October, 2009 Grunts, Yells, and Rubber Bullets Writing the Thieves Fall Colors, Fall Complications Writing and Real Life Apples Fall, Muffins Rise Fall Food Memories 500 Entries, 85 Prizes, 24 Hours Site News and Sharon's Deluxe Freewriting Prompts

Dear Cowgirls and Friends,

It's time to write on into autumn…

Grunts, Yells, and Rubber Bullets

Nights are getting nippy—I no longer run out on middle-night deer patrols in shorts and a tank. Patrol consists of going just outside the back door of the detached garage (which is our primary on-foot portal to the gardens beyond) at least a few times each night, shining a 12-volt spotlight around the gardens and orchard and adjoining many-acre sloped field while stomping and making low, gruff coughing and grunting noises as close as I can come to a deer's bark. This performance generally makes most local ruminants turn their heads so I can catch their eyes and see where they are.

I don't always get them. My five-way grafted antique apple was loaded this year—I think all five varieties were bearing in one year, which is fairly rare—but the deer and moose have so far managed to pull down over half of the apples, many of which were still very green and laid around rotting with just a bite or two out of them (ack, I can just hear them… "try this one" "oo, it's green, too, try that one, maybe it's better"…).

I love seeing deer, but not when they're after my crops.

If I spot deer, the grunts turn into yells to get out of my orchard and move on to the wild apple trees (plenty of them around here). That is usually enough to drive deer up the hill if I keep it up for a bit. (Our new garage kitten, Scrapper—about four months old now—frequently finds this whole performance amusing enough to come out and dance attendance.) If it's one or more moose (we've had up to three at a time, and that is a whole lot of moose), I can yell from a distance if I want to. I'll admit I don't get many chances to yell "get outta here ya mangy old bugger!" but as far as shifting a moose goes, a perverse personal satisfaction in legitimately shrieking like a fishwife is all it's going to get me most times. Moose are enormous and can be deadly dangerous to approach.

Fortunately the couple of times we've had moose this year, Liz was available, since she's the only one in our household who can operate a shotgun. Fish and Game gives us shells loaded with rubber bullets to deter the moose. Nothing else drives them off with any reliability, and they could easily destroy our small orchard (they don't just eat and pull down fruit and nibble leaves, they eat the trees!). The rubber bullets won't damage the moose and usually work, if you can manage to land some in a sensitive place.

Writing the Thieves

Living in the country with my gardens and orchards makes me very aware of some of the forces trying to steal the things my family and I need to survive. Small thieves with big appetites include grasshoppers, aphids, and flea beetles— horrible little things in terms of damage but not much bigger than a large pin-head. One summer there were so many in the cabbage you could hear them chewing! Larger competitors for our food supply up here range from mice and voles to moose, elk, deer, and bear.

Animal thieves are pretty obvious, but some forces are more subtle. What people or animals or natural or societal forces try to take from you what you and your family need to live and to do what you need to do? What is trying to take your food, steal your time, sap your energy, or make unnecessary trouble for you or your family? What steps can you take to patrol? How far are you willing to go to defend yourself (I absolutely will not approach an adult moose on foot, no matter how much I love my precious trees that I've nurtured for 14 years in a tough spot)? What are you willing to risk? What is relatively sensible that will work? Take it for a write.

Fall Colors, Fall Complications

It's cooler now at the Farmer's Market, soft glow of peaches and nectarines giving way to crisper reds and yellows of apple and pear, last glowing glory of tomatoes and peppers contrasting with the earthier oranges, greens, and tans of the growing heaps of winter squash and pumpkins. The trees in town and bushes on the mountainsides are fading into what will become a brief riot of color, last end-of-the-season tree party before the final drop and winter's sleep. Grain harvest is mostly done, but for gardeners, orchardists, and market growers, the late harvest is on full-bore. Here are some words for you for October:

apples  autumn  splendor  crisp  squash  sparkle  guide  gusty  leaves  geese  falling  invigorating  rain  leaves  frost  squall  preserve  honey  stubble  hike  football  chrysanthemum  soup  woodlands  orange  pumpkin  steal  hay-ride  bonfire  jack-o-lantern  tailgate  homecoming  rough  cider  migrate

Pick one or two or a few and go for a write. Now think up seasonal conflicts, complications, or challenges. Is a long-planned trip to view the fall colors complicated (for travelers or for innkeepers) by the trees not getting with the schedule? Is He convinced that a series of odd noises and occurrences mean the house is haunted, while She is sure it's just neighborhood pranksters preparing for Halloween? Is a hard frost on the way with not enough help to get the crop in? Come up with one that works for you, add a sprinkle of words, and take another write.

