As I Said, A List of Writing Links

Writing About Writing

Crossposted on Will Write For Feed Blog: As I Said, my new blog. Explanation [Step One].

In an effort to organize – and possibly jumpstart – my writing career, I have collected my past posts on writing. From here on, writing posts will self-collect over on the writing blog. At least, that’s the plan. For the moment.

Virtual Brush Box/Rodney’s Saga
(Why the two names? [Introduction])
2019
[Daily Inklings, Another Internet Writing Site]
[Now Or Forever? Six Publishing Possibles To Ponder]
[Branding Without Having A Brand]
[Writing Rules, Which Ones?]
[State of the Blog: A Marketing Haiku]
[750 Words, A Place To Write]
[Writing Utter Nonsense]
[Schadenfreude Saturday, My Pain Is Your Amusement]
2014
[10 Reasons to Get Paid to Write]
[Off Topic: My Origin Story]

Off Topic
A secondary blog I had for a while.
2014
[My Origin Story]
[Two Sentence Genre Stories]
[Two Sentence Horror Story]
2013
[You Say Escapism Like It’s A Bad Thing]

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Synecdoches and Soft Kitties, Instagram Recap August 2019

Photography
Random Images

 

Posts through early August 2019 from my blog Instagram account, @myvirtualbrushbox. Previous [What Does Your Phone Say About You? Instagram Recap, June 2019].

Well Rodney, the good news is that you made the Instagram account more than Milton this time. The bad news is that only parts of you did.

Posts By Subject
Horse, five – Rodney 3, Milton 2
Cat, three – home 2, SSF 1
Other, one – sidewalk art

Posts By Location
Home, seven
SSF, one
Other, Birmingham, one

Most liked
1st – Milton jumping
2nd – sidewalk fish


[February 2019]

The Extraordinary Life of Ricky

Jeremy Novy

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Fencing False Alarm, Fortunately

Horsekeeping

 

… time to get the horses … put Milton up … Rodney is right over there … hmm, were’d he go? … must have wandered off … he does that all the time … has no problem leaving Milton in the dust … walk out to his usual spot … not there … keep walking around pasture … no horse … I know the pasture is in summer growth but I can usually spot them … going around again … checking all the corners … WHAT??? …

… crap, crap, crap … NOT what you want to see when you have gone all the way around the pasture and not found a horse … crap, crap, crap … this is how Rodney got out last time [Fencing, A Photo Essay] … crap, crap, crap … okay, the fence isn’t as low … the underbrush on the other side does not look as if 1400 pounds of horse just went through … he *probably* didn’t escape … not something one wants to be wrong about … crap, crap, crap … exit pasture … check side field … no horse … crap, crap, crap … walk gingerly down driveway … listening for squeal of brakes … crap, crap, crap … no squeal, no horse in sight … he’s really not the sort of horse to head over the horizon … he’d stop at the nearest patch of grass … crap, crap, crap … come back up …

… block driveway with truck … crap, crap, crap … go back to barn … cr …

… Rodney standing quietly in the aisle. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Thank you. Time to go fix a fence … and take photos for a blog post.

Seriously, I got agita all over again just typing this.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Switching Gears

Adventures in Saddle Seat

 

I have a card in my brush box that I read before my saddle seat lessons at Stepping Stone Farm. It gives me a headstart so that I don’t spend the first 5 minutes reinventing the wheel [Swapping Back and Forth]. Reverting to hunt seat does not require reminders.


 
Front
BEFORE
Gloves

POSITION
Sit back, all the way to the cantle. It’s not the safety seat that eventers use when coming down to the Head of the Lake. It’s a balanced seat, just farther back to allow for lofty shoulder action. Okay, maybe not on Sam, but in theory.

Legs off. Heels away. Dig your knees in. Just like h/j trainers tell you not to do.
Feet forward, true h/j, worth noting

Hands up, way up, even higher.
Pinkies in. Saddle seat, rein goes around the outside of the pinkie. Hunt seat etc, rein goes between 3rd and 4th fingers. This issue has followed me into the show ring [Getting The Band Back Together].

Whip perpendicular, straight down along shoulder.

Back
RIDING
Energy goes up ^ not fwd >.

All aids are lighter.
Steady contact is ~1/2, still steady

If use lower leg, remove after.

Outside aids, esp canter. This one catches me in both saddles. I’ve sat on Milton getting ready for the canter, thinking, hunters, inside rein, outside leg.
Outside rein, outside leg.

Set hands at canter. Collect, collect, collect, every stride.

For canter transition, tip head to rail. more. Dressage has an obsessive emphasis on straightness; saddle seat, not so much.

Your Turn
I know several folks out there ride or have ridden saddle seat as well as hunter/jumper/dressage/eventing. If you rode/ride saddle seat, do these reminders ring any bells? If you still ride both, or any two differing disciplines, how do you switch?

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Circling Back, Rodney Returns to Full Circle Horse Park

Training Journal

 

 
Back to Full Circle Horse Park last Sunday. First trip, a week earlier [Looking Around, and Around, and Around, Rodney at Full Circle Horse Park].

Would Rodney be better? Worse? The same?

I was banking on better. How much better? A little? It took him over half-a-dozen trips to settle in at Stepping Stone Farm. A lot better? Heavens would part, Rodney would give a sassy hoof snap and be all ‘I got this,’ and we would trot and canter our fool hearts out.

Phase one – Touring the grounds at at walk.
Much better. Still looking about and stopping to stare at this and that, but without the ear hysteria.

Phase two – Warm-up on long lines.
Alas, Rodney took a few funny steps on the lunge line. Lame? Not lame? Right hind? Left front? Working out of it? Imagined it? He’d had a kerfuffle on the long lines the day before and ran around the field that morning. Could have been an artifact of either one, or neither. Meh. Better safe than sorry. Went home without riding. Pffft.

Never got to see if his calmer attitude in hand would translate to under saddle work. I’m betting it would have. Progress. Maybe even Galápagos tortoise steps, i.e. large turtle (tortoise) steps.

Thank you fore reading,
Katherine Walcott

Milton Is Getting A Break

Training Journal

 

Milton is getting a break … from me.

We did five cross rail shows [1,2, 3, 4, 5]. While he acquitted himself moderately well, he did not fling himself about the ring yodeling, ‘Yes! This is my calling. Show me the next one!’ His attitude was more along the lines of ‘What?! Oh, okay. I think I can cope. What?! Oh, Okay …’ Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

As for me, I’ve had enough of this nonsense. I want to jump real jumps. Wide-eyed hesitation is understandable in one’s first class at the beginning of April. It becomes less acceptable to display an unchanged, unimproved attitude by one’s 14th class at the end of July.

Milton and I are taking a temporary break from riding while we sort out how to bridge this gap. In the meanwhile, he is long-lining regularly, even starting lateral work. He and I are doing in-hand walks and hills in the afternoon for conditioning. We’d like to hitch again if we can coordinate schedules with our driving supervisor.

So, Milton is still in work. Milton is in work without the high-maintenance, high-pressure, howling, horse show monkey on his back.

That would be me.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Fiction Faith Graphic

Graphic Design

 

 

Process notes
On the down side, still relying on computer fonts, Arial in this case, rather than drawing my own letters. I had envisioned a completely different image based on swirly, swoopy initial letters. F & R seem to lend themselves to swoops, don’t they? However, I couldn’t get the Inkscape spirals to behave and knew I couldn’t freehand with either pen or computer. Insert Ira Glass’s Advice For Beginners quote once again, [Definitions] Zen Pencils.

On the upside, had fun discovering two-tone letters.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott