Publetariat

Authors have always been lucky enough to have a built in stress reliever whether they know it or not. It’s called writing a book. Once I’m working on my characters and their lives for a new book I’m so absorbed that nothing or no one in today’s stress filled world bothers me.

I like getting lost in a developing story and putting the main idea whirling around in my head down. It’s a challenge adding to the skeleton story I’ve created to fill in and build a book. That takes all my concentration. I get excited every time I’m working on a scene, and when something new pops into my head for the character to say or do that fits into the story. Humor is important to me. It should be to everyone. The more we laugh the better we feel. Humor is a stress reliever. Being able to laugh can make you feel more relaxed. You smile at someone, and they’ll smile at you. You laugh and someone laughs with you. The scenes in my book I’m working on that make me giggle while I’m writing them are the moments I’m told by readers that make them laugh out loud when they read my books. What a delightful feel good moment for me to hear this from readers.

Sometimes, the comments are that my characters draw the readers into the story. In my mystery series of five books, the characters are so colorful that once the readers have finished the first book, they have to read the other four to see what happens next to everyone in the book. The same is happening now that I’ve written two books in my Amish series. Readers like the characters Nurse Hal and her Amish family. They want to know what will happen to all of them next. The readers are so deeply absorbed in the characters lives to the point that they try to read my books in just one sitting. While reading my books doesn’t leave any room for thinking about something stressful. It’s simply a time to relax. I know all this because I hear it from my book readers.

Not everyone has the inclination to write a book just to find a stress free time but if writing interests a person keeping a journal might be helpful. I’ve written daily journal logs over the years. Now it’s fun to look back and read about something that I had long ago forgotten. One journal was about the ten years I helped care for my father while he was battling Alzheimer’s disease. Talk about feeling stressed. In those days, I’d come home from my parents home and plop down exhausted emotionally and physically. I’d pick up my journal and write about that day with my father, entering my thoughts, emotions, fears and dreads. Though I hadn’t thought about writing a book at the time, that journal later became my book Hello Alzheimer’s Good Bye Dad. I’ve hoped that the story might be of some help to others. There are many similar books on the market about a family coping with Alzheimer’s. To make my book an educational tool rather than just a story, I added helpful tips throughout the book and in the story. Perhaps, reading that book would be a stress reliever for caregivers. They learn ways to help their family member while they become educated about what the disease will do to their loved one next.

I know for a fact that books help readers relieve stress. When I don’t like the programs on television in the evening, I tune out by reading a book while my husband watches a program. Then there is maybe the extreme when one buyer wrote me that she read one of my books (A Promise Is A Promise) six times while she’s been going through a tough spot in her life. Wow! I as an author am helping myself and helping others at the same time just by being creative. So if you’re a writer, relax and work on that story. If you’re a reader get you a good book (of course I’d like it if you bought one of mine at ebay, amazon or www.booksbyfaybookstore.weebly.com), set down in a quiet place with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and go with the flow.

This is a cross-posting from Virginia Ripple‘s The Road to Writing blog.

This post, from C. Patrick Shulze, originally appeared on his blog on 4/20/10.

When writing your novel, have you ever cut back or cut out a character you liked? How about one you didn’t like? Have you ever promoted a secondary character into a larger role within your novel? These events happen all the time in novel writing and, in fact, should happen.

Secondary characters are as common as leaves on a tree but have the power to kill both your writing and your novel. Despite this, they are as necessary to a good novel as your major characters.

How do they kill a novel? They can take over roles that belong to other characters. It is most onerous if they [overtake] a major character like the hero. In this case, the protagonist diminishes in stature which, in turn, makes readers less empathetic toward the him. And we all know an unlikable hero is the kiss of death to a novel. Further, if you incorporate too many secondary characters in your novel, they can confuse and overpower the reader, with the same result as the unsympathetic hero.

Read the rest of the post on C. Patrick Shulze‘s blog.

Photo credit: paladinsf

The sharpest writing is world-wide sourced
for the next Big Picture, and Rabbi Jamaica’s
dealing with it, as the poster-boy he actually is

And the winds bring choices, and the words
of our mouths are the deaths of generations.
Scholars are dropping in a bass continuo.

But they lack the awareness, yo fun-boys!
So what the chances are now, stepping
an interlude, to split out in toys?

A consensus unmoors as flooded lines,
castaways children are watching the smoke;
physician are sitting delighted,

fulfilled in their upper vocations.
Just the two of us, we are the strangers,
we are about to walk by. We cast a light.

So let us ’scape immediately, now stray my fair!
Don’t let them stare at ya, don’t goodbye,
our geese are hissing; our task is found.

I’ve noticed over the last couple of years there are several people in my acquaintance that have active imaginations when it comes to a story line for a book, but not the inclination to write the book themselves. They seek me out to tell me about their idea and suggest I should write the story for them.

That’s how my soon to be 18th book was started. This one has been three years in the writing so that’s why this book will seemed to be coming so close behind the last one I published. The genre is western. My second one. It so happens that I worked with one of the few readers of my first western. I can count on one hand the number of people I know that are as fond of reading westerns as I am. My coworker is one of them. I wrote the last western for the fun of it, because my parents loved westerns. Since that was the type of books laying around the house, that was what I read while I was growing up so I’m comfortable with old west tales from Zane Gray and Louis L’amour.

Of course, I’ve put my own spin on my character, a lackadaisical sheriff in small town Montana named Stringbean Hooper. This man is not at all like one of Louis L’amour’s tough, fearless Sackett brothers but more like Bret Maverick from the television series. However, when the man is forced to show what he’s made of while he’s trying to solve the town doctor’s wife’s disappearance he turns out to be more trust worthy than first thought.

A Stringbean Hooper book – The Dark Wind Howls Over Mary – (ISBN 1438221576) became such a favorite with my coworker, she asked me to write another western about him. I said I didn’t have any ideas what he should do next. The woman said she had it all thought out. She wanted him and his new wife to take a trip to California, camping out in the rugged elements. This woman is a fan of Lonesome Dove. I’m sure she was thinking of that book and movie. No way was I going to come up with a story written as well and with so much rugged authenticity as Larry McMurtry puts into his great stories.

However, I began to think I should give the story a try as a challenge for myself. I set to work researching to figure out what each state was like in the late 1800’s. I read about what was happening in history at that time in the west. With all my facts at hand, I wrote most of the first draft. Then came my retirement. Just before I stopped working, I told my western fan coworker that I wouldn’t forget her when the book was done. One day, she would find a package in her mailbox from me. Outside of her, one uncle and my older brother, no one else will want to read this western book. Those three will receive a complementary copy, and I’ll move on to the next Amish story.

A year ago during a snowstorm, I brought the manuscript up on my computer. Over the years, I’d gotten Stringbean and his bride through the pass into California, but I didn’t have a clue why they wanted to make such an arduous trip when they had a prosperous cattle ranch to work in Montana. The last time I talked to my western fan, I reminded her this story line was her idea. I asked her how I was suppose to end the story. She didn’t have a clue. I said I didn’t either. She told me coming up with an ending was my job. I’m the writer. Besides if she knew what was going to happen at the end, it would take all the fun out of reading the book. It would appear her imagination isn’t fool proof when it comes to book beginnings, middles and endings. She left me hanging high and dry so to speak.

Finally, while I was working on what I did have I was struck with the idea for the ending like a bolt of lightning had hit me (funny how that happens to me). I knew why the couple had to get to California, and I’ve ended the story in Stringbean Hooper style. Now I’m working on my last draft so I can send it to my editor. Some time in June when the book is published I’ll see if I can get my three readers to give me their reviews to use on a blog post.

During the months of May and June 2010, buy a copy of my story collection, The Principle of Ultimate Indivisibility (print version only: $14.95) from Lulu.com and Bliss Plot Press will send you a free copy of The Other Face: Experiencing the Mask, a fascinating anthology of writings about the mystery of masks (an $8.00 value).

Get more information about both books at BlissPlotPress.com.

When your purchase at Lulu is complete, you’ll get an e-mail receipt. Just forward that receipt to Bliss Plot Press, along with your shipping address, and they’ll put The Other Face in media mail at no cost to you. Send the receipt to: order [at] blissplotpress [dot] com .

