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They say the monsoon may move out next week. Maybe. More or less on schedule. But maybe not.
I'd been kvetching that everybody else was getting rain and we haven't had more than a sprinkle in two weeks. This morning came up nice and wet. We haven't had two inches or more as they have in town, but there's standing water and the grass will green up again. That's good enough for me.
Fall is here in the desert. I noticed it last week while driving out on errands--the light has shifted. It's not the summer light any more; it has that indefinable slant that says the season has changed. There will still be plenty of hot weather; our annual cooldown is at least a month away. But the nights are ten degrees cooler all of a sudden--60s instead of 70s--and even today's big, wet storm feels more wintry than summery, in spite of the occasional lightning. It's subtle, but if you live in the desert, there's no mistaking it. Summer's back is broken. We're headed into the season when human beings actually want to live here. (The rest of us are salamanders. We like the heat.)
No lessons today. Teacher couldn't get here--it's wall-to-wall flood warnings from there to here. Even if it weren't raining medium-sized farm animals. Sunday should be drier, they say. We'll see.
So I get a rainy day to work on book and tackle an edit or two. The week's test passages are in and approved: I got a lovely gig writing passages for a major publisher, as part of a national testing project. I have deep reservations about the test-madness that passes for education these days, but if those poor kids have to be subjected to nothing but standardized tests, the least I can do is give them something decent to read.
I've turned out to have a mutant superpower for writing under extremely tight restrictions. The list of topics not allowed is very long, and odd things can ping the Nope response: birthdays, for example. Some religions don't celebrate them. Once the topic is approved by a panel of editors (very cool people, not incidentally; they're fun to work with), one has to write according to a spreadsheet of specifications (things like include figurative language, use a word significantly above grade level, passage has to allow reader to make inferences, etc.), to a very specific grade level (easy to do these days: use Word, hit the Spelling&Grammar tool, go with the F-K reading level), within a specific range of word count. Genre will vary and will be specified--and if they want fiction, they want a story with a beginning, middle, and end, with characters, setting, plot/conflict, the works. The maximum word count I've been allowed for this so far is 600 words. Usually it's more like 350.
And by damn it's fun. I've done stories, nonfiction passages, even ad copy, and this week they asked for a narrative poem. I haven't written poetry since high school. Didn't need to rhyme, thank goodness. And they liked it. And asked for another.
The prose is just, you know, there. Does the job. But I'm really sorry I can't publish the poetry elsewhere. My consolation is, this project will run its course, and someday I can pull these pieces out and share them. I didn't even know I could do them until I did them. Not up for anything really challenging yet--there's no sonnet or sestina in my immediate future--but free verse? Oh yeah.
Everything these days, in fact, seems to be calculated to jump me up out of my safe, dare we say boring, adult-historical-fantasy-novel rut. No resting on the laurels here.
Although, speaking of which, author copies of Shattered Dance have arrived. It's a book! Signs are that it may not stay around long, so get it while you can.
Meanwhile, in farm news, the vet came yesterday and confirmed that Gold has not come back into heat because she has Oreo II on board. Due around about July 21st of next year. (We're going to have to move the SRS Guy clinic. Urg.) She and Pook did it again. She's very pleased with herself. So is he. Oreo doesn't care as long as he gets all the scritchies.
I'd been kvetching that everybody else was getting rain and we haven't had more than a sprinkle in two weeks. This morning came up nice and wet. We haven't had two inches or more as they have in town, but there's standing water and the grass will green up again. That's good enough for me.
Fall is here in the desert. I noticed it last week while driving out on errands--the light has shifted. It's not the summer light any more; it has that indefinable slant that says the season has changed. There will still be plenty of hot weather; our annual cooldown is at least a month away. But the nights are ten degrees cooler all of a sudden--60s instead of 70s--and even today's big, wet storm feels more wintry than summery, in spite of the occasional lightning. It's subtle, but if you live in the desert, there's no mistaking it. Summer's back is broken. We're headed into the season when human beings actually want to live here. (The rest of us are salamanders. We like the heat.)
No lessons today. Teacher couldn't get here--it's wall-to-wall flood warnings from there to here. Even if it weren't raining medium-sized farm animals. Sunday should be drier, they say. We'll see.
So I get a rainy day to work on book and tackle an edit or two. The week's test passages are in and approved: I got a lovely gig writing passages for a major publisher, as part of a national testing project. I have deep reservations about the test-madness that passes for education these days, but if those poor kids have to be subjected to nothing but standardized tests, the least I can do is give them something decent to read.
I've turned out to have a mutant superpower for writing under extremely tight restrictions. The list of topics not allowed is very long, and odd things can ping the Nope response: birthdays, for example. Some religions don't celebrate them. Once the topic is approved by a panel of editors (very cool people, not incidentally; they're fun to work with), one has to write according to a spreadsheet of specifications (things like include figurative language, use a word significantly above grade level, passage has to allow reader to make inferences, etc.), to a very specific grade level (easy to do these days: use Word, hit the Spelling&Grammar tool, go with the F-K reading level), within a specific range of word count. Genre will vary and will be specified--and if they want fiction, they want a story with a beginning, middle, and end, with characters, setting, plot/conflict, the works. The maximum word count I've been allowed for this so far is 600 words. Usually it's more like 350.
And by damn it's fun. I've done stories, nonfiction passages, even ad copy, and this week they asked for a narrative poem. I haven't written poetry since high school. Didn't need to rhyme, thank goodness. And they liked it. And asked for another.
The prose is just, you know, there. Does the job. But I'm really sorry I can't publish the poetry elsewhere. My consolation is, this project will run its course, and someday I can pull these pieces out and share them. I didn't even know I could do them until I did them. Not up for anything really challenging yet--there's no sonnet or sestina in my immediate future--but free verse? Oh yeah.
Everything these days, in fact, seems to be calculated to jump me up out of my safe, dare we say boring, adult-historical-fantasy-novel rut. No resting on the laurels here.
Although, speaking of which, author copies of Shattered Dance have arrived. It's a book! Signs are that it may not stay around long, so get it while you can.
Meanwhile, in farm news, the vet came yesterday and confirmed that Gold has not come back into heat because she has Oreo II on board. Due around about July 21st of next year. (We're going to have to move the SRS Guy clinic. Urg.) She and Pook did it again. She's very pleased with herself. So is he. Oreo doesn't care as long as he gets all the scritchies.
