Slow Progress

I've got all the pieces of my book ready to put together, but I got sick last week and got absolutely nothing done over the weekend. Ambrose, however, was finally feeling well enough to finish his last edit read-through. He'll be doing a final pass once I put everything together, but that's more about catching typos than making major changes. 

I'll also be sending the final draft to Bill, since he is in the book. I think it's important that folks heavily featured in my books are allowed to read through and have veto power over what I write about them. Also, his wife used to edit for a living, and I really appreciate her remarks when it comes to usage and consistency. 

I think, as long as I can stay healthy-ish, I can have that copy ready before this Sunday. I just need to set aside some time and energy for it. Unfortunately, work is really sucking my thinking energy right now, because it's evaluation season and I'm training up a new employee for a position that is so far from rote and regular that it's tricky to organize training. It's a lot of hands-on and live training on problems as they come up. But even 30 minutes a day on weekdays should set me up to really push through on Saturday and drag it across the finish line on Sunday. 

Sometimes getting started is the hardest part. And I can feel myself procrastinating a bit, because once this book is done, I'm determined to write my self care book and get that out. Even if part of me feels like that book is just stupid and people will hate it and I have no standing to write it. Screw those attitudes. I have an idea, and I want to write about it, and maybe some people will find it useful. 

Book Work and Video Work

Well! Ambrose made it through the first draft, and left comments for me. I'm working my way through them. I finished selecting all the pictures that I plan to use in the book, and I'm working on creating the captioned plates that I use to properly insert my photos into the manuscript for uploading. I've made a few adjustments to pictures that I selected, but that's to be expected - especially if I realize when reviewing Ambrose's comments that I didn't include a picture that would be illustrative of a point in the book. 

For example, I realized when I finished captions for the first day's hike that I hadn't included any pictures of our tent site at Warm Springs Bar, where we used the Z-packs Triplex as a car camping tent. We haven't often used backpacking tents as car camping tents, but on this trip it was quite nice. We didn't have as much gear inside as we normally would while backpacking, so the Triplex actually felt spacious. 

I decided to rectify that omission, but when I went looking through my other photos, I realized that I hadn't even taken a picture of the tent at that site. Oops! Well, I do have one that I'm going to try and use. It has Ambrose in it as the main feature though, the tent is kind of in the background. The photo might be too blurry to include, but I have to make some allowance for morning pictures, because it's very difficult to get my camera to take very clear images in low light. I don't like using flash in low light because it tends to highlight just the foreground - plus flash is a battery suck. 

Anywho, the book is progressing with more speed now. One full day's worth of photo plates complete (out of six total), draft review in progress, headers and cover still to be started. But I feel good about the momentum. If I can just get my guts to calm down a bit and give me some peace, then I'm confident I'll get this book knocked out before the end of the year. If not, well, it will be done when it's done. 

And, I could have put more time in it, but I'm also starting to work on making videos. There's definitely a learning curve. For now, I'm going to try and put out one video a month to start. During the next backpacking season, I'll be doing a lot of recording on the GoPro, so I might be able to do spates of more frequent posting with the additional content that will provide. 

First Draft Done!

I finished up the first draft of this year's book. It came in just under 35,000 words, which is longer than I expected. I'm glad it wasn't even longer than that, but its length may well fluctuate after I go through Ambrose's comments. 

I'm not resting on my laurels though; I took one day off and then got right to work choosing the pictures. I'm hoping to spend a good amount of time tomorrow doing picture related tasks. I'll choose the photos to include, then create the pages for the book. I also need to create the headers for each chapter. 

I changed my headers for the last few books, and I think this new way is much better. It's more difficult for me to do, but I think it's worth the effort. It helps readers get a better idea of the distances and elevations that I'm hiking each day. 

This book definitely won't be ready in time for Christmas gifting, but I'm still holding out hope to get it published this calendar year. It doesn't make a huge difference if it is or isn't, but I want to finish this up so that I can move on to other projects. I need to get a handle on how to work with the GoPro over this winter, and start putting up more videos. I also want to port my blogs over to my website. I have plenty of things to do! 

