While My Garden Sleeps

While my garden sleeps, I make big plans for it. Each year I learn more about how to make it bigger and more interesting. I have always had what one calls a “green thumb”, although I’ve also had my share of mistakes.

When I was seven years old, my mom’s cousin Dale Hollenbeck brought me all the spindly, sickly plants on his shelves to try to bring back to life. By some mystery, it turned out that I could actually keep them alive. I may not have brought them back to vigor, but I could at least give them a fighting chance at a couple more years.

I didn’t know a lot about gardening, as was evidenced by the time I planted a kidney bean in a peanut butter jar in the pure clay soil of our backyard. By some miracle, the bean came up — well, the stem came up, but the bean itself with its seed leaves remained in the clay. I was left with a botanical mystery — the headless chicken of the plant world, which persisted in its barely animate form.

Perhaps the most important childhood moment for me as a gardener was the discussion I had at age 14 with my neighbor and almost-grandfather, Johnny Belletini. Johnny taught me a small but extremely important lesson — all plants had names, even weeds, and even the weeds could be useful. Most importantly, he taught me about dandelion wine. This led to a very enthusiastic me running back to my house with a dandelion wine recipe in hand and forbidding my parents from mowing the lawn until I picked all the dandelion flowers for wine. (Note: there is nothing forbidding a fourteen-year-old from making dandelion wine in US statute. They just can’t drink it.) My parents and I spent four good years making wine as a result, until I left for college. But I digress.

I didn’t get back into growing plants (or winemaking, for that matter) until after I got my Ph.D., mostly because I had neither the time nor the place to garden. I dabbled in landscaping my wee rental house in Oneonta NY with shade plants because that’s all I had to work with. When I moved to Maryville and bought a house, however, my dreams of gardening blossomed (ahem) again. My taste in gardening developed.

At my first house, I had no basement, no sunny windowsills — and a taste for cottage flowers that would frame my cute little acquisition. I couldn’t find the plants I wanted at the local greenhouse. My father and I built me the world’s smallest greenhouse out of four wooden-framed storm windows, and I started seeds there every year for a while., running a cord out the back door to the chicken house heater that kept it warm. If the electricity went out, an entire crop could be ruined, and that happened at least once.

I live in a bigger house now with my husband, and this house has a full basement. In the room that used to be the coal room, the previous owner fitted it with shelves. We fitted it with shop fluorescents and grow bulbs, and I now have a grow room big enough to handle 12 seed flats.

The gardening theme at this house: Everything I plant needs to have something edible about it except for the moon garden, whose plants tend to be white-flowered, strongly scented, and toxic. Right now, I have the seed flats waiting for seeds at the right planting time. I have some seeds cold-stratifying in the basement refrigerator with some roots that I will plant in the spring. I have a piece of ginger which I hope will sprout so I can plant it for a bigger yield later this year.

As always, I have big plans for the garden as it slumbers in its February torpor.

Ready to Quit?

My tarot reading for today (Deck: The Good Tarot, a positive psychology/affirmations deck) says it’s time to decide whether I want to continue writing or not.

For all my threats of giving up, I’m not sure I’m ready. The problem is that when I want to quit, I’m running on feelings and moods, which in my case can run rather intense. What’s worse, I’m running on that primordial soup of past hurts that it’s easy to fixate on:

I thrive on recognition.Recognition is the positive attention that kept me going through a rather negative childhood.

I don’t deal well with rejection. (Who does?) As an overweight, highly intelligent, awkward child, I received a lot of rejection so I tend to overreact to it.

I don’t like being made a fool of, having been the butt of jokes much of my life. I’m afraid I’m being a fool by continuing to hope.

On the other hand:

I see myself as a hopeful person

I highly admire perseverance

I like the image of being a writer (although I wrestle with whether I need traditional publishing to feel like a writer)

I like writing. A lot. Editing, not so much. Querying — I love the optimism I feel when I send out a new query. I hate rejections.

I love to have people discover my writing.

