The
tags for seeing only the evolution of this story are: writing by
numbers, the evolution of a character, the evolution of a story. If you
can see the list of tags to the right you can click on the suggested
(above) links to eliminate all the rest of the posts. If you can't see
the links click on the link above and then they should be visible when
the page reloads.
This is preamble on how I made changes to my attempt to write about love. All the changes can be seen in the dated attachments. The attachment dated 27 April is the story as posted on that date.
The attachment dated 16th May is 5406 words. It is the attachment dated 27 April with notes for changes and a few changes made. Read at 190 words per minute it takes 28 minutes to read. Future attachments, probably only two more, will have no notes, and then there will be one final completed story.
[ 7 minute read ]
I have been trying to write about love; the purpose of which is to
force myself to confront something that is difficult for me to do.
Throughout my effort, I have been looking to eliminate worn out
cliches and avoid simplistic declarative statements, which I much,
much prefer to read and write. One of my first books as an infant was
called Peter and Jane. ‘Here is Peter. Here is Jane’. Love it!
Overall, I wanted to discover characters and characteristics that I
could use elsewhere in understanding diverse topics. I like to
anthropomorphise dry subjects to make them easier for me to
understand. The 'plot' of the story is clear to me; but the whole
thing is incomplete because to give it substance I still have to have
a parallel environment that follows rules we are all familiar with; I
have chosen a full calendar year, a garden, and the weather
throughout the year. This, I hope would add a canvas on which the
story is overlaid. Since I have experience of a few English seasons I
can hold the way seasons change from one to another in my mind, and
how a garden is affected.
A garden has expected results from applied effort,
that is affected by weather, which is predictable as seasons go, but
has an enormous and largely uncontrollable effect on plant and animal
growth. Weather, as an unpredictable factor can destroy
well-maintained gardens. Because growing plants and looking for;
falling in; and maintaining LOVE is always a gamble, I think the
journey of love is similar to a garden affected by human application
and random weather that we know but is always different to our memory
and expectations, much like people.
None of this, however, is yet written into the story. The story plainly needs to be extended to segue in additional pieces, because all that was posted on 27 April 2025 are the outside edges of a jigsaw and some of the brighter and most recognisable inner pieces along with a few pieces to connect those islands of significance. Expect more islands of lesser colour but add background and ambience to the overall vignette, or word-painting.
I want to put in the story: 'She had been ever so slightly over-exposed to the sun and her skin
was tight as though she had been splashed with lemon juice.' which is completely in my writing style but it will be toned back a bit. It should, I think, be used to add contrast to a pre-existing weather condition.
In Winter, most
gardeners will be planning, or finalising their plans on, what they
will try to grow until next Winter. Of course, most food crops can
only be harvested once. For humans, this might be a Summer romance.
Some plants only produce fruit or seeds in the second year and then
die, like Wallflower. Some, like strawberry plants, are more
fructicious in their second year and then decline in productivity.
Some cacti take years before they produce a magnificent flower. We
might, if we draw our memories back to either our own pre-teen and
teen years consider that our passion for someone else is
unreciprocated so we pass them in the school corridor without making
ourselves obvious until we discover that ‘that’ person also likes
us. Bingo! Big flower! Some deserts are almost devoid of plant-life
and then a flood brings the necessary water for a carpet of beautiful
flowers to suddenly appear. Insects rely on this and have life-cycles
patterns to match. We could compare this type of plant growth in a
desert to young people going to Ayia Napa, Ibiza, and Zante, and the
type of ‘love’ they get there. Lots of insects there, in hot
environments.
So, being out of
love is a bare garden. The world is cold and there is not much to
cause a lone person to believe that they will find love. More people
mingling outside in Summer, I suggest, gives a greater probability of
a happy meeting. I think because we kind of know this, we are more
outwardly hopeful and people find us more attractive. Happy people
find happy people, I think.
Garden
Winter - Bare
ground, some possibilities. Brown if it has been tilled and is
weed-free.
Spring – Warm
weather, tree blossom, anticipation of a happy time approaching. A
few days of fast growth – strong sunlight after rain the day
before. Here then, there is cause and effect in the right order. I
have noticed that watering my garden in Spring causes my domesticated
plants to flower less and later than the nearby plants that have
escaped, this year.
Summer – some
harvesting of foodstuffs, large quantity of mellifluous flowers with
vivid colours and an abundance of interesting insect activity.
Boisterous displays of colour.
Autumn – Most
crops are harvested, cooler weather (which might be welcomed)
Beautiful and relaxing tree leaf colour in a sunlight that has
travelled through more air because it is lower throughout the days.
In churches there are traditional Thanksgiving services. A time of
plenty and sharing, so LOVE often overflows and is carelessly shared
among nearby people.
