A fresh start

Happy New Year!

May you unearth treasure in the coming year!

It's a quiet time of year around here (if you don't count the invisible-nunchuck swinging children dancing around my living room as I write this). It's a time of reflection--looking back on the past year and taking stock of how well I worked toward my goals, devising a plan to further them in the coming year, and adding new goals to replace those I accomplished.

Here's hoping we all succeed in accomplishing what we set out for ourselves this year.

What do you hope to accomplish?

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Change can be good

I've been working toward becoming a Climate Master -- an expert (of sorts) on all things related to the climate and our environment. It's a lot like the Master Gardener program, just with a different focus. I've learned some pretty incredible things, and I'm going to spend the coming weeks sharing them here.

My main focus will be on things you can do to reduce your impact on the environment. And if you don't really care about the environment, or don't accept that humans are changing the climate, those things will still help you save money and eat healthier.

Change can be good--individually, locally, and globally.

Do you need to take out a second mortgage to install geothermal or solar? No. Do you need to trade in your car for a hybrid or electric? Nope. They're great if you can afford them, but they're not necessary.

See, change doesn't have to be difficult. It doesn't have to cost a lot of money. Change for the better can be as simple as a series of small steps that cumulate to become something greater. If everyone commits to making small changes, just think what our collective actions can do.

coremediagroup (source)

So to get you thinking, here's a breakdown of how a typical U.S. household uses energy (from Energy Savers):

45% - heating
18%  - water heating
9% - cooling (e.g., air conditioning)
6% - computers and electronics
6% - lighting
5% - other
4% - cooking
4% - refrigeration
3% - wet cleaning

How can you easily reduce your household energy use? 

• Heating your house is by far the biggest chunk of that bill--Turn down the heat! For every degree you lower your heat, you save 3% off your heating bill. Set your daytime temperature at 68 and wear a sweater.
• Get a programmable thermostat (one that's easy to program). Use it to turn the heat down 8 degrees at night, when you're bundled up under a pile of blankets (yes, if you're doing the math, that would be 60). Then have the heat kick in about 30 minutes before you get up, so the house isn't freezing.
• Wrap your water heater with an insulating blanket. Yes, touching your water heater can be scary if you haven't done it before, but the insulation will make a big difference.
• Hang your clothes to dry. This one is a huge energy saver. If you live in a dry area with lots of sun, you clothes will be dry in about the same amount of time as using the dryer, but with zero emissions and zero addition to your electric bill. (As an added bonus, sunlight will erase vegetable- or fruit-based stains. For serious, try it out sometime. It doesn't work on grease or dirt, but other stuff, like tomato or blueberry? Sunlight, baby, all the way.)

Those are things that will put a big dent in your utility bill. Line-drying clothing in summer will also help reduce the energy needed during peak times, which will help prevent an overloaded electric grid. That reduces the need to build new power plants, which saves you money in the long run (since the power company will pass on those costs to their customers).

See? Small, painless, and puts money back in your wallet.

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Where the wild things aren't

Where are the wild things? Not in children's books (or, to be accurate, less so with every decade that passes). So says a team of researchers who studied Caldecott winners and honor books from the past 70 years. The recent study determined that scenes depicting nature have declined steadily over time.

That's not really all that surprising, is it? It mirrors what's happening in our lives. Most children spend the vast majority of their time indoors or in built environments (e.g., cities), so why would we expect characters in books to do otherwise?

And does it really matter, anyway? As one discussant in a recent LinkedIn discussion asked, should we be disturbed by this trend?

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I'll let you come to your own conclusions on this, but first, a few items of interest.

• Children who live near natural settings experience less stress. (source)
• Kids who move to greener locations demonstrate improved cognitive abilities. (source)
• Kids with ADHD have milder symptoms when they have regular "green time"--time spent in nature. (source)
• Symptoms of ADHD decrease immediately following a 20-minute walk through a park. (source)
• Inner-city girls with a view of nature (e.g., trees outside their windows) have greater self-discipline and are better able to concentrate. (source)
• Areas with trees provide better opportunities for play, and play is an important part of childhood development. (source)
• Young children who spend time in "outdoor classrooms" have longer attention spans and better motor coordination than children who spend only short periods of time outdoors. (source) 

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What if you're all grown up, or don't suffer from ADHD? Not to worry, nature affects adults, too.

• People living in green areas are less likely to procrastinate, find their problems less overwhelming, and are better able to overcome them. (source)
• People living in housing near green areas (trees and grass) are less likely to be involved in domestic violence. (source)
• People living in areas with more natural settings are healthier. (source)
• Patients with a view of natural scenery recover faster from surgery and request less pain medication. (source)
• College students with natural views outside their dorm windows are better able to concentrate. (source)

So what do you think? Do you think there's reason for concern?

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Time Warp

Wow time flies! November's gone and we're already a week into December. It's been a busy few weeks.

I wrote over 50,000 words of Spirit for NaNoWriMo, earning myself this lively little badge:

Thanks for all the words of encouragement while I was doing it!

And we enjoyed a lovely Thanksgiving weekend with my parents, sister, and her family. It was the first time we've all been together for Thanksgiving in over - well over! - a decade. Also the first time I've hosted. I am so thankful to be close enough to join them again. I'm also thankful that my first attempt at a turkey turned out like this:

Post-NaNo has been a scramble to catch up on other things, namely articles and a non-fiction PB that I'm really behind on. But one article is ready to submit, another has a solid first draft, and the PB is... next on my list. 

Oh, and I had the distinct pleasure of signing another contract with Highlights!

