15 Water Conservation Tips & What To Read To Save Your Life

The recent climate report is more than a touch alarming, and if you're anything like me, you immediately began thinking about all the horrible ways we can die as a result. Something similar happened in my brain around 2010, which is when I started writing Not A Drop to Drink.

Even though it was published five years ago, it's more relevant today than ever before.

I learned a lot about water conservation while writing Not A Drop to Drink, so today I'm sharing some tips, along with my reading suggestions that just might help you survive the aqua-pocalypse.

Take a bucket into the shower. Instead of letting all your rinse water run down the drain, collect it for use in watering plants.

Turn off the water when brushing your teeth. Water leaves the faucet at about 2.5 gallons a minute. If you're brushing your teeth for the prescribed two minutes, you just sent 5 gallons of water down the drain.

Do the same when washing your hands.

If it's yellow, let it mellow. It takes roughly 1.5 gallons of water to flush a toilet, significantly more of it's an old model. Ask yourself if you must flush the toilet every time.

Fix the leak. Even small drips accumulate.

Re-use pasta water. There's no reason to dump all that water you just used on the spaghetti down the drain. Let it cool, then use it for your plants.

Wash your car at the car wash. Many carwashes reuse the water that's captured in the pit, which is not possible at home in the driveway with the hose. This is one of those odd tips that actually makes your life easier while being good for the environment.

Shorten your shower. Yes, I love a nice long shower, too. But some showerheads spit out that stream at 5 gallons a minute. A nice hot shower is nice, but so is having a habitable planet to live on.

Have efficient fixtures. Aerated faucets and low-flow toilets are the new black.

Shrink your lawn. Or hell, why do we even have those things? I mean, seriously, what is the point?

Don't do laundry or dishes until you need to. A clean counter top is nice and an empty laundry bin is better, but did you have to do that half-load just now? This is the 2nd tip on this list that encourages you to be lazy. Listen to me. I know how to do this.

Watch you water bill. A sudden spike could mean there's a leak somewhere you can't spot it easily.

Install a rain barrel. Gardening in the summer can use a lot of water. The sky is great because sometimes it supplies that stuff for free.

Keep flushing... with less. Don't like the idea of letting your urine hang around a bit? Fill a half-gallon jug of water and sink it into your tank. Flush with a clean conscience and an empty bladder.

Water in the morning. Love your lawn too much to take my advice on #10? Water in the morning, when cooler temperatures won't evaporate what you've used.

While you're on that low-flow toilet with the submerged half gallon in the tank, do you need something to read?

Dry by Neal & Jarrod Shusterman: When the taps run dry, Alyssa’s quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation; neighbours and families turned against each other on the hunt for water. And when her parents don’t return Alyssa has to make impossible choices if she’s going to survive.

The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi: In the American Southwest, Nevada, Arizona, and California skirmish for dwindlingshares of the Colorado River. When water is more valuable than gold, alliances shift like sand, and the only thing for certain is that someone will have to bleed if anyone hopes to drink.

H2O by Virginia Bergen: Against all odds, Ruby has survived the catastrophic onset of the killer rain. Two weeks after the radio started broadcasting the warning “It’s in the rain. It’s fatal, it’s contagious, and there’s no cure,” the drinkable water is running out. Ruby’s left with two options: persevere on her own, or embark on a treacherous journey across the country to find her father–If he’s even still alive.

The Water Wars by Cameron Stracher: Vera and her brother, Will, live in the shadow of the Great Panic, in a country that has collapsed from environmental catastrophe. Water is hoarded by governments, rivers are dammed, and clouds are sucked from the sky. But then Vera befriends Kai, who seems to have limitless access to fresh water. When Kai suddenly disappears, Vera and Will set off on a dangerous journey in search of him-pursued by pirates, a paramilitary group, and greedy corporations.

Elizabeth Tammi On Making Mythology Your Own

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

Today's guest for the WHAT is Elizabeth Tammi. California-born and Florida-grown, she's currently in Georgia at Mercer University as a Stamps scholar. Her debut, Outrun the Wind, releases November 27.

