okay.

Self-doubt, however, is not typically reflective activity. We don’t use self-doubt as a way to examine past behaviors to find room for improvement. Self-doubt is a beast that gnaws at you from the inside. It implies hand-wringing and wondering what all could go wrong before we make an attempt to do anything at all. Don’t listen to self-doubt.

To be sure, some enterprises carry inherent risks that are higher than others. That’s where common-sense decision-making and planning come in. But self-doubt? Kick it to the curb!

Here are the promised words, then:

Don’t put off for tomorrow what could be done today.

–AND—

You got this!

So, you’re probably wondering how this whole long pep talk relates to creativity and dragons. Here’s the thing:  creative pursuits are what I enjoy in my free time, when I’m done with work and home for the evening. I have a day job that is good but not great. It pays the bills. I love to write and I knit a little on the side. This is what keeps me sane.

As I mentioned before, I don’t have a ton of time for this now as I am pursuing a master’s degree, but I enjoy my coursework more than my employment, even though it is far more challenging. I can tell my mental state is worse for the lack of literary pursuits, even so. I’ve taken to writing (also previously mentioned) angst-filled poetry to fill the gap left by suspended novel edits. After this month I should be able to get into full editing mode again. All my big school projects will be mostly done by April 1^st—just in time for Camp NaNoWriMo!

My creative pursuits keep me sane, but I fall victim to both procrastination and self-doubt while working (or avoiding working) on them. This is where I call in the dragons. I need a boost every now and then, and consuming someone else’s creative output can be just the inspiration I need. Read a good book, maybe one with dragons. See what you like and what you learn. Use that magical dragon ride to kill your fear and get creative.

We got this!