Oct 2, 2005 by Naomi.

In studying plots so I can construct a novel I found the most important element appears to be anguish, that is extreme pain or distress of body or mind. Characters are driven by mental or physical actions to keep a reader looking forward to a conclusion. An instructor once said that there must be at least one incident in each chapter to keep expectations high for the reader. What the incidents must do for the character is cause anguish. Even in the hard core physical action of Mark Bolen or The Exterminator the thoughts of the main characters are what drive the story. Twists within the plots vary in type depending upon the genre but are always within bounds of a recipe.

History is more prevalent than ever in the mainstream of publishing. It’s shown up more sharply by some publishing houses but the romance of history is in every novel. Most recently, romance climaxed with the emergence of feminism, I think. People were fascinated to know what everyday lives were like. There were shocking glimpses earlier in “Grapes of Wrath” and “To Catch a Mockingbird” where anguish settled on a particular reality. Those were extraordinary people under extraordinary circumstances and are classics. However, extraordinary circumstances take place sometime in everyone’s life.

Making history come alive is particularly important to me because I had the most boring history classes and I tuned out not only the teachers but history itself. Now I have to recover that loss. I find history is anything but boring. It is the anguish of our forebearers in the fields and kitchens and state houses and bedrooms. I have many historic facts to put into a novel set in the mid seventeen hundreds. Construction of the series of circumstances to bring out that history now centers on believable characters steeped in anguish to fit the period. Now I will

work to make that happen.

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Oct 1, 2005 by Naomi.

Water fell too heavily on the wrong parts of the country in this past few weeks. The Columbia river basin, in the eastern shadow of the Cascade mountains, lost out in the water department. With an ineffective sprinkle that seemed to evaporate before it hit the parched desert the soil kept getting drier and drier. Faithful irrigation only penetrated an inch or two.

After the fall equinox nighttime temperatures dropped, a harbinger of autumn for sure, but the daily sun beat temperatures into the upper 80 degrees and the soil had no relief. One night the temperature fell below 40 degrees and the next afternoon an unusual chinook breezed through, blowing incessantly for over 24 hours. Clouds blew in and, what do you know, rain began! Rain actually fell on the Tri-cities area for more than nine hours - a gentle constant rain - in a weather front that somewhere caused the electricity to blink. For three minutes I wondered if the night would be really dark for a change. No such luck although I couldn’t have spied the stars through the thick gray clouds anyway. I turned off the electricity to my computer and before I could crawl into bed, the electricity came again.

I would have chosen to have several inches of the rains that fell on Louisiana and Mississippi during the hurricanes, like I would have a choice? Frankly, just what disaster would occur if twenty inches, or even 10, would fall on the Columbia basin within four hours I cannot imagine.

Nature disregards human wants. Nature is benign, working with the natural laws of physics. I do not always like it but I can live with it.

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