Book Update

I am still writing the book. I didn't expect to still be writing at this point in the month. I thought I'd be finished closer to 20,000 words, since that's how much I've typically written for these books. 

But I find myself blazing past 30,000 with some more stories yet to tell. I don't know how long this book is going to end up being, but it will be my longest to date. 

I'm thinking about whether I should try and deliberately reduce the number of pictures I include for the sake of the overall length. The longer the books are, the more they cost to produce and the higher the minimum price I have to set is. I wish I could make the paper copies affordable, but I'd have to make them black and white to appreciably affect the price. I'm just not ready to do that. 

The book will be as long as it is, but once I finish the writing, I've got to get a move on the next steps while Ambrose does a read through. It isn't looking like I'll have the books out in time for Christmas presents, but I might be able to finish them before the new year. 

Depends on how many words I end up writing, I suppose. 

Book Progress

Well, I had another couple of zero days. I was ill, and I chose to let my brain rest rather than force it to write when I was not at all ready to do so. And then I had a migraine, and I chose to sleep for 12 hours rather than make sure the writing was done. 

However, despite those setbacks, I feel good about where I am in the writing. It didn't get done before the end of October, but I'm making steady progress. This book may be more wordy than past efforts. I'm alright with that, though I know it will make the end product more expensive. I want to tell an engaging story, and that means including discursions that add depth to the story of my experience. 

And I might ask Ambrose to be a bit harsh with the editing pen. I'm not sure if he'll be able to execute that. Sometimes I think he likes my darlings even more than I do. 

I'm over 18,000 words in so far, and I haven't even gotten to my second night solo. That was a tough night, not because I was alone, but because I had been wet and cold. Plus, it was a dry camp, which means I wouldn't be drinking my fill until morning. But enough spoilers. 

Just like on that hike, I need to focus on forward motion with this book. Get the words written, select the pictures, work the pictures, create the manuscript, upload, and publish. 

Progress Report

Well. I didn't exactly start October the way I wanted to. The first of the month was almost a total loss when it comes to writing. I got a bit done, but nowhere near 1000 words. 

The next day, October 2nd, Ambrose was signed up for a 5K race. That day was all about him. But I managed to get my hands onto the keyboard and get the thousand words written. And I've kept that streak up through Monday and Tuesday. But I'm still working on the blog entries; I haven't started the book yet. 

But I'm getting close. At this rate, I'll be finished with the last two blog entries that I want to get done by Friday - as long as I stick to the 1000 words a day. 

Though I do plan on doubling the word count requirements on weekends, now that I've gotten started. To be honest, I know I can do more than 5K in a day when I don't have to go to work. It all comes down to getting my butt in the writing chair. 

One thing that should help improve my word count is that I've set myself up to be able to write on my phone. I got quite a few of my words done on Sunday on my phone while I waited for Ambrose to finish running. It's not something that I've done extensively before, but I know that if I can get into a habit of writing on the phone in spare moments, those words will add up. 

Really, the next concern is going to be getting my notes typed up. I take notes on most backpacking trips, but most especially on the ones that I want to write a book on. In the past, my notes on my ICT trips have been a little less informative than I would prefer. Writing me finally asked hiking me to be a little more specific about how I feel and what I'm doing. I don't know yet if I succeeded, but I made an effort to consider the book more when I wrote notes this last trip. 

Plus, I wrote at every break this year. In the past, I'd write every other break so that I wouldn't be taking so much time on my breaks. But I was taking my time this year, and the extra writing helped me not to get too worked up over how long my breaks took. 

Back to the Word Mines

Last year, I wasn't as on the ball with my book writing as I wanted to be. I forgive myself for this, because I was still dealing with my mom's passing, and her memorial service was just last November. It threw off my game, and I let it. 

