Gardening = Writing

Yes, despite my busy schedule, I spend several hours this week pulling the weeds out of my just-about-to-sprout garden. As in the past, gardening always reminds me of writing, and just as I posted last year about these connections, more similarities have occurred to me. Most involve revision in some form, since I'm the great reviser, but all reflect my belief that each writing, like each plant, follows a natural order.

See if you find anything useful:

1. A good scene is like a lilac. It's smell is heavenly, but it doesn't bloom for too long. Lilacs only bloom for a week or two, and then they are gone, and their smell with them. Then again, if they bloomed from March until September, we'd get sick of the stench. Any good scene should know when to end itself so that the magic of the scene isn't lost in boredom (SNL could do well to adhere to this rule).

2. What looks pretty at first may turn out to be a weed. You might find yourself putting some event or character which seems awesome, yet somehow the rest of the work gets gummed up around it, faltering or falling flat. Know when a gimmick is just that--a gimmick--and don't hold onto something that may end up destroying your work entirely.

3. Others can give you advice about your garden, but only you know what you really want it to look like. Everyone has an opinion, and yet you should strive, above all, to make your work into something that you yourself would like to read. If you don't feel your heart behind it, most others won't either, but if you love your work, you'll be happy, even if you never sell it.

4. When in doubt, plant first, then move the plants once they grow beyond seedlings. If you like various elements, get them down on paper. You can always move them around or change their details once they are in your document. Without seeing them set in the text, they will be harder to evaluate and rearrange. Once they are on paper, and you can see how they relate in context, your task will be easier.

5. There is a season to plant, and a season to prune. Don't mix them up. If you are on a writing roll, and pages are spilling out almost faster than you can write them down, don't backtrack. Instead, let your right brain have the freedom it needs to generate what is coming. Then, when your right brain is exhausted, switch gears and go back to revise, to add to, or to shred your generated text. Turning on your left brain too early or too often can inhibit what your right brain will do.

That's it for now. Remember, too, that these are just my own observations. Happy gardening--I mean writing!

Even More Advice from David Copperfield

I've interspersed some rather lovely advice from David Copperfield with some horrid whinings of my own, but--thank goodness for you--it's time for more Copperfield again.

This little tidbit comes from the littlest tidbit of the novel, a super tiny dwarf named Miss Mowcher, who spends a few scenes flirting around with men and entertaining while David looks on. David doesn't take a liking to her, but once a mutual friend shows his true colors (I'd tell you who, and what he does, but that would spoil the story), she reveals she had no part in the deception, and shows she's as true a person as anyone, but has had to put on a show of sorts because of her chromosomal condition. 

She tells him she has no choice but to act as she does just so that she can survive in a world where she is deemed to be so different (because so small), and she promises to do all she can to help remedy the situation, even though she is not the cause. And as she leaves David, she tells him:

You are a young man.... Take a word of advice, even from three foot 

nothing. Try not to associate bodily defects [Dickens' words, not mine] with

mental, my good friend, except for solid reason.

You see, even though she was small and not the standard of beauty, her heart and mind were good. And even though the friend who had betrayed them both was very handsome and seemed kind, he was truly a selfish, egotistical user. 

This reminds me of a story I was told about the film Tootsie. Artists spent hours on Dustin Hoffman's make-up, but when they showed him the product, he thought they were kidding. He said something like, "Why don't you make me pretty?" and the make-up artists told him that was as pretty as he was going to get. Hoffman was deeply affected by this, for it suddenly occurred to him how many women he had passed by, had ignored, because they didn't fit his standard of beauty. And yet, dressed as a woman, he was the very kind of woman who would have been ignored. (If you haven't seen this movie, it's really very good. Bill Murray alone makes it worth watching, but Hoffman is also spectacular). 

I know what it's like to be passed over. It still happens to me, and has ever since I can remember. Yet I also know, with a sinking in my gut, that I have done the same to others. I have judged on looks alone, and I am a lesser person for having done so. I've likely missed out on some pretty spectacular people. 

More Advice from David Copperfield

I know it's been a while since my last David Copperfield post, but I promised you more good advice from Dickens' memorable characters. I am not quite finished with my rereading, but I have a great bit of gold from David Copperfield's great aunt Betsy Trotwood. She is a lady who made a notable appearance as David's mother was in labor with him, and she sat by patiently, waiting for her beloved "niece" to be born. When she found out it was a boy--David--she left without another word, and she didn't appear in the story again until David, friendless, hopeless, a starving runaway, shows up on her doorstep, filthy and looking just as much a boy as before.

But she doesn't walk away from him the second time, although she does take to calling him Trotwood Copperfield instead of David. She learns a great deal from this young man, even in her old age. And when he is about to set off into the world, she gives him some advice in return. She says, "Never... be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you."

Now, all I can wish is that every parent and guardian gave his or her children the same advice, that the world taught its kids to be kind, to be true, and to cause happiness instead of pain to those around them. Think of how different the world would be if we lived like this. War would be impossible, for no one would knowingly intend harm to anyone else. Gossip would be unacceptable, for if one began sniping about someone else, those who heard the snipe would refuse to take part. 