The key, though, is that if I quit only to find that someone picks up Prodigies, I would un-quit in a second. If I had readers, especially ones I could communicate with, I would write with and for a community.

Quitting won’t get me what I need. So, how do I get what I need out of writing?

The Winter Doldrums

I’m fighting the winter doldrums.

The polar vortex with its -40 F (-40 C) wind chill has passed, and the warmer temperatures have melted some of the snow, but we’re now shrouded in grey skies and thick fog. There is nothing romantic in February fog and muddied snow.

My life looks like the terrain outside — isolated and isolating, with no shiny stars left over from Christmas to focus on. No bad news, but no good news either. Nothing other than the occasional rejection on the query front. No new life in my basement grow room, although the good news is that I will be starting some seeds in a couple weeks — tomatoes and peppers and eggplant; white flowers for the moon garden (aka the non-edible portion of my garden).

It’s hard to feel optimistic right now. It’s hard to believe that beneath the snow and ice of my life, plants slumber waiting for their time to reach for the sky.

are was were have had has — the inaction verbs

The words in the title — are was were have had has — are (see what I did there) too often substituted for action words that can make writing lively and immediate.

Let me try to write that first sentence again: Using “are”, “was”, “were”, “have”, “had”, and “has” instead of action verbs such as “need”, “possess”, “describe”, “denote” and others makes writing passive and unconvincing.

Or: Using more active verbs such as “need”, “possess”, “describe”, “denote” and others rather than “are”, “was”, “were”, “have”, “had”, and “has” makes writing more convincing and engaging.

I wish I remembered this during the writing stage rather than having to go back and edit out most of those passive verbs for more active ones.

That’s what I’m doing right now — editing Whose Hearts are Mountains, which consists mostly of making my verbs more active. I’m afraid I’m going to have to add more words to it to market it, I’m having to rewrite so much. Getting rid of the passive verbs causes me to get rid of passive, weak sentence fragments, so fewer words.

I try for not more than one “are”, “was”, “were”, “have”, “had”, and “has” per paragraph and only if I can’t find another way to write it. I wish I had the “pre” writeup for this, but this is post-edit. Just for you to read:

I crossed the border to Wyoming with little fanfare. Just on the other side of the border I saw a highway sign at the entrance for the town of Pine Bluffs. I parked the car at the shoulder of the ramp and consulted my doctored map. Soon, I would be at the border of No Man’s Land, a place without cities, gasoline, or food. A temperate desert, scathingly hot in the days and chilly in the evenings. I would need a city to stock up at, get my last refueling before I would need to rely on pressing castor beans and precipitating out the glycerin to make the biodiesel. I hoped I knew how to do that; Back at my last stop — I still felt gut-wrenching horror to remember it — I had written down the proportions of ethanol and lye to castor oil with a pencil stub I found in my coat pocket.

I drove toward Pine Bluffs, and the small gas station at the exit looked closed and shuttered. This didn’t surprise me — I suspected many proprietors would shun a gas station on the eerily deserted interstate. As I drove into town, I saw a wooden sign for the town with the carved letters painted over in black.

As I drove to the downtown, I noticed the skies darkening, and trees whipped in the wind around me. Looking at the stores, I saw nothing — houses shuttered and sagging. Buildings in the small Main Street stood deserted with furniture and goods still displayed in windows. Christmas decorations twisted in the wind on the light poles downtown. I parked my truck and stepped out to survey the streets, hearing only the wind howling.

At that moment, the wind died and the sky darkened almost to night. The most frightening silence surrounded me, most frightening in its completeness. I looked up and saw the funnel of the tornado in the near distance, and I kicked in the window and rolled through it, hoping the glass would not cut me fatally.

I turned and saw Christmas garlands ripped from their guy wires and realized blood may not be the worst of my problems. I ran through the aisles of what I recognized as an old-school hardware store. Near the antique counter of walnut and mellow gold wainscoting, I saw a door sagging open. I ran through it and down the stairs as the roaring demon coursed down the street.

