SquarePeg Books

Dammit! I lost the pool for June. I had my money on Sharknado in Texas, but it didn’t pan out. Neither did the last minute bet on “The Mummy” causing havoc in the US.

Anyhoo…

The topic of the month is how you think the publishing will or should change in the near future.

I have no freaking idea other than maybe ethics should be a thing in contract negotiation, but that’s a “Gimme” across the board.

So for today’s topic, I shall digress and maybe develop a point towards the end. We’ll see.

Back in 2011, I started ripping out the rotten wood the previous owner of the property had used as a retaining wall. It wasn’t really retaining anything, because genius didn’t level anything out or other such pesky details.The slope for the “retained” part of the yard is anywhere from two feet in the Northeast corner all the  way to four feet+ at the Southwest and Northwest areas of the yard.

Like all my projects, it started out innocently enough – tear out the old crap, replace with longer lasting, sturdier crap that I think looks good, but others will no doubt define as crap.

I sourced my rocks mostly from my yard or from obvious discards in alleys. I kinda had to, because 17 cents a pound doesn’t sound like much, until you realize you need something on the order of 4 tons or so.

The first 10-12 feet of this new retaining wall was easy enough. There was some leveling out on the lower side to make it even with the fence, and the dirt was hauled to the upper side to even out the slope of the yard a bit. I “built” a ramp of dirt on the eastern while (to the right of the picture) to follow the fence and allow for lawnmowers to move about. I had to build another ramp because there was a maple tree there on the left when I started and I tried to accommodate the roots, but alas, the repeating droughts were too much for the big guy.

(No, no. Its level. I just used the panoramic view on my phone and I was only about 9 feet away against my fence to take the shot, so it looks all bendy in the middle, and I’m too lazy to try and correct the picture.)

Then things got…ambitious. The next part went from “replace the rotting retaining wall and even out the lower side to the fence” to ” let’s even out the upper portion of the yard being held back by the retaining wall.”

Understand, the area in the upper yard that I’m  planning to level out that is about another 20 feet long, 16 feet wide and ranges in depth from 0 inches to 4 feet.

(Again, panoramic view, cheap phone, only about 9 feet away, hence the bendiness. It is actually level. The top of the wall at about the clay pot is roughly 4 feet, and this southern facing wall is about 20 feet long.)

All of this might not have been too hard except for one teeny little addition. I figured, “They made field-stone walls this big or bigger without mortar all the time a few hundred years ago. How hard can it be?”

So I worked on my “little” project, fitting the random field stones together like solving a masochistic jigsaw puzzle for 2-3 years. A shovel, a pick-axe and a wheelbarrow were my only companions. Everyone said I was crazy. Even the husband was not very supportive of this venture. I worked despite the commentary from friends and family.

“Why?”

“I don’t get it.”

“You’re insane.”

“Shouldn’t you hire someone with EXPERIENCE to do it?”

“You realize it’s going to fall apart on you, right?”

Then I took a five yearish break. I needed more stones. A lot more.

I also needed to find more support within myself.

I liked my progress. I could see where it was going and how it would improve that portion of the backyard. My work is solid, dammit. Yes, I’d had to take apart whole 5 foot sections of it and rebuild because I’d used a series of the wrong rocks in the wrong 1 foot square spot and physics is a thing, but I still did it. I tore out, I rebuilt anew, and tried to learn from my mistakes. Then I stood on those portions of the wall just to prove its solidity under two hundred pounds of weight.

Those walls are solid, dammit. The naysayers can shut the fuck up.

And I slowly gathered more wall supplies, despairing that I would ever finish because while onesy-twosey is progress, it isn’t exactly the screaming speed of instantaneous gratification.

Last year I finally picked it up again. I’m still not done, but I can see the end of the project now. I’ve turned the last corner on the raised portion of the yard. I have enough stone to complete the walls. I just need the dirt.

(Corner to Corner, this bit is a little over 16 feet long and is about 4 feet high.)
)

And I discovered that while one can find free fill dirt all over the place if one pays attention to postings on NextDoor or Craigslist, one is no longer in one’s 20’s or 30’s.

Shoveling a pick-up load’s worth of dirt into a truck, then unloading it wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow into the back yard isn’t as easy when one is in one’s 40’s. Muscles get pulled easier. Energy depletes faster. Recovery time takes longer.

What does this have to do with writing?

As I was working on the wall today, I pondered that question.

Building this wall has taught me a lot – You can’t build a wall this tall with no mortar if you don’t have the dirt to back one side of it. The physics of pressure and balance will not allow it to happen. Kinda like a book – the story might be a great idea, but if it isn’t built right, it tends to fall apart on you. Some of the building is uncomfortable. You might get hurt, you cuss (a lot) when something just won’t work, and sometimes you just gotta tear a whole nifty section apart because while you THOUGHT putting a tall clay pot in the wall as part of a corner piece, and it looks cute, it weakens the whole structure because the other pieces are prevented from interlocking with each other to share the load.

And the satisfaction of seeing it almost completed, seeing how well its all coming together, outweighs all the negative comments people have laid out over the years. The thought of being able to put up pictures of when its completed, of bringing people into the backyard to show them – “Ha! I did it and it looks GREAT!” is a better motivator now than it was when I first started.

I write in starts and stops. I get squirreled easily. I get tired. I get frustrated. I have been told I’m no good at it or being unrealistic about it by the very people who swear they love me the most. I stop for a significant period of time and starting back up is hard and not nearly as easy as I remembered it being just a short time ago. My time and brain power budget gets eaten, by children and family and errands and, and, and…

But I still write. I still get back to it. Yeah, I’m not very fast at it, and yeah, maybe it comes off a little wonky or not cleanly fitting into a target demographic, but I still want to keep writing, to keep working on those stories and bring them to completion.

And someday, I will.

Because I have a lot of motherfuckers to prove wrong.

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