Writing Day

The Garage is a mess. Blackberry vines thick as my thumb have pushed between fence boards. Fishing tackle is still in the truck. Piles of paper everywhere in my office. Yesterday I was in Grafton. Well, my head was there. As was my heart. The entire day was spent with Grandpa George Washington Gibson, his wives Mary and Ann, and all the kids. We had a great time.
Wasn't much time for swapping stories this time, however. The Gibsons had a lot on their "to-do list", so I tried to make a polite exit and return home. "My wife has a lot of things for me to do at home, so, the visit was nice...I have to go now." George put his arm around me and "lead" me outside. Dixie sun is warm, even at 9am. "Rod, glad to see ya, boy. 'Been meanin' to talk with you." "You've been writin' about planting crops and building houses, but you don't have a firm grasp of how tough it is here. The other day you fenced in my property in a matter of hours. It took me and my boys three days to build that rock caisson and pole fence." I thought about that. "Grandpa, If I make time pass too slowly, I'm afraid the novel will drag." "Find a happy medium, boy", George counseled. "That's why I want you to stay awhile, to try to get an idea of what it's like in real time." "OK Gramps, I need to run home real quick and clear my day....be right back." I said, with my fingers crossed.

"Merry, let's organize our day, OK?" I checked my wife's face for her mood. She worked hard all day Saturday while I was out fishing with a friend from dawn to dusk. But that's another story. Intuitively, I knew she wanted to continue today, Monday, what she had started Saturday. Sunday was a beautiful day, sunny and full of the Spirit, but it also served to give Merry her second wind to attack the "to-do list" anew on Monday. I started the conversation....felt it best to get my request out as I checked her expression, breathing rate, and body language. I've got pretty good reflexes, but still positioned myself at a safe distance. "First, I appreciate how you didn't give me a hard time when I came in from fishing, said "How was your day?", took off my shoes, and collapsed in our bed and slept for three hours. And the bed wasn't out in the street when I woke up." "Your welcome", Mary said. Her face was tightening juuuuust a bit. " I did notice you jumped right in and helped after your nap. That was very nice. In fact, if you hadn't....." I felt this was a good time to interrupt her....this time. "I just wanted to show you I wasn't being lazy, I was just exhausted." I relaxed a bit. "Let me tell you, though. Rowing that pontoon boat against the wind most of the day...that lake was a mile across and two miles long....and the....." "Aren't we trying to plan out the day here?" Her face was tightening up juuuuust a bit. "Merry, I want to spend the day in Grafton." I continued, trying not to hesitate and leave her a chance to stop me before I got it all out. "I have been doing everything on earth BUT writing lately. It's been two weeks since I spent any real time on the novel, and I'm about to go crazy. I'm actually feeling stressed and depressed from NOT writing." She has always voiced support and encouragement for this novel. I felt I had a real chance here. " I spend the day today writing and then on Tuesday, I'll work hard on what you want done." By the way, it's now Tuesday and I'm writing on this blog and not doing the promised work. I'm NOT writing though....I'm writing about writing....right? That should be OK? Besides she's still in bed. I didn't get home from Grafton last night until about 3am and she was waiting up for me. But she'll probably get up pretty soon. I'm typing as fast as I can here. She loves the effect this novel has had on me. Even this thick head has noticed some changes. She says I'm happier, and the fact that I'm excited about my ancestors and about this project is amazing and just makes her feel good.

As far as taking the day off and traveling to Grafton, she could tell I was sincere, and, above all, she trusted me that I was sincere. So, I got to spend the day in Grafton with the family. I took my laptop and research notes with me. We spent the day putting in corn, wheat, and sorghum cane. We whizzed through building a living fence of cottonwood shoots along the property's eastern border that will grow quickly to form a windbreak and a barrier unpenetrable to all the livestock except that old ox that knows no boundaries and has never seen a fence he's needed to respect. At the end of the day, Grandpa and I rested on the porch, him in his rocking chair that NO ONE else sits in, and me on the front step.

"I'm a lot older than you, Rod, but I'm...in a lot better shape than you. Do something about that, will ya? What year do you have me in today? 1863? I'll be 63 in a few days, June 11. And you're only 57? Wow. And don't forget my birthday, bub.

"As far as your writing, in order to understand any part of what I'm going through, you have to try to put yourself in my shoes. Try to feel what I felt."

"Get into the yardwork, feel the pain and multiply it by 100%."

"Get good and tired and multiply that by 100%."

"Feel the sun on your back and intesify that heat by 100%."

"Those piles in your office? They can wait."