Winter – final
crop harvesting and stripping the garden of debris.
People and
weather
People in Winter
often wear dark clothes, and spontaneous personal interaction is very
brief, even non-existent. As far as I can understand, there is often
only a very small and slow growth of building familiarity. ‘Hello,
Hello again, A fine day isn’t it? We must stop meeting like this,
My name is…..’ This slow growth may take weeks. This, I suggest
is quite different to the rapidity of how a relationship grows in
warmer months; ‘Hello, conversation, laugh, conversation, Let’s
meet again’, all in one or two meetings
People in Spring
become more gregarious and wear clothes a bit more colourful than in
winter. On sunny and warm days, there are more people about and
people are less frenetic about getting somewhere on foot; taking more
time to look in shop windows as they pass. I suggest that nearly all
of us ‘window-shop’ for attractive people more in warm weather
than in cold weather. This does not seem to be evolutionary
beneficial unless we consider that a new-born baby will spend its
first few months entirely constrained by its inability to perambulate
away from the warmth of the furs and fires in a cave.
In a garden, new
growth is minutely examined by the gardener to make sure it is not a
weed, and much satisfaction is found in the growth or revealing of a
cherished cultivated ‘seedling’. When a human attraction is in
its first stages, more attention is diverted to closer inspection of
the other person, largely because it is permissible, and
reciprocated.
Summer - Spontaneous
smiling at strangers and a general warmth exhibited to all around.
There is an exuberance of character that becomes more widespread and
it is a time for showing off a little. More fun and smiles among
mingling people outside engenders frivolity.
Autumn - A time of
plenty and sharing, so LOVE often overflows, yet, is cautiously
shared among nearby people. The reason for this, I suggest, is
because there is a high level of communal love that is warm and
caring, much like being under a duvet in bed; and there is also the
passionate love for an individual that is more like burning one side
of your body while the other side freezes in a cold and draughty
house with an open fire that burns brightly.
In the garden, the
warmth is still there but only the cold will come and there will be
an inadequate fire in the sky to warm the air and ground. There are
the final prunings of hedges, bushes and lawns. Gardeners know that
plants will not survive and the warm care of the gardener must be
curtailed. There is a drawing back from sharing warmth, particularly
to an environment that does not give warmth back.
This is the last
post on How Toby fell in Love, or this exploration on how I have
tried to write about love.
Hopefully, I shall
be able to update this post with ongoing attachments, all of which
shall be dated.
Writing by Numbers without numbers 7
The address for all my blogs: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551
The tags for seeing only the evolution of this story are: writing by numbers, the evolution of a character, the evolution of a story. If you can see the list of tags to the right you can click on the suggested (above) links to eliminate all the rest of the posts. If you can't see the links click on the link above and then they should be visible when the page reloads.
This is preamble on how I made changes to my attempt to write about love. All the changes can be seen in the dated attachments. The attachment dated 27 April is the story as posted on that date.The attachment dated 16th May is 5406 words. It is the attachment dated 27 April with notes for changes and a few changes made. Read at 190 words per minute it takes 28 minutes to read.
Future attachments, probably only two more, will have no notes, and then there will be one final completed story.
[ 7 minute read ]
I have been trying to write about love; the purpose of which is to force myself to confront something that is difficult for me to do. Throughout my effort, I have been looking to eliminate worn out cliches and avoid simplistic declarative statements, which I much, much prefer to read and write. One of my first books as an infant was called Peter and Jane. ‘Here is Peter. Here is Jane’. Love it! Overall, I wanted to discover characters and characteristics that I could use elsewhere in understanding diverse topics. I like to anthropomorphise dry subjects to make them easier for me to understand. The 'plot' of the story is clear to me; but the whole thing is incomplete because to give it substance I still have to have a parallel environment that follows rules we are all familiar with; I have chosen a full calendar year, a garden, and the weather throughout the year. This, I hope would add a canvas on which the story is overlaid. Since I have experience of a few English seasons I can hold the way seasons change from one to another in my mind, and how a garden is affected.
A garden has expected results from applied effort, that is affected by weather, which is predictable as seasons go, but has an enormous and largely uncontrollable effect on plant and animal growth. Weather, as an unpredictable factor can destroy well-maintained gardens. Because growing plants and looking for; falling in; and maintaining LOVE is always a gamble, I think the journey of love is similar to a garden affected by human application and random weather that we know but is always different to our memory and expectations, much like people.
None of this, however, is yet written into the story. The story plainly needs to be extended to segue in additional pieces, because all that was posted on 27 April 2025 are the outside edges of a jigsaw and some of the brighter and most recognisable inner pieces along with a few pieces to connect those islands of significance. Expect more islands of lesser colour but add background and ambience to the overall vignette, or word-painting.