This year, I want to be getting the book out in time for Christmas. That means I have to really focus on the writing and get that done asap. I'm not planning on starting the writing of the book until I finish up the blog posts for the last trips of the summer, and so those are going to be what I'm hammering on to start. 

My hope is to finish the blogs before 10/1. That way I can start October and just write my little heart out. I know I can do 1000 words a day, even on days when I'm tired or feeling crappy or have a headache. I just need to focus and hold myself to that goal. 

To get the blogs finished, I'm going to be working up to 1000 words a day. That should give me some time to get into the habit of daily writing. 

Given the average length of my books, 1000 words a day in October will allow me to finish by the end of the month. Then I can work on the photos in early November and, with enough hard work, get the books published by the end of November. Mail-wise, that might mean late Christmas gifts, but that's only because I ship them to myself first for signing. 

While I'm doing that, I also want to try to move my blog over to my own website. I'm getting really tired of how awkward Blogger has made it to add photos. And sometimes they completely reverse the order of photos I uploaded which is a HUGE pain to fix now. It will be better for my "brand" if I am on my own website anyway. That is part of why we bought the website, after all. I just (sensing a theme here?) need to put in the work! 

I've started the work, with some good writing days to start this week. I just need to keep the momentum going and sit down to write every day. Writing isn't physically strenuous, and I know what I'm going to be writing. Just my trip, and it's actually quite wonderful to relive those journeys, especially when I don't have to deal with the actual footsoreness and I have access to running water and modern plumbing. 

Really Late Book

I meant to finish my second book from last season in February. And in March, April, and May. 

It's now June, and I haven't hit publish. I've been making progress, but of the very slow variety. To be fair, I felt ill for a good portion of those months - not from tummy issues for once, but a variety of long last colds. (I did a home Covid test at one point and came up negative.)

June really needs to be the month that I wrap this thing up. I don't want to go on more trips without having put this one to bed, so to speak. So I need to just focus myself and make it happen. I'm really down to the nitty gritty parts that don't take a whole lot of thought. Just a lot of persnickety placement work for the photos (which are all plated and captioned), and then the cover, and then the standard print size, and then the cover for that, and finally the ebook version and ebook cover. That should make it a wrap. That's one long day's work or several partial days, and the hardest part will be writing the back cover copy. At any rate, I'm aiming for no later than June 15th. 

It's definitely doable. I just need to make sure that I put the book first on my priority list. And that I don't catch another of those annoying colds that sap my brain and creative energies. 

Books!

Pretty late this year, but I finally got the print copies of my books in and I'll be mailing them out today. I'm still working on the next book's text, but I think I can get that done pretty quickly if I can just block out some solid time for writing. I have made a good amount of progress on it so far; I'd say I'm about halfway through the first draft. 

Once the text is done, it shouldn't take too long to get the rest of it all set. It's only about 2 day hikes, but they are along the Idaho Centennial Trail. I don't want to miss any parts of the trail in my books, and if I try to put this in next year's, then it will be way too long. Next year is going to be long enough as it is, since I'll be including a day hike and a 6 or 7 day backpack. 

The one odd thing about the books this year is that the background color for the large print editions is a slightly different shade than the standard print editions. It's funny, because I use the exact same template to create the covers. The only difference, on my end, between the two is the little "large print" icon I put on the large print ones. 

Box of books :D

Still, I'm happy with them. 

Almost Ready to Publish

I've got my proof copy in for the latest Hike with Me book, Idaho Centennial Trail Frank Church Finale. This is a big one, as I knew it would be. Poor Ambrose had to ration his time reading it because holding the book up wore his wrist out. He has finished his read through; I now need to do a read through, and then input all the corrections to the large print file. 

Once all the corrections are made, I'll be doing a save as on the Word document to create the standard print. And then a save as on the standard print to create the ebook version. I'll need to do a little fiddling with the cover to create the standard print sized cover, and a bit more fiddling to create the ebook cover, but it's really just about finished. Just a matter of a day's work or so. 

