Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

(Hi! Lets join this Post, already in progress.)

So I’m sitting at my ‘desk’* Tuesday morning doing the final re-write on Chapter 24 of ‘Almira’, around about 7:00 am. Out the window I can see the backyard and the woods beyond.  I realize this will be self-obvious** when you see the video, but frankly this writing jones has me by the throat and so I look at every damn thing I type in terms of ‘how effective a description is that’ and ‘does the reader sense the emotions of the POV character’…. and those are just the emails I send to set up showings to Buyers! (bar rump bump… seriously I am all into trying to learn to write real good.)

(yeah! no, you’re in the right place. This is the TToT weekend bloghop. It’s just that I went and almost completed the post you’re reading, but never got the chance to hit ‘Publish’… shh we’re coming to the good part)

…anyway, I see a disturbance in the woods. At about middle level of the trees, which might be 10, 15 feet up. My first thought was ‘Squirrel fight!’ but then I saw a shape moving between the trees that was the wrong shape and way to big for a squirrel. For some reason what came to mind was one of Carlos Castanadas’ books where don Juan is talking about an ally leaping from tree to tree. I thought, ‘damn! that’s weird’. It went away and I looked back at the computer. A couple of minutes later I looked up and here is what I saw:

So what is it we’re seeing here?

(While clark-from-the-past is figuring how to explain the nature vid in terms of the Wakefield Doctrine, let me just remind you that this is a bloghop that has been handed down through generations of the Lewis family (started, rumour would have it, by none other than CS himself! And this claim clearly has credence by virtue of how rumor is spelled at the start of this parenthesis?) Anyway, every week Ms. Lewis and the 8 co-hostinae invite everyone to stop by and share what gratitudiness things happened in the course of the week since the last TToT.)

1) First time totally has to be the license and latitude we enjoy when writing a List of Ten Things. The only requirement here is that there be Ten Things (or, lacking that, a clever and/or amusing explanation for the deca-deficiency). That is not only very liberal, but if you’re in a hurry and don’t have the time to make up something clever and/or amusing, we have a Book of Secret Rules (aka Secret Book of Rules)!!

2) the BoSR/SBoR is, like, totally full of exceptions, explanations, excuses and emergency exigencies  (for example this last Item?   SR 3.12.chap;12:  ‘A[n] Item is valid and can be counted if the writer checks online dictionaries and, despite not reading the entire entry, uses one of those weird square parenthesis, like in the middle of a word! What could possibly be the grammatical rationalization that legitimizes such things/ …op. cit.

3) Phyllis and Una We went for a walk this evening. She enjoys the walks because she can stick her head out the window and sniff all the scents along the way (this is Una we’re talking about).

4) I better let the Post explanation have some time, otherwise this Post won’t make any sense.***)

Well, it was kinda depressing. It looked, (from my window) to be an injured or tangled up hawk, all, can’t-get-off-the-ground-and-fly-away, so I got up and headed downstairs to go out and see what the problem was. As I got to the doors out to the deck, I decided that I could get a blanket and maybe wrap the thing up, at least if it turned out that the bird’s feet were tangled up in something….

(yeah, yeah, yeah, Clarks gonna go all Marlin Perkins here… I should tell you about this week’s Almira, do a co-hostinea featured spotlight and let everyone get on about their weekend…)

5) so we have a cliff hanger in Chapter 24 of Almira…. if you missed if I’ll wait.  …go ahead, click on the Chapter 24 link

6) Featured co-hostinae of the Week:  Lisa   (here’s a joke/cultural reference that no one will get without googling…’Lisa  the Writing TToT’er’)  Anyway  Lisa has a website, two cats and a family and doesn’t live in a part of the country with: alligators, 8-inches-across-spiders, never-ending-waves-of-grain, the birthplace of a writer that more than 6 of us would recognize by the title of one of their works. She was (according to my interpretation/understanding**** of her ‘real’ life story) a teacher and now is totally full-time writer. She is the owner of both a 2015 Gravity Challenge and a Wakefield Doctrine tee shirt. And, I believe she was a English major. (yeah, I did that on purpose). And, of course, a cohostinae here at the blog that Lizzi built. Go totally mess up the bandwidth on her site: The Meaning of Me or her Facebook Page or her Twitter

7) damn… running out of time, lets get back and see what happened when our courageous blogger went out into the back yard. )

So I stepped out on the deck and we both stopped moving. Me and the hawk, (or falcon or whatever brand of bird of prey it was) looked at each other for a second. Then it occurred to me, I have the Wakefield Doctrine! Total guidance for all of life’s situation and puzzles and such! So I ran a quick (this bird is clearly scottian, I’m a clark…what to do, what to do) reflection and …..

8) Work has been muy stressfulito this week, but I’m grateful for the aforementioned Wakefield Doctrine in that it always allows me some ‘reflex breathing room’ in situations where bad might turn into worse. Thanks! Wakefield Doctrine

9) Item of hypo-gratitude (as clearly permitted by SR 1.78.4) ‘the ending of Summer’

Charging off the back deck I yelled (well, raised my voice) “Hey! bird!! What the hell!!”  And, the thing totally flew off into between the pine trees, up off and out of sight. I waited around a minute or so, hoping that it would, like fly overhead and dip a wing in gratitude, which I would totally include as an item in this week’s TToTrainwreck, but no. It just flew away. Probably to kill something small and photogenic.

10) SR 1.3 y’all  1.3

*  actually my ‘desk’ is one of those banquet tables with the fake wood tops and the ‘H’ shaped legs that fold up (that, in high school, a clark would know about how to do and tell a scott, who would actually do it… total lunch on the floor. ha. ha.)

**  I claim that phrase… just in case you hear it out there, in the ‘real’ world, remember, you heard it here first. (Hey it could happen! I think I’m hearing “That’s not right” (where the inflection takes the phrase from a judgement of correctness and certitude and applies it to an everyday occurrence. ex: You drive away from Dunkin Donuts and your friend realizes that they put cream instead of milk in the coffee. You then remark, “That’s not right!” (As if the mistake was a direct affront to truth, justice and the american way.)

*** yeah, I know!

**** well, this is the blogosphere it’s all about the story we tell the ‘world’ around us

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