Two good books for the price of one!

Going to Kalona, Iowa for me is as much fun as it is a learning experience. I’ve written three fictional books centered around Amish people. I want my story details to be right. It helps to be observant while I’m enjoying the day.

I saw a church sign in Kalona, Iowa last week that said – Spring is God’s way of saying I Love You. If that is true, God certainly loves Kalona. The town is in full bloom from redbuds and tulip trees to fruit trees. Deep purple tulips mixed with red and yellow ones lined the neatly mowed yards and sidewalks.

Kalona is the Quilt Capital of Iowa for a reason. The vast variety of handmade quilts for sale are gorgeous. Even one intersection on Main Street has a painted quilt block to remind us as we drive over it. I understand this summer portions of the sidewalks are going to be taken up and sections with quilt block patterns are being put in.

Citizens in that town are all of one variety, the kind that my dad used to phrase as they never see a stranger. Our first stop was at the Visitor’s Information Center. The woman in charge was very helpful. She knows her Kalona information and places to see very well. She gave us handouts and opened one booklet to a map. All the spots of interest she thought we might like in the country, she circled and told us which way to go to get on the right road.

Our first stop was the Quilt show at the community building only to find out the show didn’t start until late afternoon the first day. I was disappointed, but we picked Thursday for our trip after hearing that it would be cold and rainy the other two days. So next best was a stop at the Woodin Wheel shop. There is a large room of quilts and wall hangings that is just about like a quilt show plus the rest of the shop is filled with antiques. This year I took my camera so I told my husband to take a picture of me in front of the store. A woman crossed the street and asked if I’d like to have both of us in the picture. She’d be glad to take the picture for us. Good thing I let her. The one my husband took had me leaning to the side as bad as a sinking ship. In the store, I bought a book about the Amish to go with the two I picked out last year. This one is A Quiet and Peaceable Life by John L. Ruth.

Once we were back out on the sidewalk, I was trying to decide where to go next when my husband wondered off. A hardware store close by had a reel lawn mower sitting between tillers and mowers. For some reason, he has been wanting to try a reel mower like we both had to use when we were kids. My memory is not so short that I want to return to mowing our lawn with one. Anyway, he was on his way into the store by the time I caught up to him. He asked the price and did his usual "What do you think?" to me. The clerk winked at me, and I replied I thought he wanted it which was as noncommittal as I could get. Simultaneously, I was writing the check, and he was outside putting the mower in the trunk. He was happy. He’d just bought what in that area is probably called an Amish lawn mower and in fact had been used by an Amish farmer twice before he brought it back which should have been a signal that even the Amish don’t find mowing with a reel mower a pleasant experience. First thing my husband did when we got home was try the mower out. He’s happy with his buy, but for some reason I’m going to pretend is unknown to me, he keeps asking if I’d like to try the mower. I keep declining. Reminded me too much of the Tom Sawyer story when he tricked his friends into white washing a fence for him. We have a big lawn.

At noon, we went to the Mennonite owned grocery store on the edge of town to eat lunch in the deli. The young woman behind the counter took our order, the tenderloin and French fries, and told us she’d bring the meal to us. When she ran out of customers, she walked by the booths to pick up empty plates and had something cheerful or funny to say to the diners. When she asked if she could get us anything else, I told her I couldn’t eat another bite I was so full. The meal was good. She replied they aimed to please. A couple young men at the back were just finishing their meal. One of them was a sandy haired man with the beginning of a peach fuzz beard. She asked him if he needed anything else. For instance, a razor? I heard his weak chuckle. I think I found her comment funnier than he did.

We made a pass through the grocery store to buy bags of yellow cornmeal which I’ve done several times now. I store them in my freezer until I use them. In this area, no one uses cornmeal to the extent I do so all the grocery stores stock is small boxes. At the checkout, the woman pulled out a green cloth bag and put the cornmeal in it. She said the bag was free- one to a customer with a ten dollar order. I’ve seen the cloth bags in the stores, but so far have stuck with the plastic bags which I find ways to use later. "So you’re going green?" I asked. The lady said, "No, this is the 25th anniversary of our store opening. The bags just happen to be green."