Am I focusing on the good? Yes, yes I am. Is Spirit a wonderfully formed first draft that will require little work? No. I will, in fact, have to completely rewrite it. Did I get rejections? Yep. But I am focusing on the happy moments. I want to savor them.

How have you been?

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Multiple perspectives

First, sorry for not having Marketing Monday feature this week. My scheduled author had to do some last-minute edits so that the ARC of her next book will be out on time. Hard to compete with that! I'll feature her in May, after the A to Z Challenge (since her initials don't fit with any of the Mondays in April).

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I didn't post on Monday because my life is about to enter a tail spin, and I really wanted to finish revising my WIP before that happens. So I was working. Really. Hard.

And now I'm trying to figure out the best way to proceed. You see, this novel has chapters from more than one character's point of view. The secondary character provides important information about what's happening in the story; information the MC can't provide. But for this approach to work, each character has to have a unique voice. Therein lies the challenge.
 
Now I have the storyline where I want it, and I plan to go through only the chapters from the MC's POV to check the voice in those. Then I'll do a second pass with the chapters from the secondary character's POV. Beyond that, I don't know how else to approach it.

Have you ever written from the POV of multiple characters? How did you ensure that the characters' voices were distinct?

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Finding your top idea

By Reg Lynch; The Sydney Morning Herald

I haven't had poetry popping into my head of late. I think it's because I've been focusing on writing prose, in the form of a MG novel. My head can only deal with one writing format at a time.

I had noticed that poems almost always popped into my head while I was in the shower or just after getting out of the shower. For a while I thought the poetry muse liked the bathroom, in general (maybe because it's the one place where I get a few minutes to myself?). Then I thought it might be the hair dryer (lots of ideas came then, too).

But the poetry muse has been very quiet of late, and I've had other things popping in my head, like the idea for my entry into the weather blogfest. That scene quite literally appeared in my mind while I was in the shower. One could argue that water raining down on me triggered it, but I don't think that's it. You see, I had been thinking quite a lot about the weather.

(Lamenting it, really... I love a good thunderstorm, and the weather where I live is monotonous. Day in and day out of the same thing. It's either weeks of sun without a cloud in the sky, weeks of gray clouds without a hint of sun, or weeks of rain. Where I grew up, we got a little bit of everything every single day. The monotony makes me crazy.)

Paul Graham (software developer, programmer, investor, and all-around highly successful creative person) argues that whatever you think about in the shower is the top idea in your mind. It's the thing your brain is playing with, turning over, working at from various angles. It's the problem you will solve. The light bulb flash that will come to you out of the blue. The solution may not come then, but whatever you are contemplating in the shower is what consumes the neuronal pathways in your brain.

Rather exciting idea, really. Like being handed the keys to the kingdom. But it comes with warning: "be careful what you let become critical to you. Try to get yourself into situations where the most urgent problems are ones you want to think about." I think we could broaden this to say, try to get yourself into situations where your creative projects (or serious problems that require solving) are the things you think about.

Obsessing over a negative critique you received? You're not alone, it happens to the best of us (see Graham's Top Idea article for more about how it affected Isaac Newton). But perhaps the most selfish thing you can do for yourself is to let it go.

Nothing can be done to change it. All you do is damage yourself by carefully plotting out the various ways you could inflict pain (real or psychological) on the offender. Satisfying in the short-term. Detrimental over the long-term.

Wouldn't it be more satisfying to let it go, free your brain to come up with something that fixes the flaws, and carry out the new idea? To succeed by overcoming the problems so-and-so highlighted for you? I think so.

What was your top idea today? And how do you keep your mind focused on the ideas you want to think about?

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Getting a new perspective

"I like your orange blog, Mama."

"Thanks, honey. I see it as green."

"OK." Boss Man shrugs and walks away. He's used to us telling him that we see things differently.

Boss Man is color blind, so he sees the world in a completely different way from most of the rest of us. It's a permanent condition, there is no "cure" (at least not yet). But really, why would we want to fix it? It's not a disease, it's just how he sees things.

Animals see the world differently from humans. Many birds and insects can perceive ultraviolet radiation that is invisible to the human eye. With so much variation, no individual (human or otherwise) sees the world how it "really" looks. Who is to say that we normal-vision people see things the same way?

I used to wonder about this when I was a kid. What if my blue sky looked green to you? Meaning, what I see as blue, you see as my green, even though you call it blue. This would actually explain wild variation in color combination preferences. For example, I really dislike orange and blue (or green) together, but other people really like it (or so I assume from the orange/blue and orange/green clothing that has been so popular of late). Maybe someone else's orange is my yellow, which completely changes the picture.

Perception is a highly  individual thing. It's easy to get caught up in our own perceptions, but it is probably worthwhile to occasionally take a step back, take off our perceptual goggles and try on someone else's. If we all did this (in all parts of our lives), it would help us to better understand each other and be more compassionate.

Trying on someone else's perceptual goggles also helps spark the creative process. To give you an example, this is how Boss Man sees the rainbow (what you and I see is on the left, what he sees is on the right).

His world looks completely different from mine. The green leaves that I adore look brown to him, except for a few weeks in the fall, when they turn yellow. Dark reds look black (he often thinks that black ink on his hand means he is bleeding). Pink looks gray and purple looks blue. He loves pink and purple, and I have to remind my husband that those colors look gray and blue to him (very manly, think Dallas Cowboys).

There are other forms of color blindness and varying stages of loss of vision, too. If you are looking for a bit of inspiration, whether for a story, a painting, a drawing, or something else, do a little experiment. Put yourself in someone else's perceptual position for a bit. You might just find the inspiration you were looking for. Here's a web site to get you started.