Then I need to really settle into writing the ICT Challenge book about the two day hikes I took north of the Magruder Corridor. That book will be a small one. It might be the smallest one, but we'll see. I do have that one other short one where I was connecting from Stanley Lake to the Middle Fork of the Salmon. I have gotten that one started, and I even wrote 1000 words on Sunday. But then I started feeling sick again and I haven't gotten back to it since. 

But I know I can settle right into writing 1K per day and get that one knocked out in two weeks or less. The photo process should be similarly quick, and the cover should be quicker than the last one just because I did one recently. I'm hoping to get this second one out no later than the end of April so I can be ready to write about my new adventures once backpacking season starts. 

Actually, I'm hoping to write about early spring car camping first this season. We'll see if we can find some open and accessible campsites in April and early May, and get ourselves sleeping in the woods well before we can start our backpacking. 

Book Progress

I've got the pictures and captions all done. Ambrose was very kind to review them quickly, and he did catch a few typos. Also, we had to research some pronoun usage, because our brains wanted to say "a picture of Ambrose and I" but since 'I' is following 'of' it really should be "a picture of Ambrose and me." Easier to realize once you try one at a time (of Ambrose = good, of me = good, of I = nope). 

I had reached out to Bill regarding the finish of two the pictures, because he knows more people who know botany than I do. It actually took him a while, and several sources, but he totally came through, identifying a Syringa that flummoxed others because it was past the peak of its bloom, and a Mountain Hollyhock. I was able to identify a couple other flowers by myself, but it was great to get that assist. 

I've got the headers next on my list, but I'm going to skip them in favor of getting the bulk of the large print manuscript ready to go. That way I can send it to Bill for approval while I work on the headers. Since Bill was on the trip, I plan to request that he review the manuscript with veto power for any part he would prefer I not include. If he wants to check for typos too, I won't say no. 

I'm not going as quickly on this book as I would have liked, but it will get there. And I think I'll be able to move faster on the next one. I better, because it's going to be backpacking season again before I know it. One thing that will help is the Christmas present from my husband, a Surface Book 3. I'm even writing this blog on it, and even though the keyboard isn't ergonomic butterfly style like the one I use at work, I'm finding it very easy to type on. Plus, I get to sit on the couch. Bonus. 

Book Progress

I finished writing out my initial draft before I went out of town on 11/19. And then I kind of took the week of Thanksgiving off. Perhaps not the best choice, but I don't regret having a relaxing holiday. I did get around to doing part of my work on Sunday. That's when I finally read Ambrose's and Bill's accounts of the trip. Both of them finished their write-ups well before I did, but I refused to read them until I had finished my draft. I didn't want my brain to be thinking of the words and memories of others while I was writing my own story.

There was very little in their accounts that I hadn't covered from my own perspective, which was pretty neat. I do reference the many photos I took while writing to help me remember, but I can't take a photo of everything. 

I'm still working on the next step in the process, which is new this year. Usually, I have a hard time rereading my work, so I might skim it or just spellcheck it before handing it off. But I wanted to give it a read through first this time so that I could cull out typos and add any depth from my reading of the guys' accounts. But I find that I'm actually enjoying the reread and typo/sense check that I'm doing now. Once I finish that, I'll be handing it off to Ambrose for the first read. 

While he works on that, I'll start selecting the photos that will be used in the book. I have an idea of some of them, since they figure prominently in the writing, but culling photos is always tricky. I want to include all the coolest photos, but sometimes the ones I most want are blurred or otherwise unusable. That is, after all, why I take so darn many. 

Ambrose took less than 100 photos. I took nearly 1000. Bill was closer to Ambrose's number than mine. 

In prior years when I've done multiple books, I've tried to do the production part (pictures, caption, formatting, publishing) at the same time. This year I'm going to try it differently. I've barely started writing the second book, which will be on the small ICT section I did in August. I might work on the writing while I'm waiting on Ambrose and doing production tasks, but I might wait later than that. That book will likely be published in 2022, but I have hopes that I can managed a 2021 date for the Frank Church Finale book. 