After lunch, we drove out into the country. The gravel roads have frost balls and ruts here and there, most of which have been filled with a pile of gravel. As long as we watched and zig zagged around those areas, traveling was manageable. At night, those roads may have been all right for horse and buggy transportation but not so good for cars.

First stop was the Country Community Store that has all sorts of merchandise that Amish people prefer like stainless steel pots, black shoes in all sizes, glass dishes and lamp wicks. On the way there, we passed an Amish wedding. What a sight to see. The farmer had built a large shed to use for machinery, but while the building was new, the family used it for the wedding. A tent was set up next to the road. I’m guessing it was for the over flow crowd to eat in or the younger generation. Two wooden boxed in wagons had four shelves filled with the Amish men’s hats for the day. Those wagons were probably the bench wagons that brought the benches for the guests to sit on. Most of the Amish community plus English friends and neighbors must have turned out for this wedding. Cars, pickups and even one sporty convertible with a For Sale sign on the windshield were parked along the lawn. In the hayfield were two block long lines of buggies far enough apart to make room for the line of well behaved horses tied to a large rope that had been attached tautly to two of the farmer’s tractors. The tractors had steel wheels, but the larger one had a cab.

The Country Community Store is in a farmer’s yard. A fenced in hen house sets west of the store. On the other side of the parking lot is a large farm house and garden with growing plants under milk jugs. Two large marten houses at the end of the garden had been taken over by starlings. I’d say those birds loved their accommodations from the cheerful chattering they emitted. Why wouldn’t they? They patiently sang on their perches while they waited for the milk jugs to come off those tender plants so they could swoop down and help themselves.

From the store, we drove to the Kalona Cheese Factory. On the way we watched an Amish farmer plowing his hay field with six horses. I took a picture but the subject was too far away. When I read through my handouts, I was happy to see a picture of a farmer plowing with horses. I’ll keep that to remind me of what I saw. The cheese factory has windows in the entry hall that let sightseers watch large vats filled with cheese curds being stirred. In the store, we bought a package of cheese to eat later that had four kinds in it. The woman who helped us asked if we’d like to try a cheese curd. She pointed to a clear plastic container. I asked how we were suppose to pick the curds up. She said with our fingers then went on to say they were noted for that. I asked, "Eating with your fingers?" "No," she said. "For our cheese curds."

We went back to town to wander through two more shops- a gift store and an antique store, then we stopped by the Visitor’s Center again. The afternoon was warm, and we’d worked up a thirst so the Visitor’s Center greeter recommended we try Yotty’s Ice Cream Parlor. We got a cool drink then sat on a bench on the sidewalk and watched people walk by.

Kalona even smells like spring from the Almond soap in the Visitor’s Center rest room that lingered on my hands, to the hanging baskets of petunias in front of one shop to the flower scented shops. We didn’t get to go in all the stores or see the museum and old village, but next year weather cooperating, we’ll go on Friday or Saturday to see the Quilt show and take in the sites we missed this year.

On the way home, we took off across country and passed several Amish farms. At one farm, two women in green dresses covered with white aprons hoed their garden. They leaned on their hoes long enough to wave at us. I was struck by how clean those industrious ladies looked in mid afternoon. No way would my clothes look that clean after a day’s cooking, cleaning, doing chores and gardening. A large herd of horses were on one farm. That must be where the Amish buy new stock, because all the horses were dark red with black manes. I thought about the long line of unhitched horses at the wedding. They all look the same. I wonder how the owners knew which horse or horses were theirs. It must be because the horses were tied right in front of their buggies. It sure wouldn’t do for me to own a horse and buggy in a crowded Amish parking area. I have trouble finding my gray car in a shopping mall’s large parking lot. At that wedding, not one of those horses had a brand name on them to tell them apart.

Writers, in general, are a very creative species. We must be to craft such wondrous worlds to draw readers in and keep them there. To that end, this writer has come up with a work around to Amazon’s lack of “Look Inside” [for] my book, Fear Not! 

