OregonAuthor.com

Website Journal

    I've published essays, short fiction, and poetry in  Back Home, Bellowing Ark, Bugle, The Christian Science Monitor, The Crab Creek Review, The Doula, The Fiddlehead, Manzanita Review, Men’s Fitness, Northwest, Summit, The Sun, a Magazine of Ideas, Yoga International, The Wolf Head Quarterly, Zyzzyva, and other magazines and newspapers. I've published two books in paperback, Somewhere in an Oregon Valley and Quiet People in a Noisy World.

March 8, 2010          

    I was sitting by my table, practicing songs I’ve written, looking out the window to my back yard, watching Oregon juncos and quail scratch the ground and peck up seeds I’ve put out for them and all the other birds that come to my back yard, when the thought came to me to include a journal on my website, chronicling what building my website has involved, what I’m doing with it now, and what I plan to do with it from here. So here it is, the beginning of the journal.
    I’ve had a website for several years, but as the technology became more refined and as I learned more about the available technology, I decided to offer downloadable files for sale on my website. I worked a long time to get my new website, with a store, ready and online. Now I’m getting more songs, more books, perhaps a feature that makes some stories, essays, and images available for free, ready to put on the store.

March 9, 2010

    Computers aren’t easy for me. I spent too much time researching how to make ebooks from my WordPerfect files, researching what files would be best for ebooks, and researching how to make tables of contents with hyperlinks so that when readers click on chapters, they will immediately view those chapters. After time-consuming online research, I decided PDF files are best for my ebooks, because PDF files can be read on computers and in all electronic readers. It didn't take much research to determine that offering songs as MP3 files will accommodate most buyers.

    I see now that all the steps to make ebooks, to make tables of contents are simple and fast, but I didn’t know where to begin, and I didn’t have any guidance. I wasn’t going to pay anyone $85.00 an hour or more to teach me, both because I didn’t have the money and because it is against my principles to pay that much. Laura has a master's degree, to qualify her for teaching. At best, she gets about $20.00 an hour. I don't see that
think computer technicians should earn more than four times what she earns.

    After getting some of my  books ready as ebooks, I researched programs that would integrate a store for downloadable files into Paypal so that purchasers would automatically receive their downloadable files and payments would automatically go into my account.

    I found two programs that would let me build what I wanted without having to know HTML.

    I spent way too much time trying to learn how to use either program to build my online store and finally gave up that learning process as beyond my present abilities. I researched online again and signed up with E-Junkie, which does everything for me. I had been avoiding any service that cost me a per month payment, because I don’t have much income, but I longed to regain the times when I primarily worked on my creative work, and all the work to build my store, which might or might not bring me an income, was done and the store was established.

    That time has come. I’m practicing songs, writing new songs, revising and sending essays, stories and poems to possible markets, writing this journal and thinking of ways that might make my website more effective.

    E-Junkie is marvelous. Somebody there knows how to communicate with the technologically inept, like me. E-Junkie takes care of every step and makes an easy process of establishing an online store to sell downloadable files or tangible goods or both. You still need to know how to build a website, or you need have that done for you. Yes, this paragraph has become a commercial, out of gratitude to someone who does their work well and because, if I sell any services for E-Junkie, they will pay me for sales. According to my exhaustive and exhausting online research, their prices are, compared to other, similar services, low. Be sure, if you buy their services because of my recommendations, to use my links, so I will be credited for the sale.  

March 14, 2010
    Five mule deer went by my window as I was sitting here practicing songs. Practicing songs is, in part, part of working on my website, because I intend to put many more songs on my website when the songs are ready. The deer were oblivious of me plucking my guitar and watching them. Or they didn't care. More later about the buck who, last spring, ate many of our flowers and disdained my efforts to get him to eat elsewhere.
    The bottom of the window I look out from my writing table (and from my music practicing and recording area) is five feet above the ground. I look down on the deer. Two of the deer are bucks, a forked horn and a four point, with their antlers in velvet. I use the western method and count the points of the buck's antlers on one side to classify the antlers. The ground below my window is flat for about fifteen feet, then rises to a steep hill about twenty-five feet high, whose top is a flat area growing juniper trees, a few pine trees, shrubs, and grass. Juniper trees grow on the hillside falling toward my house.
    Several ideas seem clear to me this morning:
1) I might have to give up swimming. It seems to take too much of my energy, and I want to devote more energy and time to my website, to my music, to my writing, perhaps some to photography. I can exercise with my riding machine, my exercise ball, calisthentically as I move around the house.
2) I have to study this Website Journal and Tips for Writers and see if I can incorporate them into one narrative. It feels too scattered to have the two of them developing. If it feels scattered to me as the creator of them, it is bound to feel scattered to a reader. I'm thinking about it.
3) It's time for me to move into another dimension with my guitar playing. I've had three guitar lessons over the years. The lessons didn't get me very far. In each case, I wanted the instructor to evaluate what I already knew and teach me from there, and in each case, the instructor wanted to start from the beginning.
    Maybe from the beginning is the only way to go. It seemed to me too frustrating and too expensive. I returned to learning on my own. I'm not going by any book. I'm practicing the songs I've written and a few by other people and trying to improve my performance enough to satisfy my own ear.

