I'm polishing a draft of my stand-alone novel. This story has taken years for me to figure out how to write. Now I've got a viable draft. The final scenes are intense. Weather plays a role.

The Front Range of Colorado, on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, is dry. We're on the far western edge of the Great Plains, which at one time in history was called the Great American Desert. 

I was having difficulty connecting to stormy weather. We'd been in a hot, dry spell. I remember what a rainstorm is like. I even have memories of tornado season in Oklahoma in my youth. I had to pull out the dusty drawers of memory to inspire and add realism to the scenes in my novel.

Then the dry spell broke, and rain fell. Sure, it was the time of the season for afternoon storms. But it felt like synchronicity. Dark skies, pounding rain,  and blustery gusts of wind triggered that kernel of instinctive fear that we might not survive the whims of Mother Nature.

Great inspiration when writing a fictional storm scene. And great for our lawn and garden, too.

Garden report: I harvested my first zucchini. Tomatoes are still green, but there are lots of them. We've begun harvesting green beans. And I made flavored simple syrup from the chocolate mint, to use in mocktails.

I hope your summer is going well, with a balance of warm sunny days and just the right amount of rain.

My garden has been ramping up slowly. If you've never gardened in the Colorado foothills you may be dismayed by the pride I have in my meager results.

I've learned the importance of celebrating the small victories. Not just in gardening. In my writing life. My family. My financial accomplishments. I'm solidly Midwest, middle class, gloriously mediocre.

It has taken me decades to come to terms with being ordinary. 

On the other hand, I have to realize I do some amazing things. Most people, if you take the time to ask, have done or are doing amazing things in life.

Growing tomatoes is a small miracle. Writing a novel and getting it published is another. Sometimes, just surviving one more day is miraculous. Raising children. Running a mile. Unknowingly touching a life in a positive way. Watching the sun rise or set, really watching and listening and feeling.

In a novel I'm polishing, a character uses the line, not everyone gets to be an astronaut. Meaning, not everyone gets to do publicly noticed, amazing, adventurous things. But please take note of the quiet miracles in your life.  

What's one thing you've accomplished? It could be small in the grand scheme of things, but it may be the focal point of your life. Or even a side quest that had unexpected results. Let's celebrate the fruits of this gift of life. No matter how modest the harvest.

Gardening requires weeding. Writing requires editing, and something more. 

My container garden doesn't need much weeding. The boxes, tubs, and pots are a controlled environment. A few weeds arrive airborne, or come in the potting mix. My remaining in-ground garden beds can run rampant with weeds if I don't stay on top of things. 

What are weeds? Welcome in one environment, a flower, groundcover, or grass becomes a weed when it pops up among the vegetables, herbs, or flowers you deliberately planted. Mint is a fine example. It tends to be invasive. You plant it on one side of the garden bed, and it sends runners under and over ground to establish new colonies wherever it pleases.

I grow mint. Where I want it, mint is a wonderfully useful herb. When it invades the tomatoes, it's a weed.

Now to writing. When does "weeding" come into play? Not too long ago, people wrote entire novels on typewriters. I'll sometimes jot ideas or preliminary outlines with pen and notepad. But I primarily write fiction on a laptop computer. 

In the olden days, authors could tell you how many drafts their novel went through before completion. My writing friends have mused about the impossibility of counting drafts when you create on a computer. I typically have several versions of a novel-in-progress labeled first draft, with later copies labeled with the month and year, or the date I began that revision. 

Each version involved editing during the process of creation. I won't discuss all the levels of editing. Here's a good introduction on the Writer's Digest blog. The article discusses editing in the context of hiring someone to do it for you. Most of us are doing nearly every stage ourselves, or with the help of unpaid critique partners and beta readers.

What part of writing a novel involves "weeding"? All stages, I would argue. The writer searches for that which does not belong here. It may be perfectly okay in another part of the novel, or another work entirely. But not here.

In the YA my daughter and I are co-authoring, we're yanking out by the roots passive voice and weak action. Wording that was fine in early versions, when we had to get the first draft hammered out, is now a weed.

As an example, we noticed a pattern of using "was." Perfectly fine in most cases when used as an auxiliary verb, "was" more often diluted the sense of urgency in our story. Instead of "he was going," say "he went." She was climbing becomes she climbed. When you know what to look for, those weeds begin to pop out at you.

Other weeds were long introductory scenes we later realized weren't needed in the book. Entire paragraphs have been slashed. Even secondary characters have been removed.

​There are many more weeds to pull.  My shameful garden bed is in transition to something entirely different. I'll whack those weeds out with a hoe before they get worse. Perhaps we'll make it over into a flower bed next year. The YA novel is now with beta readers. They will find more weeds for us to pull, helping us to make the book better.

