A Garden Surprise

 Catherine Dilts

Summers in Colorado tend to be go-go-go. We want to fit in all the outdoor adventures that don’t involve snow sports. The growing season is short at higher elevations. If you want to stop to smell the roses, you’d better do it quick!

One of my favorite hobbies is gardening. I’m far from alone. 55% of the US population lists gardening as their hobby. Over 70 million households engage in gardening activities.

There are dozens of reasons for digging in the dirt. For me, gardening gives me a connection to the planet. I’m more aware of the changing seasons when thinking about seed starting, planting, and harvesting. I get exercise carrying bags of soil, bending and squatting to weed beds, lifting watering cans to hanging flower planters, and generally getting my butt off a chair and into the outdoors.

My garden is modest. I do enjoy some produce, and might do a little canning and freezing if the harvest is good. As the years go by, and the pine trees shade my yard more, I’ve moved almost exclusively to container gardening.

When your chosen career involves hammering away at a keyboard for hours at a time, you need reasons to step away. Move around. Eye health requires looking away from screens every hour. Focus on something further away than your fingers.

During one step-away session, I went outside to admire our grapevine. In the half dozen years of its existence, it has never produced grapes. I was surprised to see tiny green globes for the first time.

I typically have a flaw in my writing schedule. Winter is more conducive to sitting at my computer for hours. It’s a way to avoid facing the gloomy, short days happening outside. Summer should be lived closer to nature. Yet I frequently end up tackling new projects or doing heavy editing in the summer.

In June, my co-author / daughter and I released book one in our YA series, Frayed Dreams. Book two, Broken Strands, will be out before the end of July. I’m doing final edits on my cozy mystery, book three in the Rose Creek Mystery series, The Body in the Hayloft. I won’t list the half dozen other projects I have going. My ambition exceeds the hours in a day. And my own energy level.

Marathon sessions should be for hiking, not sitting in my desk chair. To maximize my participation in summer, I work on the deck in the fresh air, as weather permits. If I hadn’t stepped away from my computer, I wouldn’t have seen the grapevine surprise.

I’m refreshed by the sun slanting through the ash tree, the sound of birds singing, and the scent of flowers wafting on the breeze. Time to get back to work.

The End

 by Catherine Dilts

The first killing freeze is late to arrive this year. My garden, lacking access to weather apps, has already slowed way down.

The tomatoes have quit producing, not realizing they could have gone on another couple weeks. The cucumber vines shriveled, the leaves turning dry despite regular watering. Instead of one sudden death in the form of a hard frost or early snow, things are winding down. The garden stumbles gradually toward The End.

In writing, two projects reached The End recently. That moment is glorious. Finally completed! Time to sell the books to an eager publisher, make a fortune, and move on to write the next bestseller!

Not exactly. Both novels were brutalized by beta readers. Am I being too sensitive? Maybe just a little. Like the garden, I'm not ready to give up yet. I received the most incredibly helpful comments on the big novel-of-my-heart from my critique partner. I’m getting a grasp on how to do revisions that will convince the rest of the world what a magnificent story I’ve created.

The second project is an ambitious YA co-authored with my daughter. After beta readers didn’t seem to grasp our brilliance, she became depressed. Almost ready to give up. Almost. Then something snapped. She’s coming up with amazing ideas that are giving life to characters, and placing them in ridiculously perilous situations. All the plotlines are weaving together with the strength of a bridge cable.

There’s hope these books will make it into the marketplace eventually. Soon? This rewriting and polishing is a hard task. The goal is in sight. Hope is reborn.

New life when you’ve just about given up. Like my two potted miniature cherry tomato plants. They are the only tomatoes still pushing out blossoms. They might create one last crop for me.

The End in gardening involves harvesting the produce, and doing something with it. Drying, canning, or freezing. (Canning jars ready for pickle relish.) Cleaning up the beds and containers before they're covered with the eventual blanket of snow.