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

As long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with Greek mythology and history. I was a huge fan of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson stories, but even before reading them, I was intrigued by the mayhem and magic of the Greek pantheon and heroes. Though I’d heard the name ‘Atalanta’ in passing many times, it wasn’t until I was 18 that I actually read a detailed account of her story, and it didn’t sit well with me. I was impressed and captivated by Atalanta herself, but so much of her story made zero sense to me. Why would she kill the men she raced? Why did her father really bring her back home?

Questions piled up, and weeks later, she hadn’t left me alone. I started inventing my own answers and adding new characters (while shifting and altering plenty aspects of her myth) until it made sense to me personally. I also took the opportunity to answer other questions I’d always harbored about Greek myths, like the true nature of serving as one of the goddess Artemis’s huntresses, and how being an Oracle at Delphi might actually affect a girl. In short, things that had long bothered me about Greek mythology finally got their resolution through this book. It was inspired purely out of my own spite and confusion.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

I first allowed myself to take immense liberties in changing aspects of the story of Atalanta. When retelling an old story, I think I hesitated at first to find the balance between respecting the origins and writing my own tale. It’s a tricky boundary, but I focused on creating new, original characters that could serve both as their own people, while also heightening certain aspects of the original myth. I used a few general timeline points from Atalanta’s original mythology as plot guides, and filled in the blanks between with scenes that I thought offered a new perspective on what was really happening with her, Kahina, and the other characters.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

To an extent, yes. I’m a pretty big believer in extensive planning and plotting prior to drafting, but I’ve certainly had far too many instances where I’ll realize that I’ve just written myself into a logistical plothole nightmare. I think most authors have been there. I do my best to avoid that, and there’s been instances where characters will ‘take the wheel’, and say or do something that alters a scene slightly. But for the most part, I tend to outline extensively so I hesitate less as drafting.

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

Flashes of concepts and aesthetics come to me frequently, but fully-fleshed ideas are rare for me. Outrun the Wind sometimes feels a bit like cheating, because while I definitely completely reimagined Atalanta’s story, there’s still a lot inspired by the original mythology. On other stories I’ve written and am writing, I’ve had to try a lot harder to create thorough, smooth plots. I’ve found if I can come up with at least a handful of characters and a main dilemma, I can usually ‘snowball’ my way into a full story. It just takes a lot of mental energy! Stories don’t really drop on me. I have to fight for them to become defined.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

I’ll sit down and write out, by hand, as much of the plot of each story that I have planned out. Whichever one is more fleshed out and thorough is the one that’s ready to move onto the drafting stage.

I usually have at least one or two cats snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

I’m far too easily distracted even when I’m just by myself, unfortunately. I’m in college as well, so no pets for me right now. I have a dog I adore back home with my parents, but she’s too cute for me to focus on writing, haha! I’ve found I can’t even listen to music while writing. If I’m editing, music is fine, but especially when drafting, I just need to be alone and preferably with a caffeinated beverage on hand. So yeah, maybe my writing buddy is a caramel latte?

Karol Ruth Silverstein on Drawing From Personal Experiences for Fiction

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

Today's guest for the WHAT is Karol Ruth Silverstein, author of Cursed, releasing 6/25/19, which  is loosely drawn from her experiences following being diagnosed with a chronic illness at the age of thirteen.

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

I did. It all started with a suggestion from a screenwriting mentor, Holly Goldberg Sloan, way back in the early 90s. I have an obvious/visible disability, so it’s very natural for people to wonder about that when they meet me. As Holly and I were first getting to know each other, I told her about being diagnosed with a painful chronic illness at thirteen and what a struggle it was to navigate that drastic shift in my reality, especially in the beginning. She encouraged me to write about that experience, but I was resistant for a variety of reasons—the most significant of which was that I wasn’t sure how to tell the story in a way that was authentic to my experience. Much of what I’d seen and read involving sick kids seemed to adhere to some unwritten rule that said these characters needed to be indefatigable little soldiers whose bravery and pluck inspired everyone around them. That definitely wasn’t me!

