Is Your Well Primed? (Productivity)

Have you ever pumped water from a hand pumped well? If you haven't, you should find someone with an old well and experience it. There are some wonderful life lessons in such a simple piece of technology.

 

Dad & me 10 years before pump lesson.

My dad bought a campsite at Bates Pond in rural South Carver when I was young. He told us how much fun camping would be. He lied. Water came from a pump on top of a pipe sticking out of the ground. Dad explained about "the immense pool of ground water below us" and how I had to take my turn working the pump handle to keep the family's water supply up for everything from drinking to cooking to bathing. All I knew was that my arms and shoulders burned after fifteen minutes of my one hour chore.

The last responsibility at the end of each pumping session was to fill a metal bucket with fresh water and set it on the nearby picnic table.

One hot day, it was my turn on the pump. There sat the bucket of clean, fresh water, and I had just finished a long hike deep into the woods. I was mighty thirsty. That water hit the spot. I drank from the bucket, letting excess water spill past my cheeks to cool my chest. Most of it ended up on the ground. I didn't care. Figured I'd just refill the bucket when I was done.

I began working the pump handle, but nothing came out. In fact, the handle moved with unusual ease.

"Daddy!" I shouted for help. "Daddy, the pump's broken."

My father set down his axe and came to my aid. He lifted the handle a couple times.

"No problem, son. Hand me the bucket of water."

"Umm . . . there isn't any bucket of water."

"Sure there is. It's on the bench over there."

I soon got a heated lecture on why that bucket of water was so important. He explained how manual pumps worked, saying that we had to "prime" them by pouring water into the valve body. Then, he told me, the pump could build a suction and lift water up from the pool ground water. To complete my lesson, he handed me two buckets, each with a single wire handle, and sent me down to the local lake to fetch priming water. I asked why two buckets. He explained that one was needed to prime the well, and the other was needed to make sure I never screwed up like that again. It worked. The wire handles cut painfully into the meat of my palms during the one mile walk back from the lake. I could only walk a hundred yards at a time before having to massage my hands.

What does this have to do with writing?
Writing is no different than the old style, manual pump design. Sometimes our literary "pump" loses its "prime" and needs a little help to regain the ability to pull from our vast pool of creativity. I took the lesson dad taught me as a child and applied it to my writing. I always leave a surplus bucket of ideas at the end of each writing session to help prime my writing well after I have been away for a while.

Here is an example of that concept. Let's say I wrote the paragraph (below) before going to bed. I would add "priming" notes (in parentheses) for when I return to the story:

The children played quietly in the car while Megan and I argued about our child custody agreement. Neither of us noticed when the car slipped into gear and began rolling toward the lake. I heard the splash and saw Megan's car drifting into deeper water as it nosed down and began to sink.

(Notes:  How do I save the kids? Do I experience the horror of seeing their frightened faces in the rapidly diminishing pocket of air by the back window? What about reviving them if they have drowned? Do they experience brain damage from anoxia? Does Megan feel responsible for not setting the parking brake or leaving the car running? Can I . . . or will I . . . use her negligence against her in the custody battle?)

As you can see from the "priming" notes, I should be able to jump right back into the emotional grist of the story, quickly refreshing the tap into my pool of creativity. This kind of primer notation can diminish "writer's block" and produce increased author efficiency.

Thanks for the lesson, dad. I hated carrying those heavy buckets from the lake, but that simple punishment served me well, as applied the concept many times in life. Miss you, Pop.


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Sitting Syndrome...Writer's Ass

Writing and personal health.

I was big, like 120 pounds "too big," when I started writing novels seriously. Hour after hour passed at the computer while I munched through literary landscapes fueled by chips, chocolate, raisins, cookies and pretzels...all washed down with Pepsi. Stories poured out. Life seemed good, well except for my growing writer's ass.

One day, I could not walk. Severe pain shot through my right foot. My doctor convinced me to get a blood test, something I had managed to avoid for at least five years, in trying to figure out why I could not walk. It was strange. There was minimal swelling but the searing pain was so bad I could not even move it, much less put pressure on it. Tests showed one problem. Diabetes.

Doc put me on what I call sugar-dope to lower levels, and the foot pain slowly passed. Sugar levels bounced between normal and mildly elevated. During this time, I wrote four new novels. Productivity was high, so I didn't much care about the weight or diabetes, as long as that stupid pill could control it.

Severe pain returned, only it was in my other foot. "What the hell?" I thought as the pain was so bad I could not even sit at the computer. My solution? I bought an HP laptop so I could write with my foot elevated. During the next six months, the severe pain came back in my right foot again and then in my knee! Writing productivity plummeted.

The days of ignorant bliss ended. Pain was from diabetic neuropathy. There were only two ways to fix it. 1) Start taking insulin shots, or 2) get rid of the diabetes. I DON'T do needles!

Today, I weigh 268, 50 pounds less, and I'm getting regular exercise. My goal is 205. I stopped taking my sugar-dope twenty pounds ago. While sugar levels still jump if I skip a day of walking, or if I eat too much, I can completely control the diabetes without drugs.

Why am I writing about this? Simple. Writing is work. Sure, you won't build an aerobic heart rate sitting at your desk, but it requires stamina and mental acuity to write in long durations. Since losing the weight and ending drug therapy, my literary productivity has nearly doubled. It's easy to knock out 2K words in an evening and 10-12K on a weekend. My clothes fit really loose, and the neuropathy has vanished. Even my broad writer's ass is getting tighter.

Look out world. I will have three more books on the market in the next six months!