I spent the day with Grandpa Gibson and at the end, I was exhausted. But what a satisfying day. I still smile just thinking about it. I accomplished so much. "Grandpa, that satisfaction you feel after a long, hot, dry, dusty, Dixie day? I feel that satisfaction after spending the day with you....and multiply that by 100%.

Pioneer Speak is Here!

The book came two days ago and it has lived up to my expectations so far. I'm learning a lot of new words. Weaving them into my novel will, as I mentioned in a previous post, make the dialogue more authentic. The problem is some of these words are so foreign that readers will not know what characters are trying to say. Footnotes and a Glossary will be needed. It will be fun. I'm getting little goosebumps imagining how the dialogue will come alive.

Too Many Relatives

Last Sunday a lady spoke up in Gospel Doctrine Class about something her husband's ancestor did at the Kirtland Temple way back in the mid-1800s. I didn't hear exactly shat she said he did, because I was, well, not completely awake at the time. I did perk up when she mentioned Milo Andrus. Milo Andrus's son James married two of George Washington Gibson's daughters. George, as followers of this blog will come to know, was Grafton Boy number one. He was the first pear to fall from my family tree and settle to the ground in Grafton, UT.

After class we chatted. Her Milo Andrus was indeed James Andrus's father. Her husband is a descendant of old Milo, and their daughter goes to my church. So, someone that was heretofore an aquaintance is now a cousin. Now I need to find a way to write my new cousin into the book. I am, unbeknownst to my readers, writing in several family members. I haven't decided whether or not to tell them they're in the book. I suppose I could be cruel, not tell them, and if they don't bring it up I'll know they didn't read the signed copy I gave them. Pretty sneaky...don't think I should do that, but it is just something people would expect me to do.

Pioneer Speak Reaches The Grafton Boys

Tonight I ordered "Language of the Mormon Pioneers" by George W. Givens through Amazon.com. It will be very interesting to see how I can infuse the proper words for the period and for their curcumstances into my manuscript. Now that will be a historical fiction novel as accurate as this Grafton Boy can make it.

Pioneer Speak

What is "normal" speech for a Mormon pioneer in 1860? Certainly not the way I've written the dialogue so far. Now, I can write "normally" being careful not to use things like "her bf wants to keep everything on the dl", or I can do the research necessary to discover and use the normal speech patterns of the day. This is a historical novel...shouldn't I have the speech patterns be historical as well? Just don't know how difficult it will be to have my characters talk "more better".

The reason I bring this up now is because I found a book on line that does just that. It is filled with common words and pronunciations from the day. There are also examples of how to use them in a sentence. Pretty valuable if I decide to go ultra-authentic.

Research Finished? Not so fast Rod!

I was chugging right along. Text flowing from my fingertips like ink from a giant squid....which I do bear an uncanny resemblance to when the sun hits me just right. Anyway, I was getting a lot written when I got one of my brain surges. Merry had been talking about her sister and brother-in-law that live in Levan, UT. Levan and the area around Levan do figure prominently in my novel, so I got the idea to use Don Tippets, Sue, and their kids in the book. Only family, and you, will know the Tippets aren't the names of real settlers pulled from geneology or from some pioneer journal. Of course, I am going to have fun with giving them pioneer characteristics and jobs. Some of the tags I give them will be true to their real characteristics, while others will be whimsical, wishful, or just plain funny. The casual reader won't have the slightest idea it's going on, but it will be good for a laugh for several family reunions and get a lot of play on our facebook accounts. I am going attempt to include friends and relatives and probably not even tell them about it. It's one way of finding out who REALLY reads the book?

Back to the heading of this post. When I started including Don's family, I felt I needed to learn more about the history of Levan. That was two days ago. Now, I have more history of the area around Levan than I could ever use. Tonight I WILL write in the Tippets crew and be able to move on. It's going to be fun. I think his son Kenneth will be the sheriff, Wendy will be at home helping her mother due to Sue's health problems, Kevin will be in the militia, Karen will be a struggling widow with two kids that can't stay out of trouble, and Sherman might be a local veterinarian. I swear, Sherman could wrestle a horse to the ground if the need arose. Don's wife Sue will be a loving and supportive mother and wife, and the glue that holds the family together.

I found out about an obscure artifact that is still in the hills outside of Levan, south of Chicken Creek. It's a brick retort someone used to "cook" oil out of the native shale. The distilled shale oil was used as harness oil and lantern fuel. The pioneer that operated the still garnered a barrel a day from the operation. Don will be that guy in my book.

Wednesday evening I was playing basketball and fell, opening up a gash under my eyebrow that required 7 perty little stitches and treated me to a minor concussion. I'm going to have one of the Gibson boys receive that same injury when he won't leave them alone and gets pushed to the ground by his sister's boyfriend...kid gets a gash in his head on a rock in the road, dad gets mad, boy apologizes to dad, boy apologizes to the kid, boy apologizes to girl on a dark front porch, bf tries to kiss girl, little boy gets in the way again...you get the picture.