Would all sadness cease? No, of course not. We would still do stupid things. We would still make mistakes. But instead of laughing at someone we accidently knocked to the ground, we'd hold out a hand and apologize, and we'd truly be sorry we'd hurt them. 

This advice has caused me to do all kinds of nice things just over the last week. I took my kids to the library today, even though I didn't have time (they were almost teary from the books they found). I saved the last piece of carrot cake for my husband (and I really wanted it, too). It made me sign three people into one of my day classes even though I only had room for one (I just couldn't turn the other two down!). 

I still have much to learn from this little kernel of wisdom. I should paint it on the walls of my office, so that I can read it through every day. I'd be a better person if I did.

Weeding Wisdom

I will get back to David Copperfield, but I was weeding yesterday, and as with the last time I weeded, I tend to philosophize as I pull out the horrid junk out from around my rose bushes. (I shouldn't be that mean when discussing these plants, but they really are annoying.)

If you'd like to read my other entry on the matter, I think it's on my defunct blog, so it's been a while since I wrote on the topic. I am struck, each time I do some gardening, by how informative it is about life--especially about my writing. Here are a few little kernels of what I learned yesterday:

1.  Get a problem out by the roots, and it won't come back. I can't tell you how many times I've pulled the leaves off a weed, only to see it come back in a week, stronger than ever. In my writing, I often tend to lop off a little scene that is giving me a sign of some bigger problem, rather than deal with the bigger problem. When I go back through the novel or play, though, the problem is still there. It won't go away until I take out the true cause, and that requires digging. (It also leads to the next item.)

2.  Get a shovel, and use it. When one revises a novel (or play), one might be more eager to fix a comma splice than delete an entire character, or scene, or situation. One might not want to admit the climax stinks, or that the whole beginning premise is absolutely lame. But if one doesn't take a hatchet to the work--or if one isn't at least willing to hold the hatchet out there, looking for places to hack--the real substantive changes will not occur, and the spine of the work is going to be weak.

My last piece of advice comes thanks to the neighborhood dog, who detests when I am weeding anywhere near the back fence, and thus barks savagely non-stop, hurling himself at the fence (which shudders) when I get quite close to it. So, here it is:

3.  It is very hard to weed with a dog barking savagely in the background. It makes me think of bursts like the NaNoWriMo concept, to write a novel in a month (it's coming up in November). If I have a huge deadline looming, if I feel as if a dog is barking at me over my shoulder, not only will I work less efficiently, but I will be miserable while I'm doing it. That stupid dog made gardening a chore when I normally would like to do it. Surely, after years of living here, it has to know I'm not coming through the fence, and surely I know it won't get to me, but the dreadful sound make me shudder (like the fence), and they set my hair on end. Not a good way to garden. Not a good way to write. 

It's almost fall, almost time for all the plants to take a breather--and that's good, since I have two classes starting in less than a week, and two more starting mid-October. Lots to do!

The Wisdom of Wilkins Micawber

*Before I get into today's blog--I have an update from yesterday's: It seems the little boy I mentioned refused to go to school at all, and he actually started hyperventilating at the prospect of another day there. Not great news. The mother doesn't know how she's going to pull this off.*

Now to today's:  

I've been reading--well, re-reading for the third time--Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, my favorite of his books, and the most autobiographical of any of them. (Please don't tell me I don't have time to do this. I know. I'm at expert at filling my life with tons of projects I have no time for). 

Anyway, the characters are eccentric and funny, disturbingly real and joyous (no wonder I like them), and they are also full of good advice. One such lovely character is that of Wilkins Micawber, a man fashioned after Dickens' own father. David Copperfield lives as a boarder in this man's house for about a year, and when Micawber is about to move away, he gives him two pieces of great advice. Here's the first:

My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. 

Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him! (p. 230)

Who knew that Micawber and I agreed on this. It's the reason I make obsessive lists, the reason I work hard every single day, blogging here before I've even dressed for the day, grading papers at the first opportunity, using every second of the day to do something useful and creative. But what happens if we procrastinate? I know exactly what happens, at least for me: the waiting projects loom over me, weighing me down, waking me in the middle of the night. Stuff undone undoes me, and my life is harder because of the put off tasks, not easier. 

Now to Micawber's other piece of advice, one most Americans could very well pay attention to:

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen, 

nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty 

pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, 

result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, 

the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and -- and 

in short you are for ever floored. As I am!   (p. 231)

Obviously, Americans are not paid in pounds, nor are they likely to earn only the equivalent of twenty, but the point is still the same: live within your means, and you will have peace of mind, security, and resulting "happiness." Live beyond your means, and accumulate debt more and more each year, and your stress will grow with it, it will pull from future income, and you will be in "misery." In this case, Wilkins Micawber knew the truth of this because he lived it, spending months at a time in debtor's prison because he didn't live within his means, even while his wife was nursing twins and his family were starving.

I could rant about this for a while, but I won't. The quotes pretty much speak for themselves. I'll have more kernels of truth next time, different advice from another unusual character.