But if I want that, then I'm going to need to put my nose to the grindstone and get it done!

Writing Along

My writing is moving along nicely. I started out with a 500 words per day requirement to just get me into the chair and writing. As I hoped, getting my butt into the chair has resulted in more than the minimum the longer I keep up the streak. I think I'm ready to start making my minimum daily word count 1000, which should speed the process along even more, as I start to exceed that goal. 

It's funny; when I started focusing on the writing, 500 words was hard. I would write a bit, check my count and find I wasn't even halfway there. Tuesday morning, I wrote a bit, then did my check and found I'd already exceeded 500 words. 

I think I prefer writing the Hike with Me books after the end of the season in part because it allows me to relive the trips just when I'm really starting to miss backpacking. Though I did like having the write-up done earlier the one year that I did my ICT hike in May and finished the write-up before July. Of course, I did two other books that year, so I was still writing in October and November. 

It's so much fun to look back over all my pictures and recall the scents and the feel of the breezes. How hot it was in the afternoons, and how cold in the mornings. The trip went exactly according to plan, and that was such a relief after my last few attempts at the Frank. 

I'm hoping to finish my write-up of both this trip and the second ICT hike that I did later in August before November 19th, but it will all depend on how long each one ends up being. I expect the second one will be a lot shorter simply because I was only hiking for two days, due to fire closures, but I'm not sure how many more words I'll need for the first one. 

However many it takes :) 

It's the Time of the Season...

For writing!

The writing is underway. I'd say this is about an average start. I mean, technically, I did start this much earlier, but I haven't really started pushing myself on it until this past week. 

I know myself. When I have a daily word goal, I get writing done. When I don't, I don't. So I'm starting with an easy 500 words per day goal and as I get going, I'll probably up that to 1000 words per day. I'm hoping to finish the writing of both ICT trips before Thanksgiving, which should give me plenty of time to publish before Christmas. Or be close - it will depend on whether I order physical proofs or rely on the electronic. 

From past experience, no matter how much I review the electronic proofs, I will always miss typos that I'd catch on paper. But hope springs eternal, so I might go ahead and try electronic proofs again this year. It will really depend on how I'm feeling when I'm ready - and when I'm actually ready to make that choice. It's much easier to choose the physical proof when I'm ready in early December than when I'm ready in late February. 

I also submitted a story to the 4th quarter of Writers of the Future, with about three hours to spare before the 9/30 deadline. I actually had the story ready since July, but I was waiting to see if I wrote a better one. Of course, as soon as I submitted it, I thought of half a dozen ways to improve it, but there's always next quarter. (Writers of the Future allows you to submit the same story more than once.)

Backpacking season is over. Car camping season is over (for us). It's time to settle down to the off season pursuits and get these books written. Maybe a few stories while I'm at it. 

This Year's Books

Although I haven't settled in to the serious business of actually writing up my trips (or reading Ambrose's or Bill's trip reports), I have decided what I'm going to call each of my Hike with Me books this year. 

For the fly-in trip, I'm going with Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Frank Church Finale. I thought about doing Part 3 instead of Finale, but I wanted to emphasize that I was finally finished with the Frank. It took me a long time to get through it, and there are definitely choices that I made that I might not make if I do the trail a second time. (Sorry Dry Saddle, you are gorgeous, but the trails from Sheep Hill Lookout to the Salmon and Burnt Knob down to Poet just aren't there anymore.)

The title for the other book was harder to come by. Although I'm heading to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, technically, the trails I hiked were not in a Wilderness area. Not quite. I straddled the edge of the Selway when I hiked along the ridge from Burnt Knob, but once I turned off downhill towards Poet Creek, I was no longer in any Wilderness, just the Nez Perce National Forest. So this isn't really the 1st Selway hike. 