I’ve put together a sample similar to what a potential reader would find in an Amazon “Look Inside,” including the front cover, table of contents, introduction, first session and back cover, which is available on Scribd.com. Really, the only thing lacking is the option to jump to a certain page, as far as I can see.

Why the work around? People like to “try before you buy.” I know I rarely purchase a book without first taking a peek between the covers. (My Dad actually sits in the coffee shop of the bookstore and reads almost the entire book before he decides to buy it. ) There have been enough times where I didn’t preview a book and wished I’d saved my money only a few pages in. That’s why the option to “Look Inside” is so important, especially to Indie Authors.

Will putting a preview out there guarantee more sales? No. However, it might boost sales and that’s good enough for me. When the people you thought would help you on your journey don’t always come through like you hoped, then it’s essential to get your own creative juices flowing to find a way to do it yourself. That’s part of being an Indie Author on The Road to Writing.

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s The Road to Writing blog.

I don’t believe in writer’s block. I know full well there are days when the writing comes easy and days when the writing won’t come at all, but I don’t ascribe the difference to any unseen or mystical force. Rather, I ascribe the difference to the fact that writing is damned hard all the time, and any day when it’s going great is a miracle.

I was reminded of my feelings about writer’s block by a post from Stephanella Walsh, in which she herself talked about coming to terms with the myth of writer’s block. It’s a good post, and particularly so because it admits to change, which is something too few people are confident enough to do.

Stephanella does a solid job of listing reasons why people reach for the “I’m blocked!” excuse, and I don’t disagree with any of them. People have been using the excuse of writer’s block — and the premise: that writing necessarily flows from some hidden spring of inspiration — since the first caveman struggled with the first cave painting.

I would like to propose, however, that there is a basic choice that every storyteller needs to make when approaching their work, and that in making this choice a writer necessarily allows or precludes writer’s block as an aspect of the storytelling process. The choice I speak of is whether or not writing is viewed first and foremost as a craft.

If you view storytelling as a craft — as a mix of techniques and channeled authorial gifts (the stuff you just happen to be good at) — I don’t see how writer’s block pertains. When you write from craft you can say you’re stuck, or you’re tired, or you hate your life, but the idea that your muse is playing coy, or that something that happened in your childhood is getting in the way of your ability to bash the holy hell out of your keyboard is absurd on the face of it — as it would be if you were a ditch digger and complained of ditch-digger’s block.

On the other hand, if you view storytelling as art — as a nebulous, ill-defined process of introspection and pure expression devoid of any compelling need to communicate with the reader, or even to be intelligible — then I suspect that writer’s block is useful in an endless variety of ways. Including, perhaps most importantly, by connecting you in spirit to all the other great writers who sat back in a sunny cafe chair and bemoaned the lonely fate of the truly and tragically gifted.

It’s your call, of course. But if you’re thinking that what you’d like to do is tell stories, you might want to take a long hard look at what your storytelling is in service of. Giving your authorial fate over to the unseen or mystical strikes me as a both a considerable statement of intent and a mistake. Unless, of course, what you’re really interested in is the drama of being a storyteller as opposed to the end product.

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett’s Ditchwalk site.

Gold and Glory, the second volume in my Mercenaries series, should be available in two to three weeks. Please check my blog (http://andiriel.blogspot.com) for further information (and also for lots of humorous and satirical articles).

According to strangers that email me, I’ve had a handful of rich relatives or someone who just wanted to leave me money die in foreign countries.  I deleted the messages right away.

Recently, I received two invitations to link my blog to leading ink cartridges blog sites by I assumed from the way the email read a employee of those companies who just happened to read my blog and found it interesting enough to have on their website. In the one link, the address turned blue which was a sign to me that there was such a link. In the next email link I received a week later with the other ink cartridge company name mentioned the address was not blue which should have been a red flag. I did search for a blog site for that company and didn’t come up with one. But I excused that as my failure because I didn’t know where to look. I put the links in a couple of my blogs. One of those blog web sites red flagged my blog as having a virus in it and didn’t use the entry. At that point, I still wasn’t getting what had happened. You see as an author, I was thinking the more places on the internet I have my blog means more exposure so more people become familiar with my name and my books and buy them.