Don't Know a Thing!

I wish I could make some profound statement about how wonderful it was when this novel idea emerged, how it emerged as a light from above that warmed me, filled me, clarified all the mysteries of life and left me with white hair and a perpetual smile. Nah. Just don't remember. If it comes back to me, I'll come back to you and tell all about it.

I wish I could tell you I've an advanced degree from some haoughty-taoughty liberal arts college. I wish I could tell you I've a degree of any kind from a liberal arts college. I wish I could tell you I've taken lots of courses on how to write. I wish I could tell you I've taken classes on writing. What I can tell you is that I'll always strive to be the best writer I can be. I will be a life-long learner in my chosen field and never become complacent.

The greatest influences on my writing skill, in no particular order, I owe to three sources.

One: The Internet. There are thousands of pages available on how to write, accessible by searching and clicking. I have copied and pasted so much content on how to write more better (yes, I know...I wrote that non-correctly on purpose) than I'll probably ever find enought time to read. Suffice it to say that I will strive to be the mostest bestest righter eye can bee and I will yous spell chek awfun.
Note: My wife, after reading these posts, has asked me to go back and edit a few things that somehow made it past spell check. I dedicate that last sentence to my dear, supportive wife.

Two: My appetite for reading. I have read, and heard it said, and seen it writ again, (rhyming dedicated to Dr. Seuss) that "writers read". As an adolescent, throughout my teenage years, and on to adulthood, I have loved to read. Fiction and nonfiction, I've enjoyed them all. My ability to read well at an early age fed upon itself to make me a voracious reader as time progressed. In college I found myself bound to textbooks as I prepared to become a scientist. I eventually became a science teacher, again strongly bound to textbooks. I have come full-circle. I have rediscovered the joy of reading. Fiction and nonfiction, I'm enjoying them all.
And now I'm a writer...a novelist...an author. Cool, huh?

What is the most important thing they teach you in pursuit of a liberal arts degree?
(Do you want fries with that?)
That's is an old joke. I'm an old science teacher. Therefore, a science teacher is an old joke? Ouch!

Three: The most influential source of my motivation and skill at writing has been my mother, Louise Grant. I owe to her my desire to read. She encouraged and guided me at an early age to become a reader. Thanks to her, reading became easy for me. The ability to read and read well has more to do with academic achievement than anything else. Due to my mother's influence, I wrote my first book in the fourth grade. I pulled down volume one of the family's Collier's Encyclopedia and read about the first animal listed, the Aardvark. That was chapter one. Next the Aardwolf, chapter two. Do you sense a pattern here? I don't remember how far I got, but I do remember submitting it to my teacher, receiving a very puzzled look in exchange for the unsolicited manuscript. I wish I still had that book. If she'd edited it, I could have received my very first red-penciled rejection at age 9 and been well on my way to becoming a writer.
Maj-Jong was played once a week at my Grandma Burningham's house. Most of her children were there, all really old adults from an adolescent's perspective, and they had a wonderful time together. It was truly one of the most boring places to be for an man nearlyh grown. I suppose I was seven to twelve years old, somewhere in there. I found an enjoyable way to pass the time (seemed like hours and hours and hours), however. My Grandfather had a series of reference books dealing with all the sciences. Each volume covered a different science. Biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology, they were all there. I would close the bedroom door and read about all sorts of fascinating things. More reading, more learning. If I'd known where all that reading was going to lead, I'd have spent my time carving my name into granny's antiques or something else constructive. But I was a good boy. Oh, yeah, there WAS that time I put a fake crack on her TV screen. It was clear plastic film with black lines on it...bought it at the same magic store I bought the rubber dog poop that ended up on her new couch. She assessed each attempt at humor as equally disagreeable. I leaned a chair against the doorknob that night as I retreated to the bedroom with grandpa's books. When my grandmother and grandfather died, I inherited those volumes...just a minute...water's dripping on my keyboard from somewhere.

