Gardening for Bees

If you've been following my blog for a while, you know I have three gardens: one is my front landscape, one is specifically for butterflies, and one is for veggies to feed my family.  The landscape and butterfly gardens are also a favorite haunt of many different kinds of insects, including bees.

 

I get excited when I see bees these days, because worldwide, they're in decline, just like butterflies.  Beekeepers have been reporting a 30 to 50 percent loss of their hives.  That's staggering, and it means trouble for our food industry.  We are much more dependent on bees than most people realize for our fruits and vegetables.  Losing them would mean a huge hole in the food web, and we could find ourselves quite literally starving.

 

The Culprit

 

Research is pointing at systemic insecticides called neonicotinoids, which infiltrate all parts of the plants on which they are used.  That includes the pollen which bees collect and eat.  This mass application of a pesticide is having a ripple effect that, ultimately, harms our food supply rather than helping it.

 

Pesticides are not a new threat.  In 1962, Rachel Carson published a book called Silent Spring, which addressed the negative effects of pesticides on birds.  More than fifty years later, we're still fighting this fight, and it's hard to understand why.

 

Bee-ing the Solution

 

What can you do?  Well, you can do what I did: plant native-plant gardens, and vow to go pesticide-free.  There are many articles and resources on environmental gardening, and the results are healthier for you and your planet.  Share your yard with insects and wildlife, and form a mutual respect for your wild neighbors.  (Most bees are actually quite docile - too busy dotting your flowers in search of pollen to be bothered with you!)

 

There are caveats to bee- and butterfly-friendly plant claims.  A recent article in Organic Gardening caught my attention on this subject, and I did some investigating.  The environmental group Friends of the Earth tested a small sampling of plants purchased from major chain stores like Home Depot and Lowe's.  They found neonicotinoids in over half of the plants tested, even though the plants were labeled "bee friendly."  So, a warning: although that species of aster might be favored by bees, the specimen you're looking at could poison them.

 

Your best bet is to find plants from reputable garden centers that use no pesticides on their bee-friendly stock ... or from a friendly, local gardener who does the same.  Neonicotinoids can stay present in plant tissue for several years, so you could be doing harm to the bee and butterfly populations without even realizing it.  Make sure that what you put into your garden is truly organic and pesticide-free.  The bees will thank you by making sure your flowers, fruits and vegetables come back fuller and more robust each year.

Movie Review: The Lego Movie

If you have a kid, you've heard about this.  Trailers have been all over TV, so unless you're living under a rock, you know that Lego has created a movie with virtually every recognizable Lego character ever.

 

And if you're like me, and you have a 7-year-old kid, you're gonna go see it.

 

Which is totally worth it.

 

The family had a special outing today to watch The Lego Movie, and from what we'd seen in previews, we were expecting a few laughs.  Ordinary Lego construction worker Emmet discovers that he is the "Special," destined to save all Lego-dom from permanent gluing.  There are lots of recognizable Lego figures and sets, and it's not all for the kids.  Adults will have fun with the dramatic irony and wisecracks sprinkled throughout the film.  (This one's for you, Expensive Coffee Drinker.)  Lots of laughs for adults and kids alike.

 

What really brought this movie up from a mere "OK" rating is the last fifteen minutes or so.  I don't want to spoil it for you, so what I will say is that it will make you remember what it's like to be a kid.  The adventure is fun, if typical, but there's that extra element to it that makes it so much better.  Even though the movie could be considered a giant ad for Lego, it's worth the viewing, and you're going to want to hug your children afterward.  And maybe buy a set of Lego and play with them.

 

Er, and invite your kid.

Kickstarting Your Creativity #2

In my last entry, I discussed boosting your muse by using writing prompts, which are short scenarios designed to get you writing in order to answer questions.

There are many such ways to pump up your creativity, and one of my favorites is music.  While some writers find they can't do anything unless it's in total silence (and, I admit, most of WATER was written that way, even though I create a playlist for each book), I find music extremely helpful.  The right song helps me visualize a scene as though I'm watching a movie.  For example, when I wrote EARTH, I used a great deal of country music, including many of the songs from the score of "The Horse Whisperer." (The song "Hooking On" helped me write a key scene between Kincade and Allyson.  The mood of the piece is ethereal and mysterious, which is exactly the atmosphere the scene needed.)  I simply set a particular song on "repeat," and write until the scene is finished.  Lyrics?  No lyrics?  Fast and loud?  Slow and sensual?  Use whatever the book requires!

 

For different books, I switch gears.  My upcoming book, FLASHPOINT (Book Two in The Gifted Series), is quite a bit more action-based, and the music I chose for its playlist reflects that.  For an important scene involving a rescue, I used Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out for a Hero," during which Hakon quite literally plays the hero.

 

Don't feel that your readers need to like (or even know) the music you use for your book's playlist.  Tastes vary widely, and a turn-on to you may be a turn-off for someone else.  It's a tool to get the job done, and no one needs to see (or hear) it but you.  That said, a playlist is one of those book tidbits you may want to share on your author website.  Readers love to come to your site to discover a little more about the books they love.  (I haven't done so, but I won't rule it out forever!)

 

So, there you have it: another way to kickstart your creativity.  Keep writing!