I got another email from the one link. The woman said she couldn’t find the link on any site. I replied that the link didn’t light up so she might send me the link again if the one she sent wasn’t working. I didn’t hear from her. Until a few days ago that is when I recieved much the same type email with the hype that the site had thousands of bloggers and thousands of viewers. The woman used the same name as before which wasn’t too smart. Now I’m finally suspicious that something is wrong. She requested me to link up to yet another name brand ink cartridge blog site. The link wasn’t blue in this one, either. I investigated and couldn’t find the blogs so I deleted and blocked that message. Maybe the links were just these companies way of advertising. If someone saw the links they couldn’t use them because they weren’t valid for good reason, because there isn’t blogs connected to the company sites but the ink cartridge brand mentioned is a way to remind them to buy.

I’m not sure what was suppose to happen or what will happen as a result of my replying to the emails. Now I’m wondering about the first email with the legitimate website address. Anyone can type in a website address that works. That doesn’t mean the person who emailed me had the authority to invite me to be in the blog site or that I actually got in once I put the link in my blog. I’m now thinking that all three message came from the same person or persons.

The blog site that red flagged my blog has let me back in to post. I appreciate that the website managers are willing to give me a second chance. So from now on, one lesson I’ve learned is if the link isn’t blue delete it and before you accept an invitation investigate to see what you’re getting into. I’m going to go back to my blog entry with the links in them and delete. For right now, if I were you I’d put emails with bad links to name brand cartridge ink blog sites on the top of your list of emails to get rid of fast. If anyone can tell me what was or is suppose to happen now that I stupidly replied to the email, I’d appreciate hearing comments.

Think that is the end of my virus or spam woes. Think again. A couple weeks ago, I took myself off a social network. I enjoyed emailing family and friends through that website. However, they all have my email address and can contact me anytime they want, but it makes me angry that I should be the one to leave in order to stop a problem created by someone else. My email was being used in a link that was thought to be a virus. I didn’t have a clue that the link was circulating on that site until a member that wasn’t on my list of contacts so wouldn’t have been someone I would have known how to contact emailed me. She sent me the link with my email address in it. This was a long line of letters and numbers with my email address in the middle which by the way wasn’t lit up. She said she had received the link many times for a period of time. The link looked like a virus to her, and she wished I’d quit sending it. I replied that I didn’t know anything about it or her which should have made her suspicious. She should have notified the website managers right away after the first time she got the email. I didn’t like what was happening any better than she did so I told her I was going to leave the site, but before I did I turned in the problem and hoped she did, too. The website managers answer was for me to delete myself until they found out what was going on. Right after that I received another email from a man who had gotten a link he didn’t like. I didn’t know him, either. A man he did know was sending this link to him so he deleted that man from his list of contacts. He thought that would be the end of it for him. He was hoping that would solve my problem so I wouldn’t have to leave the group. Might have but I didn’t know the person the link came from or what was behind it so I couldn’t delete anyone from my list of contacts. The damage was already done and would continue if I had stayed on the site. Who knows, my email link may still be surfacing to unsuspecting members of that social group if the person or persons sending it hasn’t been caught yet. For me, it means I will never use that site again.

Lesson number two, don’t be like the woman who suffered in silence as she deleted emails from me, a stranger, with my email address in the link and no other message included. Alert someone at the website involved, tell it to whoever will listen so a virus doesn’t happen to them. Stop whatever was suppose to happen. I know that won’t stop the bad guys from coming up with something new to pull on us, but hopefully as we keep each other informed, we become more alert and wiser. So if anyone out there wants to leave a comment about this happening to them or something similar I’d appreciate hearing from you. The more educated I am, the more prepared I am to end the next attempt at scaming me or putting a virus in mine and other computers.

One of the first things that new writers may discover when they start working is that there are certain times of the day that make for better writing results. Of course, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all sort of thing. No, each writer will answer differently if asked. (Some may not know when they do their best writing.)

There are writers that work better first thing in the morning and there are those that do better work at night when things tend to be quieter. You may even find that the middle of the day is the best time for you. There are also writers that work better dividing up their writing times into several periods throughout the day. Which of these are you? Better yet, what benefit is there to knowing when you write better?

