Locally Grown

I just attended my cousin’s wedding in Indiana. The reception out on the Family Farm was in a tent so large, I’m sure the neighbors were wondering when the elephants would arrive. Inside it was strewn with lights and swaths of fabric, a dance floor and a band, plus formal seating for 180 people. Linen tablecloths, napkins, and fine china contrasted with the grassy earth beneath our feet, and the food was all locally produced within five miles. It was like something you only see in the movies.

But what amazed me most about this wedding was the sense of family. I flew down from Alaska to attend, and when I showed up several days in advance, my uncle gave me a big hug and handed me a knife. “Do you mind peeling some onions?” I worked for hours over the next few days helping prepare for the gathering. And I’ve never been more honored. I was treated as if I lived right there and got to see everyone all the time, and although I was born and raised in Alaska, I’ve never felt more “locally grown” than I did at that wedding.

My cousin got to start her new life surrounded by the best gifts a bride and groom can get – the love and support of family, no matter how far flung the members might be. And I got to be a part of something large and whole and wholesome. Family.

Cultivating Creativity

Creativity is like a growing plant. A writer must nurture it, water it every day, and fertilize it with a balance of ideas from many sources. If you do this, it will grow.

But what about acts of nature that sabotage your garden? What about the hailstorm of the loss of a job, or the flood the death a loved one may cause, or even the sunshine drought of visiting relatives preventing the proper care of your creativity?

My latest manuscript suffered a few acts of nature this year, and like one of those misshapen cucumbers that starts out fat and juicy at the stem end and tapers down to a shriveled, moldy blossom end, the manuscript has become inedible.

So I have decided the best thing to do is pluck the fruit and discard it before it sucks the energy from a plant that could produce more cukes. My writer friends have been like pollinating bees, and a new fruit has set in my mind, swelling with potential. Much as I might want to find a way to use the old manuscript, the best course of action is to redirect my creative energy. It is sad and exciting at the same time.

Have you ever had an act of nature sabotage your creativity? Were you able to save your fruit? Or did you find it best to put your creative energy elsewhere?

Goodbye, Bob

My boss and friend of 9 years passed away last night. He'd been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma last year, but after chemo, thought he beat it. A month ago, it came back, and he was given 3 to 4 months to live - a year if he did light chemo. Bob was not a man to go down without a fight. Last week he was in the office, obviously in pain, but still living like he was never going to end. We all thought he'd somehow, miraculously, beat it again.

And then he wasn't feeling well, so didn't come to work on Monday, and three days later he's gone. I would say without warning, but he had time. He got his affairs in order. He said his goodbyes. I think we're the ones who didn't believe he'd go.

This is the kind of thing that makes us yearn for the happy ending of books. In life, happy endings are hard to come by. The best we can do is handle reality with grace and acceptance.

Farewell, my friend. You will be missed.

Filling in the Seams

I have been building an addition on my house for a year, now. I framed it in, put in windows and doors, created rooms, wired and plumbed, and finally got to put on sheetrock. Closing it in made it really start to feel like a real house.
Only mudding and taping all the seams has taken forever. I just want to get done. Can’t we live in the rooms just like this? Of course not. It’s not finished. No one would accept conditions like this.

Mudding sheetrock is a lot like editing. First of all, it seems to take forever. I fill in gaps between the panels of gypsum. I round edges and crease corners. I smooth out rough spots. And then I go back and look at it with a critical eye and lo – cracks I thought I’d covered need another go over. But eventually I reach a point where it has to be “good enough.” I’m the only one who will ever notice that spot high in the stairwell wall, visible only in the direct beam of a halogen work light, where the corner dips a little too low.

So it is with my manuscript. I need to reach the point of “good enough” and let it go. Because I know I will always look at it and see the seams.

Kill Your Darlings

I thinned my carrots yesterday. I know some gardeners who don’t thin, and they’re always amazed by the size and productivity of my garden. “I put all that work into growing them,” they say. “I just can’t pull them out and kill them!” But you have to kill them. You have to murder your darlings if you want the biggest and best seedlings to produce to their full potential. To become marketable plants.

I’m in the editing stage for my latest manuscript right now, and there’s that phrase again - kill your darlings. “But I put so much effort into writing that perfect sentence!” Kill your darlings. Maybe I can pull it and transplant it somewhere else, but most likely it just needs to go onto the compost pile. The essential elements of it may end up in a manuscript next year, and I won’t even know it. The important thing is that I give the other sentences in my manuscript room to do their job.

Second Chances

Baby chicks arrived today. Fifty seven in a box that weighed no more than two pounds, including the eight ounces of electrolyte mix I ordered. I could hear their loud cries echoing through the post office the moment I entered the building, and when the postmaster handed me the box, tiny beaks and yellow fluff peeked through the air holes as if to say hello. I couldn’t wait to meet each and every one of them.

As I lift each fragile baby from the box, I dip its beak in the water, and then set it free to roam the wood shavings strewn across the brooding house floor. It finds the food, discovers the heat lamp, and takes off to explore the far corners with its brethren. I watch them all, and inevitably I find one that stands out from the rest. One that I will name, and keep even once it stops laying eggs, and allow out of the poultry yard to follow me around the garden on sunny days. This year it is a chick that comes to my hand whenever I put it down on the litter to lean in to change the water. A golden one with stripes down each side of its back that I’ve named Speedy. There are others that come to me, others just as fast and cute and interesting. But Speedy is the one that has captured my attention.

I imagine that is what it must be like for agents and editors with all the manuscripts they review. Many manuscripts are worthy, but for no other reason than personal whim, one captures an agent’s heart. If my fifty-seven chicks had gone to another farm, a completely different chick may have been chosen as a favorite.

Unfortunately for these chicks, they don’t get a second or third chance to become a favorite. My manuscript gets to take a tour before deciding on a home. Here’s to an agent deciding mine is a favorite.

Weeding, Writing, and Arithmetic

Today marks the one-month anniversary of my marathon-writing weekend. And I realize I have not written a single new word on my manuscript since then. Not one … stinking … weed.

Did I say weed?

Gardening season hit, and I’ve ignored everything but getting the ground ready and planted. Kind of my marathon-gardening month. Then I’ll ignore it for a month, until I realize I’ve got to catch up on all the weeds.

I love gardening as much as I love writing. They are both creative endeavors, a chance to put something on paper or in the ground and watch the leaves of a story unfold. But to be successful at either takes discipline. It takes visiting pretty much every day. If I were to spend a half hour weeding just 20 square feet of space every day – that’s a four by five foot area – I’d have weeded my entire garden in a month. (Yes, I have an enormous garden.) If I write 2000 words every day, I’ll have finished a rough draft of a novel in a month.

You do the math. A novel in a month. Give myself another month to polish it, and that would be six novels a year. Even if I took two months to polish it, that would be four books a year. Pretty amazing stuff. Most days, if I sit my butt in the chair and write, I can crank out 2000 good words in about 3 or 4 hours. That’s less time than a part-time job. And I want writing to be my job.

So from here on out, I will visit my creative landscapes. I will weed a little bit every day. And I will write a little bit every day. Between the two, I will have the best year of growth ever.

Weed 'em and reap!