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In The Dirt

I have been up to it in dirt : the kind that grows, the stuff that clogs.
But planting a garden can yield some good things, both to eat and to improve your writing.

Planting my summer garden is giving me breaks from the other kind of dirt, the dust bunnies and muddy clumps that jam my creativity and blur my writing like a window in need of a good scrub.

What clogs my writing:

  • Overthinking: spinning my mental wheels on a phrase or image that won’t budge

  • Lack of attention: allowing chores, laziness, other people’s needs or my own excuses take me away from my writing time

  • Ridiculous demands: I choose to immerse myself in a busy home and family life. Expecting I will finish my book in a few weeks without changing that pattern is like planting seeds on a Tuesday and expecting to eat from the garden on Wednesday afternoon

  • Avoidance of what I want to say,or where I need to go in my story, searching for words that I already have but don’t trust myself to spit out

How does gardening help my writing?

If for no other reason, it gets me off my butt, into the fresh air, and hands-deep into something tangible. Ideas and words are powerful but engage a different set of senses than physical actions.  Soil warm and damp, tiny plants green and fragrant, the sun on my back and a breeze kissing my cheek – all these sensations bring spirit back to body and relax the mind, which is when the great writing can germinate and flow

Gardening, like writing, is also an exercise in delayed gratification. I need to get my hands dirty now if I want the sweet juiciness of fresh veggies come late summer. When I savour that first bite of a sun-ripened tomato, the mess and backache and sunburn will be forgotten. It’s the same with my manuscript: if I want to savour the journey of a well-tended story, I need to roll up my sleeves, kneel into the cauldron of cacophony and weed, till, plant, fertilize, water and tend my writing. I need to plunge into the muddy patches until they run clear, choose key words or memories and give space for them to grow, pull out by the roots any scenes or characters or chapters, even, that are strangling the story I want to tell. There is no other way but to get dirty and put in the work.

But oh, the rewards. Keep at it. Rose or radish, whatever you’re growing will make the world a bit better.