Downstairs, I sat on the floor, wishing I’d thought to grab a hand-crank flashlight before I retreated. Eventually, however, my eyes adjusted to the dark broken only by the tiny window at the top.
I realized that I sat on a dessicated body.

I stood up quickly, shrieking, to survey the situation. A flannel shirt and pair of coveralls shrouded the bone and sinew. He had fallen face-down; I turned the corpse over carefully, and saw steel-rim glasses and a few scraps of silver hair adhered to his skull by leather-dried skin. Next to him, I noticed a stenographer’s pad, the pen by which he documented the tragedy of the town lying by his skeletal hand:

“Buried thirty people today with the backhoe; that’s all I could manage without help. There’s no one to help; I may be the only one left. The CDC said they can’t spare anyone, but the National Guard has posted people at all exits. Anyone who tries to get out is shot on sight.

“The streets remain empty of life, except for the random dog or cat, which seem immune to the disease. The bodies lie inside houses, where my neighbors succumbed to the fever and the rash and the despair. The despair doesn’t last long, because it takes only six hours from the rash to death.

“I will not be able to bury everyone, because my hands now carry the rash, and my armpits and neck swell and bruise. My hands burn and itch; soon my whole body will be on fire. I feel numb — even though I expected to die, I didn’t expect to be taken by the sickness, but by eventual hunger.

“If anyone finds this, I hope my corpse doesn’t carry the infection. I am not sure how long I’ve carried the virus, but the rumor is that it takes only hours from contamination to death; at least my suffering will not last long.

“Mayweather Gleason, 64, Pine Bluffs WY Nov. 2, 2030.”

My ideal writing spot

My husband asked me to write about my ideal writing spot. I told him that I already knew my ideal writing spot — a cabin at nearby Mozingo Lake. After all, I said, I could curl up on the couch next to a fireplace in a cozy nook, look out the window at the lake, and type.

I don’t have access to that spot more than once a year or so, which means I have to deal with less than ideal writing spots. Take, for example, my living room (my most common writing spot). I generally write sitting on the couch, with a lap desk securely holding my Surface Pro 3 (an older but serviceable tablet with detachable keyboard). We have a fireplace, sort of — one of those little plug-in electric heaters that if one pretends really well looks like a fireplace. There’s tea here when Richard makes a pot. It’s not my favorite spot, though, because I can’t spread out and be cozy.

We have an office, a small room that was touted as a bedroom in the real estate ads for this house yet seems too small to put even a twin bed in. It’s overfull with bookshelves and a library table, and although its large monitor calls to me, the feeling of cluttered claustrophobia keeps me from taking the space seriously.

Going out to write, of course, gives me a fresh perspective on writing. Board Game Cafe in Maryville, MO (as I’ve mentioned before) has good coffeehouse ambience with just enough distraction to make writing easy. The Starbucks in the campus library (aka the best Starbucks in the US given its location and spacious seating area) works excellently. Both these places need a fireplace, though.

Going back to the Mozingo cabin, I think the reason it’s my favorite writing space is because it’s truly a retreat, a visible break from everyday routine. It’s something I can’t have all the time. Even if we put a real fireplace in my comfortable living room (impossible because of the need for ventilation) my living room would be someplace I would need to take a break from, to get a new view on my writing.

I’m still looking for how to make home more ideal, though.

My Qualms about Self-Publishing

I said I would share my reservations about self-publishing.

My first reservation — and I might as well get it out of the way — traditional publishing feels more legitimate. Agents and publishers curate one’s work and bestow the title of “author” and all its blessings unto the writer. The reputation of the publisher reflects upon the writer. Traditional publishing speaks of centers of commerce, big cities, a certain cachet. On the other hand, self-publishing feels to me like declaring oneself an author, hoping nobody puts an asterisk after it because it’s not blessed by a publishing house. Do I need someone else to tell me I’m an author? Honestly, yes. It sounds stupid, but there it is.