March 17
    I tried incorporating the two journals, and it didn't seem to work. I'm splitting them up again.
    Putting my website online didn't mean it was finished. I revise it almost every day. I have a novel ready to add to my list of ebooks available on the website. I seem to be waiting for something to click in my mind or in my heart, an indefinable sense of readiness before I take the step of putting it on. Or maybe I have to read it again to be sure I want to put it on.
    I thought I had more songs ready, but I've listened to them several times, and I have to record them again. They aren't clear enough. I have to go back to recording in Laura's study room, because it has the best acoustics of any room in our house. I'll work around what she's doing, because it's her room.
    I'll set up my recording gear when she isn't using her room, take it down again when she moves toward the room. At most, it takes four minutes to set everything up and four minutes to move it all back into my room.
    It would be best to record in a studio, with the assistance of a sound engineer. I plan to do it that way when I'm more affluent. Much more affluent.

March 18
    I open my window and clap my hands to make a banging sound. The squirrel heads for the nearest tree at a run, climbs up and out of sight. I want to share with all the wildlife, but the squirrel violated two important rules.
    When it first showed up, it seemed polite enough, and I welcomed its presence as it ate from the feedground. A couple of days later, the squirrel chased all the birds away when it arrived. I wasn't pleased. Many different species share the feedground on the hillside behind my house. Nobody owns it.
    Then the squirrel dug a hole, defecated in the hole, and covered it. I drove it away by clapping my hands.
    (More of this story tomorrow. I'm going to practice music.)

March19

     I’ve been putting feed in our back yard for birds for about four years. I’ve never seen bird shit in the yard, and I’ve looked for it.

     When we took care of Magic Sky Girl Scout Ranch in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, a group of people brought raptors to the ranch to show them to girls scouts. Some of the raptors flew, most on tethers. A Swansons hawk flew without tethers. Before the flight demonstrations, the bird handlers warned us that birds cannot be toilet trained. They apparently void without thought, and the handlers wanted the people in the audience to know they were vulnerable when the birds flew overhead. Because the handlers were bird experts, I accepted that as fact, birds cannot be toilet trained. They void whenever and wherever they void, without thought.

     A friend of Laura’s quit feeding quail in her back yard, because the birds soiled areas of the yard badly, and she didn't want the unsanitary condition there.

     Many birds come to our backyard, a covey of quail that sometimes numbers more than thirty birds, ten or more Oregon juncos at a time, sparrows, up to four steller’s jays at a time, scrub jays, doves, flickers, and other birds. Conflicts between species are rare, and they only occur when someone gets very close to someone else.
    Apparently all the birds like a clean feedground and extend their desire for a clean feeding area to the entire backyard. Courtesy to me may be part of their choice not to use the backyard as a toilet area. With that many birds coming to our backyard, I think they have to be making a conscious choice.
    I'm going swimming. My shoulder and neck trouble me some because I work too long at the computer and because I've been playing my guitar more than I'm used to. Swimming helps balance me. I know what I said about giving up swimming March 14. I change my mind a lot. I revise my writing a lot, too. More on the subject of our backyard tomorrow.

March 20

     When I work at my computer, work on my website, write, communicate, research on the web, record songs and listen to the recordings, I look over my monitor into my backyard. I look down into my monitor. If I sit up straight, my monitor does not obscure my view out the window. I am barely a good enough typist to not need to look at the keyboard or the screen most of the time. So I have the pleasure of watching the birds who come to my backyard as I work. Sometimes, my work inside slows and halts if there is something particularly interesting going on in my backyard. It’s okay with me if my work is interrupted by observations. If not for the observations, I wouldn’t have anything to write about, to sing about.