Writing and Real Life

Real life often provides more complications, challenges, and conflicts than one might wish. What happens to your writing when life throws you a curve ball that whaps you up alongside the head or slams into your gut? Do you hang onto writing like a spar in a heaving sea or does it become easy to neglect, to put off? It has saved me a time or two, this writing thing. Given me something to throw my attention into while the waves of pain crash through and past in seemingly endless progressions. If you're aiming for full-time writer-hood, this is a big issue, because life does just keep happening but a contract is still a contract. Last month I treated myself to Holly Lisle's e-book, 21 Ways to Get Yourself Writing When Your Life has Just Exploded.

Holly Lisle is no stranger to real life trauma and family crisis, but through it all she has managed to keep writing or find her way back to writing with reasonable speed. As with other aspects of her writing, she has built up a collection of strategies and tactics to deal with the problem. We are lucky she is willing to share and that she manages to do it with such honesty, clarity, grace, and subtle humor. I highly recommend this e-book, especially for those of us whose lives or families tend to be on the trauma-prone side of the scale. It is definitely another smart Holly Shop purchase.

Apples Fall, Muffins Rise

I love apple time. Modern transportation and storage capabilities have made apples available year-round in many countries, but they are at their finest in season and close to the source. People have enjoyed and been nourished by apples for millennia, and apples have long enjoyed a place in the folklore, mythologies, and legends of many cultures and faiths. That apple a day really will help keep the doctor away, too. Regular consumption of apples can help reduce the risk of cancer and dementia and help you lose weight and lower your cholesterol. Guzzling cider in the fall when it's fresh (if you can get it where you live or make it yourself) is very good for your liver and gallbladder, because the malic acid in fresh cider helps to dissolve old bile salts that build up over time.

Apple Nut Muffins are a delicious way to use apples. Three generations of my family, young and old, have enjoyed them, and they keep well or you can freeze leftovers for a healthy treat later on. They are good hot or cold, with butter or cream cheese or even plain. Eat them with soup or stew or alongside a quiche or casserole or bean dish for lunch or supper, with eggs or cottage cheese for breakfast, or anytime for a nutritious snack. If you live alone, make a batch and freeze some for later. If you prefer your muffins warm, a good way to reheat them is to split, butter, and slide briefly under the broiler. A little cheddar or Colby cheese melted on the muffin halves is good, too.

Fall Food Memories

There is something so welcoming about the smell of apples cooking, so often enhanced by warm aromas of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves… For many people, apple pie symbolizes the warmth and comfort of mom and home. My mother's apple pies were great, but her apple bars (like a pie but thinner, baked in a cookie sheet, and usually glazed with a thin frosting) were even better. Fall also brought Grandma H.'s applesauce. She would cook chopped apples; cores, peels, and all. Then we would help her put them through a conical shaped sieve. I loved it when my turn came to turn the pusher round and round while the thick, fragrant applesauce oozed out the hundreds of little holes, leaving the peels and seeds behind. I think of Grandma H. every fall when I make applesauce.

Did your family have special food traditions as the season moved from summer to autumn? Apples? Squash? Pears? Applesauce? Pies? Muffins? Going out to the country to pick fruit or buy it from a fruit stand? Living in the country and helping with harvest or preserving? Write about it in real time or near-future, as if you were still the child experiencing or anticipating the trip or treat or work.

Contest, Gallery, and NaNoWriMo

I'll make up for the late notice on the contest in last month's newsletter by telling you about one that still leaves you plenty of time. A website called Writer's Weekly has a quarterly short story contest. It's a 24-hour marathon prompted contest, with the next one slated for January 23, 2010. It only costs five dollars to enter, and only 500 entries are accepted, so if you want to take on the challenge you should register relatively soon, to make sure you get a spot. On the day of the contest, at noon, you will receive an email with the prompt and word limit (usually around 1,000 words, give or take a few hundred) for the contest. You then have twenty-four hours (actually somewhat less, as email is not always instant and the deadline is absolute) to write, edit, and format your story for submission. I've entered four times and won an Honorable Mention one of the times. It made for a crazy 24 hours without much sleep but was a valuable process. If you want to practice for the contest, go into the archive of contest winners and try working with one or more of the past story prompts. You can learn more about the contest at http://www.writersweekly.com/misc/contest.php. There are three cash prizes and lots of e-book and e-zine prizes awarded.