It wasn’t until years later, while doing an exercise in a writing workshop, that I discovered the voice of my main character Ricky (short for Erica). She was snarky, self-absorbed, terrified and pissed off—which was basically how I felt when I was first diagnosed. With Ricky, I’d finally found my way in.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

I must confess: despite being a total “plotser,” with Cursed I just wrote whatever scene came to my mind, whatever needed or wanted to be written at that moment. I wrote the whole novel out of sequence, with no outline/treatment beyond knowing who my main character was, what had happened to her and how she felt about it and that the story took place during the school year. It was utter and complete MADNESS! Plus, it took FOREVER. My advice: don’t do this! Unless you must, unless you’re writing something that demands to written this way for whatever reasons. Then—have at it.

After I’d written hundreds of scenes, I figured I’d better start thinking about plot. Coming from a screenwriting background, I had a basic sense of how my character’s journey should proceed. I looked at all of my scenes and began rearranging them so that the story slowly started to make sense and then I made notes in the manuscript where bridges were needed between scenes. Eventually I had a linear plot, but I still had a lot of work to do!

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

I’ve definitely experienced this between drafts in many other projects, if not between head and computer. In one of my screenplays, I decided to add a completely new, surprise/twist ending a few drafts in. Suddenly, I was writing The Sixth Sense and had to go back through the script and put in little clues and Easter eggs—without tipping my hat too much—so that when the twist came at the end, it made sense.

In Cursed, lots of plot points changed after I got my first editorial letter, if not the overall plot itself. For one, my editor had me age my main character up, from thirteen to fourteen. That ended up having a ripple effect on the whole story—and actually changed what my character ultimately wanted and needed too. Many scenes were rearranged, consolidated, trimmed or deleted. New scenes were added. I ended up being really happy with many of the changes.

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

Yes and no. Some stories have popped into my head nearly fully formed, particularly ideas for picture book manuscripts. (Perfecting a picture book manuscript is a whole different story though). But in addition to being a “ploster,” I’m also a reviser. So while I have some writer friends who have dozens of first drafts sitting on their computers, I tend to have a smaller volume of projects but they’ve all been revised numerous times. Does that indicate a lack of new ideas or a dedication to my works-already-in-progress? I’m not sure. I do remember doing a writing exercise once where the task was to write down fifty story ideas. I think I used every story idea I’d ever had, however vague, and still only got about half way there!

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

There are always lots of stories percolating in my brain, and I generally work on multiple projects at once. It’s just how I roll. If I get stuck or feel uninspired on one, I can shift focus to another while a few of my brain cells continue to work on the issue with the first project.

Now that my novel has moved onto the copyediting phase, what I work on next has to do with my goal of being on submission with one or two projects by the end of the year. I discussed this goal with my agent, and we decided I should focus on a picture book of mine that needs a little polishing. So I’ll be working on that manuscript and then will move on to revising another novel (that, alas, need a good bit more that a polish). But I love revising, remember? Writing a screenplay adaptation of my novel is also in my near future—in case Hollywood comes calling!

I usually have at least one or two cats snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

I wish I could convince my cats to snuggle with me while I write! They only seem interested in lying near or on my keyboard so that I’ll pet them instead of typing. Sigh.

Much of my writing time is spent in blissful solitude, though I currently get together with a small group of children’s book authors every Monday and write all day at a bakery/coffee shop. We do a good job of keeping our noses to the grindstone, with minimal chatting except for when we break for lunch. Mondays are always very productive! I also have had lots of critique buddies over the years. Running everything I write by another writer—whether for significant feedback or a just few polishing notes—is an absolute necessity for me. My current/long-time go-to critique buddy (we are each other’s “secret weapon”) will even be reading my answers here!