     My backyard and the birds and other animals who come to my backyard become part of my website, part of my writing, part of my music, part of what I think about the world, about all of reality.

     Which is why observations of wildlife in my backyard becomes part of my website journal.

March 22
     According to my experience here, wildlife, to some degree, is trainable. I don't think the squirrel has come back. I'm not at my work table all the time, so I can't be sure of that, but I haven't seen it.
     I have also asked ducks to leave. Wild mallards descend on the pond in front of the house in great number through winter and spring. They have come into the backyard three times, looking for food, that I've seen, and I've chased them away without politeness nor hesitation. They are used to people, and they are used to being fed, so it took some convincing, but they did believe me.
     A fifty-pound sack of cracked corn and mixed seeds to feed the birds lasts me about a year. The ducks travel in large groups. One of those groups could consume that fifty-pound sack of feed in a day or two. I wouldn't put it all out for them, but if they feel welcome at my feed ground, they can consume in a few seconds what I put out for the birds every second or third day, and there will be nothing left for quail, Oregon Juncos, sparrows, doves, steller's jays, scrub jays, and all the other birds I enjoy feeding and watching. I like seeing the ducks, but wild ducks and geese belong in front of the house, not in back.
     I think the pond in front of the house is a bedding down area for the ducks and geese. I think they fly into downtown Bend, where people feed them in the parks and then fly here for resting , sleeping, and partying. Mallards are not a quiet species. The noise they make sounds more like raucous laughter than quacking. When numbers of them gather on the pond, they sound off enough that it sounds like there is a party going on, and someone is telling hilarious jokes much of the time. The ducks carry on their parties all night long. It must be that some of them sleep while others continue with the jokes and laughter. The geese too, Canada geese, are noisy and don't seem to care whether it's night or day.

March 23
     Geese and ducks quiet down in spring. Maybe courting and mating is serious business and requires more quiet.
     Maybe in winter the ducks and the geese are having riotous bachelor and bachelorette parties. "Hey everybody, party it up now, because soon, warm weather comes, and we'll all be raising little ones, and nothing is funny about that."
     When I was raising little ones, we laughed a lot, but if we saw a bald eagle overhead, we were thrilled. For ducks and geese, especially if they have little ones, a bald eagle overhead is a life-threatening situation. So is a dog by the pond, or a cat.
     I've seen a bald eagle hunting ducks on the pond. Adult ducks wait until the eagle is close, then dive deep and stay underwater until the eagle rises from the dive. Underwater, the ducks are safe. Can ducklings dive to escape the eagle, and if they can, do they have the knowledge to do it? I don't know. If I ever learn the answer to those questions, I will tell you.
     Raising young is serious business. Usually, mother ducks on the pond have 11 or 12 ducklings, but days go by, and they have 10, then eight, then seven. As the individuals grow, the number of individuals decreases.

March 24
     The quail are here at dusk. It' dark enough that I can't see the small seeds or pieces of cracked corn they feed on. That must mean their vision in darkness is better than mine. I hope it is better than cats' vision. There are many feral cats as well as untended pets in the area. Feral cats are a problem in most places. People move away and leave their cats. The cats multiply. They put far more pressure on wildlife than wild predators ever did, because there are more of them. I keep the grass around the feeding area short so predators have nothing to hide behind as they try to sneak up on birds.
     Quail are ground travelers. They don't fly as much as they run, so it seems they're vulnerable. They maintain their numbers over weeks and months. Maybe they are smarter than cats.
     I'm thinking of taking one book off the website and putting one or two others on. I want to take some pieces out of collections and circulate them to possible publishers as individual pieces. One advantage to working with ebooks is the author can change them endlessly. I wrote several pieces as short stories. I have become more aware that, with minimal changes, they could be essays. As I see it now, they have more weight as essays. I didn't make up the story. I lived it.
     Nothing happens very fast on this website, because I have to think about how I'm going to make changes before I make them.
     The creative work becomes selection and organization, skilled use of language to make the piece interesting and real.
     The main purpose of the website journal and tips for writers is to draw people back to the website, to build a following. I might now have to make both of them an every other day or every third day exercise, because, as I explain in Tips for Writer's the pressure to pursue stories, essays, novels, songs, intensifies. The website is nothing without finished works to justify its existence.

