It's a Great Life If You Don't Weaken

by Nib

Anticipation 

Spring is here! As soon as the snow melts, anyway. I have to admit it’s been a tough few months for me. I didn’t winter well. I struggled with dreary days in a cold house. But I developed a routine, determined to persevere. I scribbled my way through one completed manuscript, ¾ of the way through another, which will probably remain unfinished. And finally settled in to write the first in a series I’ve been thinking about for a while. The first draft is nearly done on that puppy.

I kept myself to an ambitious daily word count, even if some of those days I resorted to only writing description because I wasn’t sure where the plot was heading. In addition to that, I forced myself to get outside on all but the blizzardiest days for at least an hour. I knew that eventually spring would arrive and I’d finally get to plant my vegetable garden and enjoy the sunshine.

I sought out inspiring messages. I read all those clichés on Facebook about positive thinking and counting blessings. I did my best to create a positive attitude. It didn’t always work but it didn’t hurt.

In a faith-validating way, April swung around and I planted a vegetable garden. And now it’s growing and I’m heaving a huge sigh of relief. I don’t have to put so much effort into feeling happy. Hearing the birds sing, waiting for the first burst of color from my peonies, and feeling the sun on my face is all the inspiration I need.

Today, I’m going to share one of the bits of inspiration I tacked up last winter to remind myself to buck up. I saw it online someplace and printed it out. It’s from Doe Zantamata.

We believe what we tell ourselves.

Tell Yourself:

Everything will work out.

Things will get better.

You are important.

You are worthy of great things.

You are loveable.

The time is now.

This too, shall pass.

You can be who you really are.

The best is yet to come.

You are strong.

You can do this.  

My father-in-law used to have a saying I love: It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.

I often resort to one of my favorite lines I first saw on a greeting card: It’ll all be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.

Look at their sweet newborn selves!

Now as I happily trip through the sunshiny spring and summer of growth and delight, I’ll shed the heaviness of winter. Not to get too maudlin, but life and the seasons cycle around. Maybe the dreariness of winter won’t hit me like a sledgehammer next year. But eventually, I’ll run into another rough patch and I’ll need to circle my emotional wagons again.

As an aside, the Hopi tribe, featured in my mysteries, believe that planting seeds and growning things is essential to maintaining not only the Earth's balance but our own personal balance. 

What about you? What tricks, methods, exercises do you engage when you need to pull yourself from the depths?

Cooking Our Bounty

Last time I wrote about planting our literary seeds, weeding, and harvesting. Today I ponder tools, secrets, and tricks for turning our produce into an enjoyable meal.

Equipment is important. It’s almost impossible to cook or write without the proper tools. Cutting boards, knives, and woks are a few of the tools necessary to prepare vegetable stir-fries. For writers it’s not only about the laptop. It’s about collecting the skills essential to our craft. Taking classes, attending workshops, reading books on writing, finding a good writing coach or critique group.

It’s best if we weigh carefully the flavors we work with. Our choice of genres can be thought of as our garden’s herbs and spices. Mix too many genres and we’ve got confusing flavors. Hybrid genres are one thing. A post apocalyptic fantasy thriller that takes place in the Wild Wild West with SF and romantic elements will taste like some of the confusion foods that try to pass as fusion foods. Know what we are writing and write it boldly.

Just as gardeners and cooks approach produce differently, each writer has a unique style and brings to his work different strengths. Some focus on plot and some excel at developing characters. Some are all about the beauty of the sentence. Even thin or unwieldy plots can sell well if the writing is brilliant, just as one chef’s simple, local offerings can succeed as can the creations of another who focuses on complex and exotic ingredients.

Writing, like gardening, is all about hidden secrets. Seeds are the most obvious and miraculous secrets. But there are countless other garden secrets. Sure, a zucchini plant can net enough fruit to feed 100 armies, but if plucked at the just the right time, the blooms can be used to make one of the best appetizers in the world, stuffed squash blossoms. In a writing career and in each of our books (regardless of genre) there are hidden mysteries. The secret is to find and share them.

We grow veggies to eat them. It’s important, then, to do them justice, but not too much justice. Cooking them too long turns them into paste. Some of us writers cook our books so long we never consider our work finished. Sometimes we fear failure; sometimes we fear success; sometimes we hesitate to start a new project. If we are aware of our fears, we may be less likely to overcook our produce.

On the other hand, there are those of us who don’t let the sauces simmer long enough to meld the flavors. We whip through a draft or two then send our books off, false hope in the mail. Tomato sauce doesn’t belong on noodles unless it’s had a good long time to simmer the flavors to Italian perfection. We’re better off considering five drafts half simmered.

We could layer in discussion about our lives as the soil we start with, fertilizers that inspire our words, bad-habit weed barriers, and selling our produce in the farmer’s market. But metaphors are like truffle shavings, too much of a good thing overwhelms.

Words are food for thought. We grow them so we and others can enjoy them.

The clouds are cooperating. Inkpot wishes you good gardening and good eating! Bon Appetite!