My second reservation relates to the first — I feel unsuited to self-promotion. There’s a reason I didn’t go into sales; in fact, professoring is the polar opposite to sales. As a professor, my work is judged on its scientific and factual merit, its rhetorical accuracy, and its readability — not its saleability. I fear that promoting myself will consist of getting into people’s faces and disturbing their regularly scheduled Facebook lives and begging them to read my book. I can’t even bring myself to ask my Facebook friends to read my book, much less strangers. I tried putting one of my books on WattPad, and had a total of 21 readers, whereas much more poorly written items had thousands of readers.

My third reservation has to do with resources — how much of my writing time will go into promoting my book? I have a full time career already, and I’m the sole earner in my family so retiring early isn’t an option. I also have little money to put into promotion.

My fourth reservation? I have no idea what to do for self-publishing past “Write, edit, find a cover, post on a platform”. Someone suggested asking a published author to make a recommendation — I am acquainted to one, and she didn’t return my request.

What isn’t a concern? Making money. I’m still not in this for the money (although it would be good to break even in terms of editing and promotional outlays). I want to be read; I want people to think my work is good. I’m not expecting a huge number of readers, especially as agents don’t champion my work because they don’t think they’ll get a return on it.

I’m just really, really scared of self-publishing.

Playing Devil’s Advocate to my Writing Career

Well, we survived the power outage yesterday, and the windchill now is only -18 F (-28 C). We spent about 2 1/2 hours in candlelight and bundled up with hot tea (the stove still worked) in hand. We still had charge on our computers and internet from a backup power system for our modem and router.

So I’m still here, despite the cold, despite the fact that I got another rejection yesterday.

I’m still here, but I don’t know what that means.

I think about giving up writing at times. I’ve slowed down considerably on the writing front to edit the backlog of what I’ve written, so it’s harder to remember the thrill of writing new things. It’s easier to examine my writing, find the places where I fell into mediocrity, and wonder if my work deserves to get published.

It’s harder to remember the reasons I started writing — because I felt I had something important to say — and easier to consider the work, the hard work of writing and editing and querying — with no guaranteed rewards.

It’s harder to call myself a writer and easier to let it fade away and find another hobby.

I’ve given up things before — I used to write songs. I used to be a singer-songwriter until I divorced my guitarist twenty-some years ago and couldn’t perform my songs anymore. Those songs, almost twenty in number, still exist; I don’t sing them anymore. I wrote a song a couple years ago with my friend Mary Shepherd — it’s a Christmas carol. I don’t know what to do with it.

Giving up is not necessarily a bad thing. If the practice isn’t worth the pain, if the resources put in do not yield rewards, the logical thing is not to continue putting time into something that’s not working. To put more time or money into a fruitless pursuit or a junker car is called the sunk-cost fallacy, and like all fallacies, it is illogical.

I don’t know that I’m going to give up writing, but I have to look at it as a viable option, and ask myself if it’s still worth the time to me if I can’t get traditionally published.

My feelings about self-publishing are worth their own essay.

aaaaand the power just went out.

I think that if I could pick the one time I would not want the power to go out, it would be on that morning when we have a negative 30 wind chill. Here I sit, writing in candlelight while the Internet battery backup allows me to still post. Then we have a wi-fi hotspot with at least a little more juice if we need it

We have a generator in case this lasts longer than an hour or two. That will give us heat and refrigeration at least. We will not freeze, but we may find ourselves a bit chilly.

This was not how I expected to spend this day off. Not at all.

The Wind Chill

The temperature at this moment is -17 F (-22 C) with windchills of -32 F (-35.5 C). At this temperature, any exposed skin will develop frostbite in ten minutes. The US Postal Service suspends deliveries to save its workers from literally freezing to death and schools shut down. Outdoors could kill me today with very little effort, if I were to venture out and stay there.

I’m not sure why I got out of bed this morning. It’s hard even thinking about moving, even in a blessedly warm house, with temperatures outside like that. It’s bitterly cold outside, and my body wants to eat high-carb food, gain twenty pounds of fat, and hibernate for the winter.

I will do nothing of the sort. I have coffee to drink, blankets to swath myself in, books to edit. I have gardens to plan. I defy the chill, even though it frightens me with its potency outside.