But it was a challenge. I took nearly ten hours to complete ten mostly downhill miles. I took long enough that Ambrose started to get worried about me. A large section of trail simply wasn't there anymore, and if I hadn't had GPS and a huge stubborn streak, I would have turned around. Or maybe my streak was a combination of stubbornness and optimism; I really did hope that the trail would become trail again at any moment. 

So even though that was only two day hikes on the Idaho Centennial Trail, with the planned third day cancelled due to fire at Warm Springs Bar, I'm going to call it: Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Challenge. That's going to be the main angle that I'm approaching that one from; the challenge of getting through the first day, and the challenge of actually getting up the next day and hiking again with my destroyed body. 

Next, I've got to start setting aside some time for writing, hopefully each day in September. Once I stop going on backpacking trips on weekends, I'll set a word count, maybe 500 words a day. That will be enough of a reminder to get my butt in the chair and start typing without being an impossible goal on days when I'm tired and/or in pain. 

The Time for Writing

I've got two books now that I'm working on. There's this year's Hike with Me, which will be called Idaho Centennial Trail Frank Church Finale. I figured calling it Part 3 would imply that more parts could follow, so I settled on Finale as the best indicator of triumphant completion. Then there's my other book that I've been chewing on for nearly a year now. Kind of self help, kind of philosophy, mostly about creating a framework for self improvement. 

I haven't made much headway on either of them in the last month. I've been writing in fits and starts. Mostly fits. My mind is getting easily distracted by my body's woes. I use my willpower to focus enough on work to get that done, but then I hardly have any left to focus on my personal writing work. 

My tummy has been rough for most of the summer. I got a new issue of throat gunk, which turned into tonsil stones while I was hiking through the Frank, and then cleared up briefly only to return, along with something like heartburn, despite a course of Prilosec. The sensations are painful, but during the day I can ignore it in favor of doing other things. It's at night that I run into problems, because I'm trying to empty my mind and relax and the painful sensations just get louder as my mind gets quieter. 

I have a pretty good writing set up at home now, and I need to actually utilize it. I need to carve out time and energy for getting my butt in the chair. Otherwise, I'll never read Ambrose's or Bill's accounts of the trip! See, I don't want to read theirs before I write mine, lest I steal a turn of phrase or forget something important to me. Also, it serves as a bit of an incentive to get to writing. 

But I don't expect that I'll finish my writing before November. That's my typical schedule. I will need to start focusing on it at some point to get that done, but there doesn't need to be urgency yet. If I'm not making headway by September, I'm going to have to institute a minimum word count per day. That usually does the trick of getting my butt in the chair for enough time each day to do the work. 

Another Story, What?

It's interesting. The more I focus on writing this nonfiction book that's been percolating in my head for several months now, the more I find myself writing fiction. I mean, I'm not setting any records here, but it feels like it's been a long time since I last had a story demand to fall from my fingers quite like the one on Monday did. 

I'll be saving that story to submit to the next quarter of Writers of the Future. Unless I write more before June 30th. I guess that is a possibility. If that ends up being the case, then I'll decide which to submit at that point. 

I'm not entirely confident that this story mindset will last. Of course, by writing stories, I'm kind of avoiding writing the other book. Maybe that's what I need to do to motivate myself: have multiple projects and procrastinate them off each other. 

But it could also be that opening myself to writing that book is allowing me to be open to other stories floating through my brain. Though, to be fair, this last story felt more like the start of a book than a short story. Or maybe it's the short story prequel to a novel. It kind of feels like I've cracked open the edges of a world, and it's up to me whether I want to crank it open wide and really learn/define it. 

I think that reaching an understanding that I am not a visualizer has helped inform my writing. Helped me understand where I was missing things in my writing; missing that visual description because I don't find visual description to be that important when I read. I don't see the scenes in my head like a TV show, so why would I write in such a way that others would be able to create that? 

I like writing; it's one of the ways that I learn the world and process my own understanding, by creating stories or telling my real life stories or just musing about in a semi-philosophical way. I don't think that I'll ever stop writing, even if I decide to stop actively trying to sell my writing. I do hope that I can someday make a living off of my writing, but I'm not pursuing it strenuously. Slow and steady, keeping the day job, and maybe, with this next book project, doing some actual promotion. 