For the working writer, the answer may come down to productivity. If you are working on an article with a deadline, you want know that you can make the most of the limited time that you have in order to get things done. If you want to work better then you should be aware of your tendencies. Make your writing time work for you rather than against you. There are some beginning writers that spent time trying to force themselves into a particular mold. They then wonder why they’re having such a hard time putting words on the page. Every article becomes a struggle to complete.

This is a reprint from Shaun C. Kilgore‘s website.

My post may appear to have nothing to do with being able to write a book, but guess again.  Where do you think I get my ideas and vivid details for the type of books I write?

My attention is split these days between the computer to blog and work on a book and the transformation outside from winter to spring. Sweet smelling purple and white hyacinths are in bloom in one of my flower beds. On a trip through a couple towns yesterday, I saw other flowers, but in the country, the temperature is cooler. We are not protected from the cold winds so country flowers take longer to come up and bloom. I just keep telling myself that my turn is coming to admire my flower beds.

Now we have most of the baby lambs and goats born and frolicking around the barn yard. City relatives want to see the newborn. A great nephew thought we ran a petting zoo. I gave him a bottle of milk to offer a lamb. The lamb came at him with such gusto it was all the little fellow could do to hang on to the bottle. After the bottle went empty, the nephew made a lap around the barn yard, chasing the sheep. They managed to stay ahead of him and not knowing his intention decided to hide in the barn until he left. I put a milk goat in the stanchion and offered to let him milk, but he took one look at what I had in mind for him to do and yelled, "Gross." After that he stayed fairly close to his father. He’s only five years old. The rabbit tour was more up his alley. They watched him from the safety of their cages, and he eyed them back.

That same day, a 36 year old nephew, a new relative by marriage, who wants to experience all he can about farm life came to visit. He is always eager to learn something new when he comes to visit. First, I had to dig out two new nipples so that I had enough bottles to go around to feed the lambs. Nephew was going to help me put the new nipples on the bottle. The hard new rubber nipples refused to stretch over the pop bottles. It took us half an hour to get the job done. Finally, my husband pulled his pliers out of his side holster, grabbed the tab at the bottom and stretched the nipples over the opening. Where was he thirty minutes before? Of course, the nephew thought I gave him trick nipples to use just to see him struggle. The next morning the new nipples went on the bottles as easy as the older nipples because they had been stretched. I haven’t told Nephew this yet.

He helped our five year old great nephew bottle feed lambs, but he wanted to try more of a challenge. For a year now, he has been asking me if he could milk a goat. I handed him the bucket and pointed to the goat in the stanchion. My instruction was to milk fast while she ate her feed, because when she finished eating, she lays down. The nanny is pretty smart that way. This is her statement. She gets fed, or she don’t give milk.

Nephew worked gingerly at something he’d never done before. I finally told him to turn loose of the bucket and use both hands. After getting half a cup of milk in the bottom of bucket, he told me to show him how I do it. As he got down close to watch, I pulled the trick that has been handed down through most families of farmers when they milked their cows. I missed the bucket and sprayed him. My aim was good. I splattered the back of his hand, thinking to not mess up his city clothes. He wiped his hand on his slack legs like a true county man. Unaware that I missed the bucket on purpose and this nephew being the teaser he is, he isn’t going to let me forget my bad aim for awhile. Not that a trick or two is going to stop him from coming back for more lessons. He loves being on the sidelines of what we do here. I know how he feels. It was bred into me from my ancestors to want this country life and to appreciate it.

This post originally appeared on the Online Degree Programs site, and is reprinted here in its entirety with that site’s permission.

For many authors, a great novel is simply one part of a larger lifetime of creative work. For others, however, a great novel is a once in a lifetime blessing, one that was never followed up with another due to creative stagnation or circumstances out of his or her control. The authors listed here wrote books that have been read in high school and college courses for years, many of which won numerous awards. These books mark the greatest literary achievements of each author’s lifetime.

1. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird: This notoriously reclusive author was terrified of the criticism she felt she would receive for this classic American novel. Of course, the novel didn’t tank and was an immediate bestseller, winning great critical acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. While Lee spent several years working on a novel called The Long Goodbye, she eventually abandoned it and has yet to publish anything other than a few essays since her early success and none since 1965. 
    
2. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man: Invisible Man is Ellison’s best known work, most likely because it was the only novel he ever published during his lifetime and because it won him the National Book Award in 1953. Ellison worked hard to match his earlier success but felt himself stagnating on his next novel that eventually came to encompass well over 2000 pages. It was not until Ellison’s death that this novel was condensed, edited and published under the title Juneteenth.
   
3. Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago: Pasternak’s inclusion here by no means limits him as a one hit wonder, as he was and is known as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. But when it came to writing novels, Pasternak was to only create one work, the epic Dr. Zhivago. It was a miracle that even this novel was published, as the manuscript had to be smuggled out of Russia and published abroad. Even when it won Pasternak the Nobel Prize in 1958, he was forced to decline due to pressure from Soviet authorities, lest he be exiled or imprisoned. Pasternak died two years later of lung cancer, never completing another novel.
    
4. Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind: Margaret Mitchell never wanted to seek out literary success and wrote this expansive work in secret, only sending it to publishers after she was mocked by a colleague who didn’t believe she was capable of writing a novel. She turned out to be more than capable; however, and the book won a Pulitzer and was adapted into one of the best known and loved films of all time. Mitchell would not get a chance to write another novel, as she was struck and killed by a car on her way to the cinema at only 49 years of age.
    
5. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights: As part of a family of women who enjoyed writing, Emily did work on a collection of poetry during her life, though the vast majority of her work was published under a more androgynous pen name at first. While Wuthering Heights received criticism at first for it’s innovative style, it has since become a classic and was edited and republished in 1850 by her sister under her real name. It is entirely possible that Emily may have gone on to create other novels, but her poor health and the harsh climate she lived in shortened her life, and she died at 30 of tuberculosis.
    
6. Anna Sewell, Black Beauty: Sewell didn’t start off her life intending to be a novelist. Indeed, she didn’t begin writing Black Beauty until she was 51 years old, motivated by the need to create a work that encouraged people to treat horses (and humans) humanely, and it took her six years to complete it. Upon publication it was an immediate bestseller, rocketing Sewell into success. Unfortunately, she would not live to enjoy but a little of it as she died from hepatitis five months after her book was released.
    
7. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray: Wilde is best known as a poet and playwright, but he did make one attempt at a novel during his life, the sometimes controversial The Picture of Dorian Gray. While his plays brought him the most success during his lifetime, it is this novel that has secured a place for him in literary history. Yet it was a bit too racy for Victorian society at the time, with critics calling it everything from "effeminate" to "unclean", largely due to the book’s homoerotic and hedonistic undertones. Because of this criticism, Wilde revised his novel, but he was never to undertake the task again, instead sticking to poetry and plays for the rest of his career.
    
8. John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces: John Kennedy Toole was a well-educated and intelligent man who taught at Dominican College in New Orleans. It was during this time he wrote his comic novel. Unfortunately, the stress of not being able to get his work published–book critics didn’t think it was about anything in particular–as well as other factors took their toll on his health, and Toole quit his job and descended into a deep depression, eventually committing suicide in 1969. It was not until 1980 that his work was published, finally earning him the recognition he desired and a posthumous Pulitzer Prize.
    
9. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar: Sometimes a work of fiction can be a little too personal, as was the case with Plath’s The Bell Jar, published in 1963 under a pseudonym. While an accomplished poet, Plath struggled with bipolar depression, a condition made worse by an unfaithful husband and a miscarriage. In the acclaimed novel, the main character suffers a break and commits suicide, a fate Plath herself was to share, killing herself only months after the publication of the book. While this was to be her only novel, Plath did win the Pulitzer for her poetry in 1982, the first writer to ever posthumously do so.
    
10. Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things: This author is mentioned last because while she has to date only published one work of fiction–one that garnered her the Booker Prize–she is still working today. Much of the work she has published since her novel has been nonfiction and political essays as well as a number of screenplays. After a significant hiatus from her last book (13 years and counting), she is reported to be working on a new novel, though there is no guarantee that she will return to the novel-writing genre.