The End in writing frequently results in realizing you’re not finished. There remains more editing, polishing, and review by trusted critique partners or beta readers. The absolute final step is doing something with it: sending it out into the world.

Each phase of gardening and writing is its own special season. Each requires a different kind of energy. And the courage to keep watering that bed if it promises to produce one last crop.

Preparation

by Catherine Dilts 

Gardening and fiction writing both begin with a dream. In writing, it’s the spark of a story idea. In gardening, the dream is often born in the depths of winter, with a yearning for warm days and neat rows of green things. For either of these dreams to come true, you have to prepare.

What might sound surprising is that the preparation phase in gardening is not about seeds and plants. Not quite yet. Before ever putting a shovel in the ground, you plot out a garden. Measure your gardening space. How much room do you have? How many plants can you grow in that space? What variety will produce the number of tomatoes you hope to harvest? Will you really pick and use cilantro or dill? A certain amount of planning is prudent.

Fiction writing requires preparation, too. Writers have likely heard of the Panster versus Plotter techniques. Pantsers start on page one and just write, letting the story flow under its own steam. Plotters outline their story, like a driver marking their route to a destination on a map.

I have learned through trial and error that I need to outline heavily. Otherwise, I write myself into a corner. I spend hours returning to the beginning of the story to install the clues and red herrings needed in a good mystery. Outlining helps me avoid that.

Most writers aren’t 100% a Pantser or Plotter. Every Pantser I’ve talked to does have, at bare minimum, an idea of where the story is going. And although I tediously outline my stories from beginning to end, they frequently diverge from that carefully crafted path, taking a surprising and unplanned route.

Preparation to plant a garden or write a story can be agonizing for me. But tossing a handful of random seeds onto the ground will be unlikely to produce the vegetables I want. Likewise, throwing words onto my computer in any kind of order usually results in an unreadable mess.

Once the preparation is complete, and I have a map for the garden or the story, the next part of the work starts. Now the real fun begins.

(Note on photo: With preparation, I was able to start a second crop of lettuce in late August after harvesting zucchini.)

A Different Kind of Energy

I am delighted to join the Type M for Murder crew with my second post! I’m finding a wealth of insights into the fiction writing process and the writer’s life in other authors’ blog articles. I hope I can contribute new ideas based on my own journey.

This spring and summer, I have been exploring parallels between my gardening efforts and my fiction writing. Writing and gardening share phases of development. Each phase has a different kind of energy. You don’t need to love each phase, but you do need to strive for competency in all the phases if you hope for overall success.

Let’s dig in to the starting point. If you’ve never gardened, this may surprise you.

Gardening doesn’t begin with plants, or even seeds. It doesn’t even begin with the soil. A garden begins with a dream.

During the depths of winter, gardening catalogs begin to arrive in the mailbox. From general commercial seed catalogs, to mom-and-pop gardening supply businesses, to specialty heirloom tomato seed companies, they all tempt with beautiful illustrations of possibilities. Experienced gardeners also have a stash of seed packets or saved seeds from past seasons.

In writing, this is the idea phase. Another sort of dreaming. An image pops into your imagination. A snippet of a scene. A character. A setting. Snatches of dialogue. Most writers struggle with the quantity of story ideas. Which ones will blossom into short stories or novels?

In the garden and in creative writing, you can’t do everything. My garden space is limited. I want to grow ten different varieties of pole beans, but I only have room for three or four. I’d like to grow pumpkins, but they take an enormous amount of unfettered space.

I have ideas for three new series and a stand-alone novel. I don’t have the energy or physical capacity to bring all of them to life. Not all at once.

You begin with the dream of the garden, or the story. Seeing what you want in your imagination. Lush. Potent. Compelling. The dream begins to take form. Let this phase take you to impossible places.

The dreaming phase is a different kind of energy. Done right, it can lead to amazing results. Ignore the dream, and nothing will bear fruit.

Next time, I’ll talk about phase two in gardening and writing.