Recently, as I finished a final round of edits on
CROOKED LITTLE LIES, my novel that is coming out shortly from Amazon/Lake Union, I was
also putting in the major elements of the garden that has been in the planning
stages since I moved out to the country a year ago, and I was thinking how
similar the two occupations are. Either undertaking begins with a thought, an
idea, an image, some whisper of something that sends you out the door or to the
desk. Notes are jotted down. Sketches are made. Plans are put into action.
Sometimes you hit a wall. Out here in the country, in particular, where there
aren’t the usual parameters, like sidewalks, driveways and privacy fences, to
define the area, I’m often stumped. How far should I take the limestone
dry-stack wall? What, exactly, should the cedar rail fence with its adorable
peaked arbor encompass? I go outside and stare, trying to decide. It’s very
like sitting at my computer, wondering which way to take a plot or a character
in a story.
Gardener’s block and writer’s block have a lot in common.
There’s a certain despair, rising levels of frustration and anxiety. I can
almost see this little person in my head pacing the floor, wringing her hands.
Until a voice speaks up, yelling: Just do something! In the case of writing it
means type a sentence even if it’s gibberish. In the garden, it might mean
getting a few rocks, adding them to the existing wall and stepping back to
evaluate. Or it might mean digging up that entire clump of daylilies, because
they’re in the wrong place. It can get complicated with crafting a story, too, requiring
of anything from ripping out an entire plotline to totally changing an ending.
 |
Built from cedar harvested on the property, this little arbor
in January looks pretty bare, but it has lots of potential. |
And the two processes also share similarities in the method
by which either one is created. Both start with good bones. In the garden, I
begin with hardscaping, a wall, a length of fence, statuary or a pergola—some
focal point to build around. In story writing I begin if not with a fully
fleshed synopsis then at least I will have the bones of an idea. And in either
case, for me, anyway, the bones need to be strong and compelling. I need an
ocean’s worth of enthusiasm, because either way, I‘m going to be lost in this muddy,
unknown territory for awhile. Either project is going to take time to complete,
and there are bound to be setbacks, small heartbreaks and jabs of disappointment,
never mind the odd bouts of confusion, the times I grope around wondering
wondering where I am. It’s as easy to garden your way into a corner, as it is
to write your way into one.
But there is one difference between the two occupations, one
that I discovered only now, as I sent
CROOKED LITTLE LIES back to my lovely editor
for the last time. I went outside to the garden, my go-to place. It’s always
been my sanctuary even as it can be the greatest source for distress, and as I
 |
This is Sophia, my beautiful garden muse,
found this spring. |
was looking over results of my early spring efforts so far, and feeling
impatient that the perennials are so small, that the shrubs haven’t filled in,
that the trees will need their canvas-strap supports for another six months and
I hate how it looks, the word STOP! popped into my head. A voice continued: You’re
missing it, the beauty now. The beauty of beginning, of watching something
grow. It often happens that I’ll hear this voice, my higher self, the one that
knows how to find the joy in life. And I’m so grateful for it, to have
cultivated it so it’s usually louder than the voice of my frustration. It’s
this voice, what I’ve come to think of as the voice of my joy, that sees me
through the hard places in life. It’s there whenever I care to listen no matter
what I’m doing, and definitely whether I’m writing or gardening. But back to
the difference between them, standing in the garden that day, while I did slow
down and let my vision fill with the beauty that is already in evidence, that
little voice spoke up again to whisper that while the book was finished, the
garden, like so many other gardens I’ve begun in my lifetime, never will be
done. I will always walk outside and see something I want to do there. In fact,
I will quite possibly die thinking of the phlox or some other clump of whatever
flowers, how tomorrow I will move them as they have overgrown their place in
the border. And perhaps that is a garden’s value, that one is never finished
conspiring with nature over its creation. It comforted me, even elated me, having
that thought. And I guess it does share a similarity with writing after all. I
can’t see how I’ll ever be finished with conjuring plots, either, for the
characters that continue to get up and walk around in my head.
The members of the Happy Bookers called me before they began
what I heard was a lively discussion of CROOKED LITTLE LIES. They passed the
phone around to say how much they enjoyed the story and a bit about what it
meant to them. I was thrilled. 
