Kate Harrington

The Unexpected

Sophie and Wayne took their usual evening walk on Monday. She walked normally until she reached our doorstep, but came into the house with her right rear leg held high, panting, and madly licking at her paw.

I felt her paw, thinking she’d stepped on a goathead—our most wicked, thorny seed that comes with three hard and sharp horns—but found nothing.

Whatever she encountered, the pain was terrific. She couldn’t hold still. Panting, she’d thump down, lick, move, and thump down again. From floor to rug and back to floor. We were helpless to know what to do.

**Fateful mat, filled with desert willow blossoms**

My guess is that Sophie had stepped on a spider. There’s a water barrel by the back door with webs which I occasionally sweep away. Since all spiders have some sort of venom, it makes sense that Sophie had stepped on one hiding in the door mat, and it had bitten her on the tender skin between her toes.

Eventually, Sophie could lie still and rest. We all went to bed.

Dog Self-Healing

At 3:00 a.m., Sophie wanted to go out. Unlike Wayne, I don’t accompany her with a flashlight. I waited at the door, then we went back to bed. (I think she was eating grass.)

In the morning she wouldn’t touch her breakfast, though she came and looked longingly at it. Wayne went off to coffee. While he was gone, Sophie asked to go outside again.

When she barked to be let indoors, I noticed a mess of grasses and stomach fluids where she spit up on the patio. I thought, how considerate. Usually she spits up on one of the indoor rugs.

By the time Wayne came back from coffee, she had cleaned up her breakfast. Hurray!

The Mystery—Solved?

In the evening, we were all three sitting on the sofa. A black spider came dashing across the rug straight at us. I usually treat spiders in the house with a live and let live attitude—at least, when they’re not charging at me. This time, with no other weapons at hand, I dropped my cell phone on it.

So did Sophie bring this particular spider inside?

Was that spider injured by being stepped on, and had it been hiding all day?

What do you think?

(BTW, she’s still eating grass.)

Year half over

How can another month end so soon after it just began?

With the heat of summer finally at hand, I’ve been belatedly spreading pecan shell mulch around our shrubs to hold in moisture. Already the scattered tomato plants look a little happier; and working in early morning coolness has been pleasant exercise.

A friend warned that with pecan shells, I could expect flocks of crows to descend. It’s the wrong time of year for crows to flock (or do you say murder?), but the doves do happily peck around for pecan bits.

Year’s Goals

With the year half over, my goal—to have a complete draft of the Pawn Quest trilogy’s third volume by December 31st—is feeling ever more urgent.

Meanwhile, to get myself well grounded in story and characters, I’m reviewing the beginning chapters. It’s important with so many threads of plot and subplot, to provide the reader with a clear, defined narration, so I’m going over the first half with that in mind. This is contrary to the advice I’ve read that says keep going till the end. My characters have to come with me, after all!

With luck (not to mention necessity), I’ll build up a head of steam and keep charging forward . . .

Where has the time gone?

In recent months, I’ve twice been drawn into a different writing endeavor. It is important to follow one’s enthusiasms.

The verse & vignette novel I call Sky’s Daughter, is based on the The Goose Girl tale. My first beta reader will have a print-out of the entire draft on Thursday.

Two things in particular please me:

It doesn’t have the plot slow-down problem of my other fairy tale retelling, The Hidden Tower, and
Its message speaks across the years to contemporary concerns.

No blog last week—

Since it was an emergency room visit that curtailed the energy needed to upload a blog last week, I feel a need to mention it. I don’t recall (though my memory may be faulty) ever going to the ER for myself; Urgent Care, yes.

An ER visit has to be worst for the one in pain. However, once one’s partner’s pain has been relieved, the onus is on the attending companion to pay attention, and wait, and worry about the unfed, unwalked dog at home, and wait . . . Exhausting and stressful.

All seems resolved now, and so this blog shall re-appear.

Reinventing the Wheel

**Flowering cactus in the neighborhood.**

Every book is different. Every book presents new challenges. At least, that’s been true for me, and other writers have said so as well.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had the opportunity of discussing the difficulties of pulling all the threads together to complete a trilogy. No doubt many series writers could offer advice.

I thought I had come up with a solution. Okay, it really was a solution. I simply failed to follow through on my part of the deal:

I decided to take each character and write out the roles each one plays in the story. What did they need to do to complete their emotional arcs. If I did that, it would serve as an outline to carry me through the last half of the book.

So I went to work—for three or four days . . .

Juggling Multiple Wheels

You may have noticed I skipped last week’s blog. I got carried away by a new/old enthusiasm: my verse novel project (retelling The Goose Girl tale) that had already consumed the whole month of May.

For our June meeting, I gave the first pages of this verse-and-vignette story to my critique group. I was surprised by their enthusiasm. So then I became consumed by the need to attend to the minor changes they suggested . . .

**Enthusiastic lavender plant down on the corner of our street.**

And voila! I was playing with a wholly different wheel.