If you're on this list and signed up for Nanowrimo (if you don't know about National Novel Writing Month, go here), send me an email to let me know and you'll get a "way-to-go, write on" in the next newsletter. If you are signed up but still not really sure where or how you're going to start when 11/1 rolls around, I highly recommend Holly's Create A Plot Clinic. Preparations such as outlining, character and world building, and other preliminary work are allowed (but you must not write a word of the novel itself before 11/1), and if you work your way through the Create A Plot Clinic you'll be in much better shape to hit the ground running. Ten bucks isn't much for such a valuable collection of solid tips, tricks, and methods, but if it's more than you've got, check out the free Holly Lisle's Professional Plot Outline Mini-Course. Even working your way through the free course will give you a boost when November comes. Good luck!

I found out about the National Day on Writing too late to give you much notice on the day itself (11/20), but the National Council of Teachers of English, will beginning to collect pieces of writing (and other related arts) on that day for an online National Gallery of Writing—a written patchwork quilt of American thought and writing. Submissions are accepted until the beginning of next June and the gallery will be open to readers until the end of June. You could have a patch in this amazing quilt. Anyone can! No cash return, but I think it is a fascinating and laudable project. Learn more here.

Site News and Sharon's Deluxe Freewriting Prompts

The website is coming along, though everything takes more time than I might wish. The beginnings of the Poetry page are up. My granddaughter, Candace Hanford, is Poetry editor. She is working on more resource reviews, but it's a start. Most of the photos on that page are hers, too. I'm hoping to get back to putting together more of the writers' links once I get this newsletter off to my husband/techie, Josh, for formatting into email. He's the one who takes my text and pictures and makes the website look so great, too, bless the man.

He's also helping me with my latest project. Very soon, for the low price of two dollars per sheet (less than a fancy espresso or smoothie!) those of you who like the unexpected note of working with prompts from an outside source will be able to download printable PDFs with two dozen writing prompts (comes to less than ten cents per prompt, and what else of significant value can you buy with ten cents these days?). Pay Pal makes payment quick and easy (use your usual credit card if you don't have a Pay Pal account), then you get a quick download. Print and cut on the dotted lines and voila, 24 handy little prompts, all ready to put in your jar or envelope or take to writing group. The first three sheets offered are all write-about prompts. Get all three for a bargain price and you'll have 72 great writes to look forward to, and many of the prompts will be good for more than one write if you let it rest a while in between.

Our new garage kitten, Scrapper, a dynamic climber. Photo by Laura Werner

Proceeds will help support the site and help my family and me through some very tough times. There will always be lots of free resources and ideas on Write 'em Cowgirls, but at this point things are so tight I don't know how I'll be able to afford to renew the domain in a few months, so I'm trying this. The Freewriting Prompts page is getting a lot of hits, so I'm hoping there might be some interest. Prompts range from the mundane to the fantastic, concrete to abstract. If you follow the process (this means if your first thought is "I hate this prompt" or "this doesn't do it for me" then write that and then keep your pen moving wherever it goes from there), you should get good writes from these prompts.

I'll see you in a month or so (I keep trying to slide it up to mid-month, at least, but life keeps happening). Meanwhile, feel free to email me if something works for you or you have an idea or resource you'd like to share, and above all, write on. Your vision is depending on you.

Best Regards,

Sharon

P.S. Ann Horn shot the headline photo for this month's newsletter. She is one of my favorite Imagekind artists, and when I wrote to tell her so and sent her the url for my site, she not only checked it out, she joined this list! Ann, when she can tear herself away from her art and photography, also writes—a woman of many talents. The red boots and the rainy day shopping pictures on the Random Elements 1 page are both hers, as is the one of women walking on the Health page. More of Ann's work will appear on Write 'em Cowgirls as new pages and galleries appear and things evolve. You can see more of Ann's art here. Ann is a very talented write-'em-cowgirl, and I'm proud to have her on the list.

Creativity kudos from this month's reading go to David Brin for Kiln People. Many of us have likely wished in our busy lives that we could be in more than one place at a time. Mr. Brin took the What-If Train way down that line and came up with intriguing possibilities and a terrific story. It's complicated, but then so would your life be if you could be in four or five places at once. It's a well-told tale and a great example of a "what if" based story. Good job all round.