Kickstarting Your Creativity #1

Your brain is an amazing thing.  It's the motor that drives your body.  It allows you to solve complicated mathematical equations, or appreciate the beauty in a work of art.  And though it isn't a muscle, it acts like one.

 

It's true: the more you use your brain (and for us writers, the more we use that all-important, creative right brain), the better it will function.

 

Writing is exercise, and don't let anyone tell you different.  Exercising your brain is just as important as working out your body.  Getting into the habit of exercising its creative side can be beneficial when it's time to crank out that fiction project.

 

How, you ask?  Well, one of the fastest ways to get your creative gears turning is a writing prompt.  In fact, my book, WATER, started out as a writing prompt.  It began as a one-page workshop, and we were given the task of explaining, in one page, what might happen if someone entered his or her hotel room to find a stranger in their bed.  From that springboard, my story evolved into someone in the hero's closet, caught in the act of rummaging through his things.  From there, it was simply a chain reaction of finding out why my heroine was going through the hero's belongings, what he would do about it, and how she would defend her actions.

 

A simple prompt can be an excellent jumping-off point for a writing project.  While I would encourage you to aim for making that prompt a part of your overall writing goal (in my case, a romance novel), it isn't absolutely necessary.  A writing prompt is merely a small nudge to get you putting words down.  The more you do it, the more your right brain will get into the habit of having those words ready for you when needed.  Instead of muscle-building, you're brain-building - teaching that gray matter to flex and do some creative heavy lifting.  As with any exercise, the more you do, the easier it will get.

 

The Internet abounds with writing prompts, but for argument's sake, I will give you one, and challenge you to write one page on the subject.

 

PROMPT:

 

Your hero is walking his dog on the beach, which he does every night before going home to his big, empty house.  As he and the dog are finishing up their walk, he notices a man and woman having a heated argument.  Inexplicably, the normally-docile dog jerks its leash out of his hand and bounds toward the arguing couple, barking loudly.

 

There you have it.  Your job is to answer the questions posed by the writing prompt.  What does the hero do?  Why has the dog's behavior changed?  Who are the arguing people?

 

Questions make the best writing prompts.  Have fun, fellow writers, and write on!

A Thousand Miles

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." ~ Lao-tzu, Chinese philosopher (604 BC - 531 BC)

That Lao-tzu was a pretty smart cookie - as evidenced by the fact that we're still quoting him some 2500 years later. This saying is often batted around by someone who's about to embark on a Herculean task.

Like, for example, writing a novel.

I love writing. Ask anyone who knows me what I did most often as a kid, and they'll tell you my nose was either in a book, or buried in a manuscript of my own making (even if I didn't know that's what they were called, back then). But writing is hard. I have often said that the minute I set myself a concrete "I will ..." sort of writing goal, I would rebel at the obligation and, therefore, not fulfill it.

Wrongo.

This year, I took a chance at breaking up my yearly "one book" goal to a page a day, something more concrete than I have done since beginning to write professionally. I have been keeping to my piddling page-a-day goal, and for the past week, have written more in that span than I have in some thirty-day stretches. How? Because a page is one step. It's nothing. I can put one page of words down without worrying about more than one page of words. And trust me, even for a professional procrastinator - er, author - those words add up. I've been keeping track of my efforts with the progress bar to the right, and I'm seeing that bar fill up - a most satisfying visual carrot, and I highly recommend it.

For anyone struggling with that phantom writer's block, or middle-of-the-book syndrome, or crucial turning point in your story, try this method. Just write a page. I'm finding that it's becoming a habit by repetition, the same as brushing my teeth each morning. Moreover, my writing is getting better. The more habitual my daily page is, the less I find myself focusing on the number of words I'm writing. Then it becomes a focus on plot and characterization. The words are coming, but now, spitting them out is intrinsic, and they're almost a side effect of my plotting and character-building. This may be the switch I needed to turn off my internal editor - the one who says "No, don't write that, it's terrible and here's why" - and let the words flow without interference.

Worked for me. Maybe it'll work for you, fellow writers. Take your first step!

I Resolve To ...

So, here we are with the New Year well underway.  I don't generally make much more specific a resolution than "get a book out the door."  With a "day job" and being a wife and mother included into the bargain, that's pretty hefty.  My set minimum at this point is a page per day.  That may not seem like much, but that's the point.  I can go over as much as I want, but I have to at least spit out one page of words.  Daily.  That, for me, can be a stretch, but it’s not impossible.

The reason people don't keep their resolutions is that they are too big and too amorphous to seem achievable.  For authors, a nebulous "get a book out the door" can be a big old "Kick Me" sign for writer's block.  If, however, we are to chop up that resolution into smaller bits, it becomes something of a daily finish line.  One page isn't much.  This blog post amounts to approximately one page, for example.  One page a day, over the course of thirty days, is an average of 7500 words!

See?  Not so hard, is it?  My personal difficulty is shutting off my internal editor so that I can get the words onto the page in the first place.  As Nora Roberts says, you can fix a bad page, but not a blank one.  If I’m going to get that raw material to work with, I need to learn to spit the words out.  I intend to work on that over the course of the year.  One page at a time.

Good luck with your own resolutions!