I’m going to install a little window in my mind so you can see it works. At least how it is working at this moment. It may not work in quite the same way at any future time. Here’s my promise: other than having decided on the overall idea, I have not planned the specifics of what I’m about to write. Instead, I will record my thought processes (if there are any) as they occur, to see if something interesting, useful or otherwise worthwhile happens. And if not, you’ll get to see that, too. Ready?
Here’s the context. It happened earlier this month. I was in Phoenix for school visits, and I had a free afternoon so I went to the Desert Botanical Garden. Great place! I was looking at an exhibit on saguaro cacti, the Sonoran Desert’s quintessential plant. A mental image of this charismatic cactus with upcurving arms may be many people's first association with the word desert, although saguaros grow only in this relatively small desert of southern Arizona, northwestern Mexico and a sliver of southesastern California. I knew these are very cool plants from a very hot place, but of course I was eager to know more.
So I read the interpretive signs and I was bowled over… with numbers. That is to say, numerical facts about saguaros. Being a numbers guy and a math author, the hairs on the back of my neck stuck up like cactus thorns. Here are a few of those numbers:
— a single saguaro plant releases up to 40 million seeds in its lifetime — saguraros grow incredibly slowly: about ½ inch in the first year and one foot in the first 15 years. Then they start cruising: in 40 or 50 years, they may reach ten feet and it is not until they are 50-100 years old that they begin to sprout arm buds. Some live up to 300. Their maximum height is 40-60 feet. When a cactus poacher (oh yes, they do exist) digs up a six-foot saguaro to plant in front of his house, a replacement in the wild will take about 30 years reach the size of the poached plant (which will probably die).
— one mature saguaro can store 1,500 gallons of water (that’s 6 tons) in its spongy pulp — enough to last several months. It can lose 2/3 of its stored water and survive.
There were many other numbers but that’s enough for now.
So here’s what happened. I thought to myself, “Hey, how about a book about saguaros and their numbers?” Saguro Numbers or Saguaros by the Numbers or Number the Saguaros or something like that. Or maybe not like that. But let’s not get hung up on the title. The thought did not evade me that I could pull it off, sequel possibilities would be countless: Elephants by the Numbers, Great White Sharks, Dinosaurs ... even Oceans, Earth, The Solar System, etc.
So what about it? Having an idea for a book (or a series) is the easy part. Figuring out a way to execute the idea is ano
11 Comments on Saguaro by the Numbers. Maybe, last added: 6/1/2012
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Love it, David! Our finished books look so tidy and predestined, but it's the messy stuff - also known as creative process - that I find so fascinating.
Loved your thoughts on this and think it's important that we share how our books come together. By the way, I was planning to do something similar to this for my June post based on recent research (as reported in the NY Times) on the Clovis people. Drat! Back to the drawing board for June (though we all often go back to the drawing board in developing our projects. I guess it's just part of the process).
Jim:
Do give us your thinking on your new book. Surely it's not based on number lines.....or if it is, so much the better.
Nice to see into your brain as you mull it over... the sequel possibilities are indeed infinite!
This is such an interesting post, David. I was especially struck by your thought, "Or how about this: multiple number lines on different scales."
Scale would be one consideration. Another would be the fact that the numbers signify different kinds of measure:
number of discreet items: 40 million seeds
time: years
height: feet (or, in one case, 1/2 inches ;)
volume: gallons of water
It made me wonder if the whole thing could be tied together not so much as a book about cacti but as a book about how numbers mean different things, depending on what they are measuring. That the unit (the number) is only one part of measurement. (Sorry, I'm not a mathematician so I don't have the vocabulary at hand.) That 1/2 means wildly different things if you are talking about 1/2 an inch or 1/2 a ton or 1/2 a seed or 1/2 a year.
Have you already written about that? (I love your books but have not had the chance to read them all.) Is that too abstract?
The saguaro could be a great entry into a broader, more conceptual discussion of what measurement is. Hmm.
David! This is so cool. Fun to illustrate too, especially if the different animals with different life spans who live there keep multiplying and dying off and doing funny tricks in the background (not as far-fetched as it sounds and full of page turners and visual treats). You're welcome.
Love the chapter numbering, by the way.
David! This is so cool. Fun to illustrate too, especially if the different animals with different life spans who live there keep multiplying and dying off and doing funny tricks in the background (not as far-fetched as it sounds and full of page turners and visual treats). You're welcome.
Love the chapter numbering, by the way.
LOL here - I once heard that writers have four basic needs: food, shelter, 5ex, and rewriting other writers' stories. Case in point!
Grethen -- my post was going to be about how I/we nonfiction writers come up with ideas that might or might not result in an actual project. In the Clovis people case, I worked the idea up to a point where I think I might have been able to get a contreact, but decided for a number of reasons I wasn't the right person to do the book. So I would have been blogging about the constant mental exercise of thinking ideas up to a certain point and hoping that one sticks (every twenty or so ideas do stick). David's post is so rich and informative (and has pictures too) that I decided to move on to another INK blog subject. I'm happy to share what I thought regarding the Clovis folk, though.
Thanks, gang, for all your great ideas. I loved all of the comments and I especially loved Barbara's thoughts about scale. What I especially want to know, Gretchen, is "just what is '5ex'?" As a "numbers guy" I find this to be of particular interest.