Another piece of advice I adhere to is to follow one’s enthusiasm. That’s what I’ve been doing. It makes me happy—when not being dragged away to deal with other responsibilities.

Back to that first wheel

Meanwhile, I’ve realized I have a lot of research to do on the sci-fi trilogy. Some of it, I’ve been doing without realizing, but for the rest, it would be good to put my whole mind to it—when I’m not playing with verse novels, that is.

**Sophie has lots of enthusiasm for supper preparations.**

Everyone out there, enjoy your lives, and address them with enthusiasm!

Obsessions

This light pole—covered with a now-dead vine—makes me think of our lives, how we wrap ourselves around our dreams and goals. (Or do we wrap them around ourselves?) I don’t know if the word obsession fits that vision but that’s the word that came to me.

I first learned the word—countless years ago—when I read the novel Magnificent Obsession, by Lloyd Douglas. All I remember of the book is that it was about a doctor.

Anyway, for the past month, I’ve been obsessed with turning a prose retelling of The Goose Girl tale into a hybrid verse and vignette novel.

With just a few more pages to go to complete the first draft (and much more work to follow that), one night recently I found my dreams haunted by numbers.

One was 500-something. That number still makes no sense to me. The other number, remembered clearly, was 154.

The calculator in my unconscious head

I’ve been disturbed by how speedily the months are flying past. It struck me that 154 might have to do with time. I computed how many days of the year have passed.

Sure enough, by May 31st, we will have lived through 154 days of 2023. My obsession has devoured the month of May. I must tell you how much I have enjoyed being prodded along by my work.

But I also have the determination to complete a draft of the book that will finish off my science fiction trilogy by the end of the year. That means returning to plodding along. With any luck, it too will become an obsession.

And so, before the month’s final days, I’m determined to spend part of each day worming my way back into the world of planet Lodestone.

Occupations

My blog deadline last week coincided with my sister’s visit—a very brief, fun visit.

Even before that, one of my projects had grabbed me, shoved me in my chair, and said Pay attention! So I did.

I continued to pay attention during my sister’s visit. And since. And now.

Just before the visit, I caught sight of my Lady Bank’s rose bush—which had come to full bloom while my back was turned. Here it is, in all its glory:

The project I’m working on (in tandem with my sci fi conclusion) is my retelling of The Goose Girl tale. Right now, I’m in love with my heroine, who knows her own failures but surprises herself in not giving up.

Her world is set in a distance past, with a pantheistic viewpoint. There are parallels with our present day need to honor our Mother Earth. I leave you with the beginnings of a poem that accompanies it.

Song of Earth and Sky

Earth’s chief consorts were fierce gold Sun,
gentle Blue Sky and his brother Storm. 
They shared Earth’s favors without a fight.

Sky’s dim-lit sisters Dusk and Dawn
gave birth to Winds both soft and strong.
Dark Night’s stars glinted with delight.

Earth the Mother begot plants from dews,
gave birth to towering oaks and yews.
Shy mushrooms hid from Sun’s great light.

Sun’s strong rays helped Earth bring forth
flowers and grasses from south to north.
Ivy climbed, moss crept, shrubs stood upright.

Earth’s consorts had good cause to ask
who fathered slug. Lizard loved to bask
in warmth, Sun’s fatherhood made clear.

. . .

Self-Care and Mindfulness

My brother and I have had a couple conversations on mindfulness. My basic understanding is that one does a task with one’s whole attention. But the doing is more complicated than the saying.

I’ve discovered that if I walk Sophie before my own walk, I come up with too many excuses to cut my walk short or not go at all. That’s because I’ve allowed my brain to fill with all the activities needing attention. I blame my failures to walk on a mind too full of the day ahead.

**I’m mindful of everything on my walks.**

So yesterday, I took my walk first, before Sophie’s.

My mind was quieter. Maybe self-care is an aspect of mindfulness. It certainly led to a more productive day.

Mindful Writing

I began reflecting on the mind part of mindfulness. Specifically, the creative mind. What I love is being deeply immersed in another world. It can be someone else’s world—and often is. But even better is to be immersed in my own. That’s why I write—but I often find myself on the outskirts rather than fully inside my own worlds.

I continue with last week’s determination to write for 15 minutes every day for the final book of my trilogy. Very often, that happens at or just before bedtime. One night, I wrote some highly unsatisfying prose, but fortunately, my sleeping mind came up with an important point I had missed. Hooray for sleeping minds!

For the last two days, I’ve been paying attention to a desire to work on an entirely different project. Not the verse novel awaiting further editing. No, this time the heroine of my other fairy tale retelling is begging for her story to be told in verse. The hero remains in prose.

And so, here I go again, into a new project. Why? I don’t know, except it feels right. And don’t we have to trust these urges? Especially urges that demand our entire attention?

It’s already May. Where did April go?

Small Steps

Last week, I made a minor breakthrough toward finishing my sci-fi trilogy. The following day, I continued that trend. Then two, three days went by—busy days—with no progress.

On Sunday, I made a promise to myself. Just for this week, I will set my timer for 15 minutes and I will write. I began that day.

