More writing with drip irrigation

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To squeeze more time out of the week I installed a drip irrigation system to water the garden. It took three days of hard work in the sun. The water feed line and a conduit for the electrical control line were installed in the ground back in the spring.

Lesson one. (It’s a big one) don’t mix parts or supplies from different manufacturers. I read this in a article off the web and it explains many of the problems I had in the past. That did not stop me from buying a Orbit brand hole puncher (it was cheaper) and using it on DIG brand tubing. It did not work. I had to go back to the hardware store and get a DIG brand hole punch.

We ran out of splices for the big tubing. Ran down to get a couple more couplings from the small local hardware store. All they had were made by another manufacturer. My friend stopped me from getting them. They were made by a name brand, but not the DIG brand we had been using. He checked closely and found the diameter of the big tubing the small hardware store coupling were made for was .12 inches different from the DIG tubing I had been using. Don’t mix material from different manufacturers.

Lesson two. Don’t over engineer the project. My friend wanted to run six electrical valves and one hundred feet of white plastic PVC pipe to feed the drip tubing.

The big drip tubing is easier to handle and change than White PVC. I used only one electrical valve and it was plenty. In ten minutes I have water coming out the bottom of the containers.

Lesson three. Be careful punching the hole for the bards (1/4 inch feed lines). Out of 120 drip lines (holes) I had three that leaked where the bards were installed.

Lesson four. The dripper or end of the drip line has to be up against the plant so the water goes to the plant’s roots. The water from the dripper goes straight down not sideways. The plant can dry out with plenty of water going to the container.

Stay strong, write on.               Professor Hyram Voltage

Book cover design

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The cover is one of those little thing you have to do as a self publish author.

I watched several YouTube videos. I looked at several sites that offer cover designs services. Bookbaby.com listed their cover service at around $600.00. Standoutbook.com listed their cover service at around $495.00.

Using these numbers as a guideline I watched more YouTube videos. Odesk got mentioned several times so I flipped a coin and decided to try Odesk over the others I had found.

Odesk is now upwork.com. Posted an outline of what I wanted as a job offer. Got back a range of bids to do the cover. One was way high. He did good work but the book is barely a novel in length. The payback for the cost of the cover from Bookbaby.com or Standoutbooks.com could take years if the book ever makes any money.

I offered to pay $250.00 for the job, about half of what it would cost at the other services. I got six bids back. I looked at the work each bidder has done for others. I chose the one that had done book covers before in a style similar to steampunk book covers on Amazon. The artist also had done covers with females on the cover. Since I was thinking of having a female on my cover that was a plus. Another bidder has only males on the cover of her works. One had never done a book cover before.

So I chose a person that had done book covers before and they were in a style similar to steampunk covers. The person was a little over the $250.00 offer. I think the artist added the cost of what upwork.com takes as their share/cut to the amount I offered. Simple right. No. I agonized over choosing an artist.

I had a definite image in mind of what I wanted for the book cover, but I am open to suggestions from the artist. I am easy to get along with.

Waiting for the first trail images to come in.

Stay strong, write on.     Professor Hyram Voltage

Writing the end. The beginning, the end, the re-beginning

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Yesterday I did something I haven’t done in a long time. I wrote “the end”. I wrote it at the end of a book. OK, it’s more of a long novella of 44,000 words. Is it the end? No

I still have some clean up in the book to to do. I will have to crank in corrections to problems that readers find. That’s a fact of life in e-publishing.

I’ve got the book blurb half written. I got a bio picture to update for the back of the book, and the backdrop for the picture to build. I got the cover being worked on. Boy is that expensive. Ask me about making a cover. I may not know anything about making cover but I’m making one. I got YouTube research to do on selling the book.

I also have a half finished second book I need to finish. I have a fan who’s asking for what is going to happen next in the second book. (I was hoping my fan would tell me). Email professor voltage@klystronia.com if you want to be a beta reader.

I got to get some sleep.

Write something every day. Write two things every day. Write ten things every day, your a writer… write.

Stay strong, write on.       Professor Hyram Voltage.

How to Learn or Teach Story Writing

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How to Teach Story Writing

(You can’t)

You learn/teach writing the same way you learn to write with a pencil. Think back to your first days at school and to how you learned to print with a pencil. Your teacher would draw a letter or letters of the alphabet on the chalk board and you would draw the letters with a pencil the size of a two by four on paper that was the color of tree back and felt about as smooth. Think back, as hard as you tried you could never (at least at first) exactly copy the teacher’s style. In the end you developed your own style, your own flourishes, your own way of printing by copying.

Think about it. This is the way you learn to write a novel, short story, or trilogy. You read what others have written and then you write like them. You don’t copy. It takes more effort to copy someone than to write your way. If you copy you have to keep turning off the writer inside you and write like the person you’re copying. That takes much more work.

To write like your favorite author you have to analyze how they write. Have you every analyzed the way your favorite author writes?

Here’s a quick analysis to run. Take a great action scene out of a work by your favorite author and list all the verbs she uses. It’s a simple analysis to count the number of verbs. How many times are the verbs repeated? How many letters are in the verbs (are they short or long words) (if it’s action scene they should be short). Are they high brow words? Now try to write something and use the verb mix your favorite author uses.

Analyze the names of characters. Do they have hidden meanings? Are they common names? Are they over the top names? Is there a color theme to the names (did the author play the game of Clue a lot)?

Learning to write a story is a lot work. Hard work. Work you are going to have to do. You are going to have to read lots of books. That what many famous writers tell beginning writers to do. You got to read, and not just in your genre. Then you are going to have to work, go back over what you just read and analyze what you read. It will take a while, but you’re going to find that the analysis fun

You are not going to find out how to write by reading some blog post, or watching some You Tube video. You are going to have to read, analyze, and write. It’s all work and it’s all the greatest job in the world. Now get writing.

Stay strong, write on.    Professor Hyram Voltage