I will talk myself into this. 

Submitted Another Story

I wasn't sure what I was going to write for the 3rd quarter entry of Writers of the Future that I promised myself I'd do. I've tried to do writing goals before that were more aggressive, and while I can keep up a more aggressive pace, I have other things that I like to do. Plus a day job. So, I haven't been as focused on story creation. 

And, for some reason, I keep coming up with story ideas. And rather than letting them lie, because they're really weird, I've decided to try writing them without concern for how weird they might be. I can't say how good these stories are, but they're written. 

After all, there's no way to determine whether a story is good or not until it is written. When the voices in my head try to keep me from writing a story because it won't be any good, they are arguing from a false premise. A story isn't anything until its written (or told, I'm not knocking oral tradition here). 

Neither is a book. I've been percolating a book for several months now, and while I've written bits and pieces, I haven't really hammered at it. I go back and forth, thinking that it's a good idea and some people might appreciate it, and then thinking it's a stupid, privileged idea and some people might hate it. But the truth of the matter is, it's probably both of those things, and more. Even the most beloved books have 1 star reviews on Amazon, and, well, in order for people to hate it, they'd need to find out about it. So if people hate it, at least that means people know it. 

I'm going to get that book written. And I'm going to publish it. I might even - gasp - promote it, at least to my circles, small as they may be. Because I will not know until I write it how it will be received. If I want to find out - and I do - then I must buckle down and write it. 

The Pot Speaketh

The other day my husband told me that I could sometimes be a bit convoluted in my communications, leading to less clarity and sometimes confusion. He was about to really get into how I do that, but I cut him off with a laugh. I laughed, because he was absolutely the pot calling the kettle. 

This is a man who will spend 40 minutes telling you five different stories to explain one off-hand remark, and you will not realize, at first, that he is doing this, because story number 1 has NOTHING to do with what he said. If that's not convoluted, then I don't know the meaning of the word. 

And I absolutely do know the meaning of that word, as someone who recently 'won' an argument by pointing out that I properly used the subjunctive. 

The incident made me think about my writing, and whether I need to keep an eye out for convoluted phrasing or confusing word usage. And I think that I do keep an eye out for those, but that isn't all that I need to do. If my thoughts naturally organize into something more convoluted than typical, then I need to think about bigger picture organization and making that more clear in my writing. 

I consider myself a 'rule-follower'. I have learned the rules of the English language (many of them, at least), and I enjoy using that knowledge. Using the language to the greatest extent that I can. That's all well and good for an essay, or perhaps literary fiction, but if I want to tell a story? I need to put clarity over cleverness. 

Even if it means no longer using the subjunctive to win arguments. I can always find another winning tactic. . . 

Book Published!

That took longer than I would have preferred. But I did finally push the publish button on the large print edition of the 10th (10th!) Hike with Me book. There are still a few more tasks to be completed on this. Three more editions to produce and publish, but no more proofreading to be done. 

In years past, I would be very careful not to make too many changes when I proofread. Once the pictures are placed, it can be a pain to add or remove even a single word, because every full page picture after that change will have to be shifted. I was being lazy, frankly, by not allowing myself to look at the final read through with a more critical eye. 

This time, I read my work and thought about clarity and meaning. I cut quite a few words that felt extraneous. I rephrased a few things when I read them again and realized that while I knew what I was saying, it really wasn't clearly spelled out for anyone else to know exactly what I was saying. Some of those spots, Ambrose pointed out, but not all of them. 

I tried to approach this read through with a bit of detachment. Detachment, but also affection. As if I were reading something that a friend had written, and I was helping them prepare it for publication. Because I would be much nicer to a friend than I would be to myself. Isn't that silly? But it worked. I feel very good about this book. 

It was a short trip, and so it's a short book. But not my shortest. I hope you check it out: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08XNVDG8P/