Then, as often happens, my Monday efforts seemed lackluster. 15 minutes is not very long, but it feels like an eternity if you can’t find the words, or don’t even know what you want to say.

Small Steps Lead to Bigger Solutions

But—the thought came that I really, really needed to write out an outline for the remainder of the book. I’m what’s called a pantser, (one who writes by the seat of their pants). However, after two books, I have a lot of strings to pull together. Plus, I have a number of scenes, and happenings, that aren’t yet pinned down in time, or in sequence.

I have to figure out when they happen, and how they fit into the whole. Then I’ll know what new scenes are necessary—and they will serve as a focus for my daily 15 minutes.

So on Monday, I also began working out a detailed outline. On Tuesday, I continued working on the outline. Tuesday’s 15 minutes didn’t happen until bedtime, but they did happen.

Show Stoppers

I’ll admit, I’ve been fighting the midpoint of this book because—spoiler alert—someone dies unexpectedly. (Well, someone also died unexpectedly in the second book, but though there was shock, there was no strong attachment leading to deep grief.)

Have I mentioned that writers have to mine their emotions when writing?

In this case, I was fighting the need to go back twenty years to my shock on learning that my youngest brother might be dying. Was dying—but it took time to accept that possibility. I’m taking that shocked grief and moving it to an entirely different event.

Garden News

I picked a bit of spinach last week—young, tender leaves.

Yesterday, I discovered a new crop of mushrooms pushing through, and showed them to a friend. But, wow! How that spinach had grown! We’re having spinach and mushrooms for supper.

No! Not these mushrooms! I still don’t know what they are. We’ll be eating button mushrooms from the grocery store.

You all have a great week! Happy May Day.

WEEDS

In the backyard, I’m digging out this year’s crop of unwanteds. In particular, wild mustards delighted in our unusual number of winter and early spring rains. You can find mustards all over the city, and especially in my backyard.

In previous years, we’ve had volunteer larkspurs which I’ve protected until their lovely blue blossoms faded away. I haven’t found a one this year.

Before beginning, I tasted a mustard leaf. It wasn’t nearly as bitter as I expected. Hmm. Unlike those questionable mushrooms that popped up in a raised bed, I could eat them.

Nah.

I began slaughtering weeds, using a shovel and large collecting bucket, dumping mustard carcasses in a heap against the back wall where they’ll compost themselves.

But yesterday I let an inspector in through the side gate, apologizing for the weeds there. After he left, I decided to work in that area before anyone else used the gate.

Those mustards had been more pampered, with shade, and moisture. They were taller, with bigger leaves. I collected a bunch and carried the mess into the kitchen where I stuck them in a bucket. Later, I trimmed off the best looking leaves, washed and bagged them, and dumped the stalks.

I ate some this morning along with an egg. A little tough, but okay. Maybe chopped up in a stirfry next?

Which brings to mind the two oak trees in our front yard that spill so many acorns every year. One time an escaped pig settled in under the chinquapin oak (she knew which acorns were the sweet ones) and was chomping away until we got her removed.

People are starving in the world. Why not consume them ourselves? I’ve thought of trying them more than once, but . . .

Other weedings:

Weeding in the library used to be one of my favorite jobs—culling the unwanted, the battered, the overly-loved books to make room for new titles.

As a writer, I hang onto far too many bits of paper. I’m currently weeding out notes to myself, early drafts, ideas, etc. . . .

And then there’s always junk mail . . .

Spring Sprang. Now what?

Weather went hot the day after Easter.

Momentarily, anyway.

So far we’ve had mostly strong winds and cold air. Of course, in New Mexico, it can change in an instant. But I’m thinking this era of climate change is going to rob New Mexico of any spring at all. It feels like we’re moving from winter into summer.

Apologies to my readers. I’ve been immersed in work, so the blog is going to suffer this week.

Warm wishes to all for a spring-full week.

April is Poetry Month

One of my writer friends emails out a poem a day in April. It’s lovely to receive the great variety she selects. I’m not going to emulate her daily discipline, but here’s a poem and a few thoughts to share with you.

Most of my early attempts at poetry centered around emotional times. My first college love. My failing marriage. Having been happily married for many years, I have to go back to an earlier time to find personal poems.

I guess that’s why verse novels have become such a part of my life. They let me put words to my character’s angst, while living my own life on a more even keel.

Taking a Walk remained only four lines for a long time, until a poet critiquer told me there was more to say. So I added two more verses. Years later, in a calligraphy class, I made a little booklet on labyrinths, and created a different set of verses to accompany those first four lines.

So here’s to labyrinths and finding our way home to ourselves.

Taking a Walk

Taking a walk around the block

circles from and back again.

Rather would I walk from toward

for we always take back with us.
*
Taking a path through the labyrinth—

though Theseus cheated with a string—

he knew the game was only won

by facing the monster found within.

*

You can never go wrong in the maze of life

unless you stand still— Even then—

no matter where on the road you wait

you meet yourself, again and again.
Kate Harrington