March 26
     It snowed hard starting about daylight, and by 9:00 am we had about four inches of snow on the ground. The snow was gone by noon.
    Tips for writers and the website journal add knowledge, and they tell me what I'm doing. Any journal exists partly to tell the writer what perspective, what thought was in effect at this date.
     I'm still thinking about putting features on my website, a link to a story, an essay, some poems.
    Mark Flashberg keeps bugging me to give him an opinion column. I'm still thinking about it. Sometimes it seems there's already plenty of opinion in the world, maybe too much. But one could say there's already plenty of books, music. I tell him I'm still thinking about it, and he tries to convince me I promised him. I don't think I did. I think I said "Maybe."

March 30, 2010
   Mark has started his opinion and comments column. I don't know how often we'll post entries there. It depends partly on how often Mark gives me entries and partly on whether or not I can accept all the entries he gives me. I plan to be flexible. Mark seems to understand the simple rules I've given him, and it seems he intends to go by the rules.
   See if you can figure out what the rules are by reading his column.

   I don't like computers very well. If I had enough money, I would hire a secretary to do all the work computers do for me when I write. I would hire someone to build a website for me and to include an online store. I would hire a sound technician when I want to record songs, all like that, people to work for me instead of doing everyhing I do with computers. I don't have enough money to do that, so computers substitute well for all those people I would have working for me. I try to remember to be grateful for what computers do for me and for the fact that they've gotten more stable in the time I've been using them.
   I'm often in trouble with computers, and I have been since I started using them, about fifteen years ago. They have often wasted my time and energy, sometimes because I didn't know how to use them very well and sometimes because of deficiencies in computers or software, sometimes because of a combination of deficiencies in computers, software, and my knowledge of computers and software. At times, it seems to me that the themes of my books and extensive use of computers are confliciting directions in my existence. All I can think of, so far, to deal with this thought is that my website provides an opportunty to sell my books and to devlop my website as a creative work itself. The themes of my books are still valid, as is my family's existence that relies less on the consumer culture than many existences do.

April 2, 2010  
   This morning's enthusiastic snowstorm has turned to rain with medium to heavy wind. No one comes to my feedground this morning so far. The seed is under several inches of snow. I haven't done anything about the snow yet, because Quail scratch through snow and find seed underneath. Oregon Juncos do, too. If snow lasts long or is too deep, I go out, squeegee the snow aside and put out fresh feed. I know the birds made it through millenea without my assistance, but I feel committed to keep food available for them.
   I think of many changes for my website. I slowly get at the ones that last in my thought. Irrelevant ones wash out after a few days. As I've said before, the website so far is not my highest priorty. Keeping up with practicing songs and writing take higher priority, though that prioritization broke down for a while when I was trying to learn everything I needed to know to establish my website and my online store. I could deeply regret that it took me so long to get everything on track, especially when I know that computer literate workers could have done everything much faster, but I'm just where I am. I make a practice of getting rid of regret as fast as I can, because it doesn't do anything positive for me. It slows me down.

April 5  
   Wind blows fiercely.
   Quail run into the feed ground, peck up some food, and then run on into last year's bleached out, tall grass. They seem to be more nervous than usual. I think the wind makes it harder for them to use all their senses to alert them to danger from predators. I don't know how much they rely on hearing to know what is going on around them.
   A substantial part of the afternoon, I revised the appearance of my home page to make each book's display there more distinct, to include some description on my home page. I'm hoping that will boost sales of the books. Sales don't seem to be headed to a thousand books a week as quickly a I had hoped they would.
   I still have software that doesn't do what I want it to do. I'm using two website editors to achieve what I want to achieve. One won't do everything I think it should do, so I fill in with the other, which also refuses to do some things, but not the same things the other one refuses to do. I switch back and forth to get most of what I need. Some ideas, I have to give up. I'm willing to see that I'm ignorant of how to use the software correctly, but I don't think that's what's happening. It's what's happening in that I refuse to learn HTML, and I haven't been able to make sense of CSS for website design, and perhaps learning those would give me all that I try to design. As I've said before, I resist becoming completely devoted to computers. I still want to make music, write essays, write stories, write books and poems.