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!

The Scent of Lilacs

My lilacs are blooming. I'm sure that's later than it would be for many of you across the country (don't they bloom in February where you are, Stephanie?), but they are calling to me now, wafting through my windows from where I planted them last year in the backyard. So nice of the little plants to grow to twice their size, and then bloom in the most wonderful way. 

Reminds me of a poem, one of my favorites, written by Walt Whitman... "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed." Here's a very short excerpt, from stanza seven:

(Nor for you, for one, alone;
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring:
For fresh as the morning—thus would I carol a song for you, O sane and sacred death.
All over bouquets of roses,
O death! I cover you over with roses and early lilies;	50
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
Copious, I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes;
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
For you, and the coffins all of you, O death.)

The "coffin" being discussed is Lincoln's, yet though the poem deals with the death of a man Whitman revered, it's filled with the lushness of hope despite death, power to be found in the flowers, the beauty of the earth, used to remember the dead. And that is what life is, hope mingled with sadness, or hope despite sadness. The smell of lilac reminds me to notice the beauty in the world. 

Some days I really need that reminder. 

Go out and smell some flowers... and think of your own favorite flower poem (I also love Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"). And if you hate poetry, let me know. I'll try to limit posts on it to one day a week (though that's always hard for me in spring).