I want to put in the story: 'She had been ever so slightly over-exposed to the sun and her skin was tight as though she had been splashed with lemon juice.' which is completely in my writing style but it will be toned back a bit. It should, I think, be used to add contrast to a pre-existing weather condition.
In Winter, most gardeners will be planning, or finalising their plans on, what they will try to grow until next Winter. Of course, most food crops can only be harvested once. For humans, this might be a Summer romance. Some plants only produce fruit or seeds in the second year and then die, like Wallflower. Some, like strawberry plants, are more fructicious in their second year and then decline in productivity. Some cacti take years before they produce a magnificent flower. We might, if we draw our memories back to either our own pre-teen and teen years consider that our passion for someone else is unreciprocated so we pass them in the school corridor without making ourselves obvious until we discover that ‘that’ person also likes us. Bingo! Big flower! Some deserts are almost devoid of plant-life and then a flood brings the necessary water for a carpet of beautiful flowers to suddenly appear. Insects rely on this and have life-cycles patterns to match. We could compare this type of plant growth in a desert to young people going to Ayia Napa, Ibiza, and Zante, and the type of ‘love’ they get there. Lots of insects there, in hot environments.
So, being out of love is a bare garden. The world is cold and there is not much to cause a lone person to believe that they will find love. More people mingling outside in Summer, I suggest, gives a greater probability of a happy meeting. I think because we kind of know this, we are more outwardly hopeful and people find us more attractive. Happy people find happy people, I think.
Garden
Winter - Bare ground, some possibilities. Brown if it has been tilled and is weed-free.
Spring – Warm weather, tree blossom, anticipation of a happy time approaching. A few days of fast growth – strong sunlight after rain the day before. Here then, there is cause and effect in the right order. I have noticed that watering my garden in Spring causes my domesticated plants to flower less and later than the nearby plants that have escaped, this year.
Summer – some harvesting of foodstuffs, large quantity of mellifluous flowers with vivid colours and an abundance of interesting insect activity. Boisterous displays of colour.
Autumn – Most crops are harvested, cooler weather (which might be welcomed) Beautiful and relaxing tree leaf colour in a sunlight that has travelled through more air because it is lower throughout the days. In churches there are traditional Thanksgiving services. A time of plenty and sharing, so LOVE often overflows and is carelessly shared among nearby people.
Winter – final crop harvesting and stripping the garden of debris.
People and weather
People in Winter often wear dark clothes, and spontaneous personal interaction is very brief, even non-existent. As far as I can understand, there is often only a very small and slow growth of building familiarity. ‘Hello, Hello again, A fine day isn’t it? We must stop meeting like this, My name is…..’ This slow growth may take weeks. This, I suggest is quite different to the rapidity of how a relationship grows in warmer months; ‘Hello, conversation, laugh, conversation, Let’s meet again’, all in one or two meetings
People in Spring become more gregarious and wear clothes a bit more colourful than in winter. On sunny and warm days, there are more people about and people are less frenetic about getting somewhere on foot; taking more time to look in shop windows as they pass. I suggest that nearly all of us ‘window-shop’ for attractive people more in warm weather than in cold weather. This does not seem to be evolutionary beneficial unless we consider that a new-born baby will spend its first few months entirely constrained by its inability to perambulate away from the warmth of the furs and fires in a cave.
In a garden, new growth is minutely examined by the gardener to make sure it is not a weed, and much satisfaction is found in the growth or revealing of a cherished cultivated ‘seedling’. When a human attraction is in its first stages, more attention is diverted to closer inspection of the other person, largely because it is permissible, and reciprocated.
Summer - Spontaneous smiling at strangers and a general warmth exhibited to all around. There is an exuberance of character that becomes more widespread and it is a time for showing off a little. More fun and smiles among mingling people outside engenders frivolity.
Autumn - A time of plenty and sharing, so LOVE often overflows, yet, is cautiously shared among nearby people. The reason for this, I suggest, is because there is a high level of communal love that is warm and caring, much like being under a duvet in bed; and there is also the passionate love for an individual that is more like burning one side of your body while the other side freezes in a cold and draughty house with an open fire that burns brightly.
In the garden, the warmth is still there but only the cold will come and there will be an inadequate fire in the sky to warm the air and ground. There are the final prunings of hedges, bushes and lawns. Gardeners know that plants will not survive and the warm care of the gardener must be curtailed. There is a drawing back from sharing warmth, particularly to an environment that does not give warmth back.
This is the last post on How Toby fell in Love, or this exploration on how I have tried to write about love.
Hopefully, I shall be able to update this post with ongoing attachments, all of which shall be dated.