All that early history is cute and all, but my best writing memory came later, at Linn-Benton Community College. Barbara Jean's English Composition class. I was 24 years old, fresh out of the U.S. Navy, in my prime, and lookin' good! There was an annoying old lady taking that class with me that continually frustrated me. The first paper I'd turned in was a well-written piece. The papers were graded and passed back a couple of days later. Not bad, a B+! She leans over to see what I got, making sure I could see the top of her paper. She had gotten an A+. Grrrrrrrr. Try as I might, I could not get a higher grade than her no matter how many hours I spent on a writing piece. Not even leaning back in my chair and intertwining my fingers behind my head would work. She got a higher grade than me on every single, dang-blasted, stinkin', con-sarned paper I turned in. That annoying old lady was my mother. Taking that class with her was a treat that I will treasure all my years. SHE is the writer in the family. It's my dream that she writes something for all of us to remember her by. Even if she doesn't, I'll always have English Comp 122.
My children learned to read early. They were read to from the start and encouraged to read at as early an age as they could handle. My youngest, James, was having a hard time in school. His reading was below grade level.
We has been reading scriptures every day (almost) with our seven children. They were all able to read the King James Bible easily except for James. Consequently, we only required James to read one verse, and he needed assistance with that. When we recieved the below-average reading results, Merry came up with the idea to have James read the same number of verses as the rest. .The other kids bellyached a bit about having to slow down for James, but in a few months he was up to speed with the rest. Next time his reading was tested, he was above grade level. The teacher asked what we'd done. The typical Portland, OR elementary school teacher does NOT want to hear that the Holy Bilble was the key. That's not what they were taught in teacher school.

This is not the Beginning of the Work

In the beginning, if I had thought about constructing a blog for this novel, we would be starting the process together. I only recently got the idea that a blog of my activities might be fun for myself to look back on, as well as an interesting place where people who desire insight into the writing process and struggles of a first time novelist may be enlightened and entertained. I have to admit that I also hope people who wander onto this blog might get a taste of what The Grafton Boys is all about, becoming interested enough to be a reader when the novel is published.

Two years of research have been completed. My computer's full. I've had to compress files and put pics on an external drive. Small writing pieces have been created and plugged into the rough draft over those two years, but now the bulk of the research is finished and creative juices will be allowed to flow like the Virgin River flowing through Grafton. I'll get periodic floods of ideas that I'll be unprepared for. I've already forgotten some wonderful ideas that popped into my fuzzy brain and, without the benefit of pen and paper to write them down, have drifted off into whatever part of my brain things drift to. The aforementioned "drifting away" happens too often. Sometimes to reappear, sometimes never to be heard from again.

Rule #1: Carry something to record ideas onto or into.

Logjams will occur. Writer's block. My family must understand that gazing out a window, leaning back in my chair and placing my intertwined fingers behind the back of my head, closing my eyes, breathing deeply, and allowing my body to make one of various possible and potential noises, is part of the creative process. Going fishing, hanging out at the bookstore, and long drives, also allow me to break free from writer's block. In fact, anyway I choose to spend my time I can rationalize into part of the creative writing process. During sleep periods, whenever they might occur, I try to dream of Grafton and the Gibsons. Sometimes I remember something from a dream that makes it into print.

Rule #2: Just because I'm taking a nap, doesn't mean I'm not writing.

I'm constantly building and rebuilding irrigation ditches that channel ideas from the data stream. This information goes here, this info goes there. I have all these files set up with data waiting to find its way into the chronology of the novel. Now's the time when I get to use the diverted data to nourish ideas I've planted on the page. Using whatever color thumb it would take to perform such a task, I give creativity free rein to bring my ancestors and their struggles to life.

Rule #3: I need to give that thumb a color!

The Grafton Boys

I've created this blog to share the wonderful time I'm having writing my first novel, The Grafton Boys. This is a historical fiction novel showcasing the struggle of pioneers in Southern Utah 1861-1920. The story centers around three generations of men and their families, and their struggles to survive the relentless onslaught of the desert environment, hostile Indians, outlaws, and and other ne'er-do-wells while they attempt to settle, survive, and thrive. As the presence of the ghost town of Grafton Utah now attests, The struggle ended. Grafton had been dying for years and finally the end came in 1944 when Frank and Mary Russell left Grafton for a more comfortable existence in St. George. Death has been pronounced on Grafton, but there is this day a tiny blip on the monitor. The Grafton Heritage Partnership Project has come to preserve what is left and restore what they can while informing the public of the wonderful history of this place. As generations of Grafton's citizens peer down from the cemetery above town, they must be pleased to see the town that meant so much to them, where life and death struggles were everyday occurrences, is receiving the care and recognition that it deserves. Preservation activities are keeping my ancestors' town alive. It is my hope that The Grafton Boys brings the lives of my ancestors out of the dust and onto paper where their story can be told.

The Grafton Boys is as accurate an accounting of the above mentioned history as I have been able to document. There are gaps in the research that don't allow me to remain truly factual throughout the novel and still provide an entertaining plot. Journals don't often reflect the personality of the pioneers, and it is often necessary to create fictional interactions between my ancestors, their families, and others. I strive to make these interactions logical and historical, while remembering that this is still a work of fiction.