Weeding gardens, writing, or life in general is an on-going process. Instead of treating it like a dreaded chore, try approaching it as a chance to make things more beautiful and less complicated.

Is it really the end of June? Last weekend, I took off for the mountains. I didn't work on my writing, except to contemplate a plotline while watching my fishing line.

We dragged our camp chairs and fishing poles to the shore of the reservoir. It is well known that the best fishing is done here from a boat. Shore fishing is a mostly fruitless occupation.

Maybe that's why we return here year after year. We don't actually want to be bothered with catching a fish.

Shortly after our arrival, however, I did catch a trout. It was hardly worth the effort. Legal size to keep, but not worthy of a cheesy look-what-I-did photograph. 

Our younger daughter brought her new baby, a cute puppy who went wild with excitement. All the smells, the sounds, the water birds. Sophie desperately wanted a duck or pelican. 

Kind of like how new authors are desperate to achieve fame and fortune, or at least a wee bit of attention. We lunge at the end of our leashes, splashing our paws in that big publishing pond where we're certain we'll catch the prize.

Taking a weekend off was refreshing, although I experienced moments of anxiety about not working. Now I'm back at it, preparing to submit a short story to a magazine. My eldest daughter and I are polishing a final draft of our YA novel for our young beta readers to review. I'm almost done revising my mainstream novel. Now I'm eager to start on new projects.

The garden didn't suffer from our brief absence, but let us know summer is here. The planters and in-ground vegetables and flowers need water regularly. We can't rely on the spotty rain of the desert high plains and foothills.

My writing requires consistency, too. If I don't work on a project for a few days, it wilts. But I also come back to it with fresh eyes.

I had time, while sitting on the shore watching my fishing pole, to think about Sophie. Our daughter held her leash to prevent her from running off into danger. She couldn't reach her goal of a juicy duck. What am I doing that holds me back from achieving my publishing goals? What, actually, are my goals?

Flowers on vegetable plants are the promise of good things to come. If you live in a different climate than central Colorado, you may be scratching your head at my excitement. Late-June, and I am finally seeing hope that my garden will produce.

I've plucked a few leaves off kale plants to throw into smoothies. But the satisfaction of a meal cooked from ingredients harvested from my garden is weeks away.

My writing life has been in a similar period of growth. The labor has yet to bear fruit. I've completed two short stories. Book three in my Rose Creek series is with my editor. A stand-alone novel is going through beta reads. Book four in the Rose Creek series is in the outlining stage. And the YA I'm co-authoring with my daughter is nearing completion.

I'm giving myself permission to take breaks. Sitting on the deck with a cup of tea first thing in the morning is a treat. ​While we're striving toward goals, or maybe just trying to survive day to day, we need to enjoy moments of peace and quiet, or exuberant joy, wherever we find them.

I'm not much of a talker. Never was. When I was two, my parents became concerned that I still was barely speaking. Or talked baby talk to my older sister, who would translate for me. Nothing much has changed over the years, except that my sister abdicated her translator role at some point, leaving me to fumble through communication on my own.

​What does this have to do with writing? My slow acquisition of speaking skills seems rooted in my inability to Speak Up For Myself. Add in a native Midwestern reticence to toot one's own horn, and I have abysmal skills at self-promotion.

I learned to communicate through writing. It's what I do best. I've managed to become traditionally published: a dozen novels and over a dozen short stories. With that track record, you might imagine I'm preparing to buy my own island. Nope. Like the vast majority of authors, my writing barely earns me a profit - forget earning a living. I am a competent writer. Some have called my work brilliant. There. I said it. But promoting my own work? I cringe at public bragging and buy-my-book pitches.

What does this have to do with gardening? I realized long ago that non-gardeners aren't interested in my beans. I might wax poetic about growing, picking, and eating the fruits of my labor, but few other people care. Unless I'm handing them a bag of my home-grown produce. On occasion, I've received painful comments about my small tomatoes or oddly shaped cucumbers not matching their grocery store counterparts. 

Writers are at this point nodding in agreement. You sweat blood to create your story. You give a free copy to friends or family, believing it is a great gift, the emotional equivalent of handing them a gold bar, or bag of heirloom tomatoes (gold and homegrown tomatoes being equal in value by the ounce). And you get crickets in return. No review on Goodreads. Maybe a sympathetic "nice, job, dear" that makes you question the meaning of your existence.

A lot of my angst is My Own Darn Fault. For a decade, I've treated writing as a side gig. My day job pay and benefits were adequate, and writing was what I did for fun. Now that I'm retired, I can write full time.

At this point in the game, I realize it's not about the money.  Just like I garden for my own enjoyment, and to supplement the groceries, writing is what I do to stay sane, and hopefully provide a few bucks toward a  vacation once a year. So don't expect me to become a rabid promoter. I'm still too Midwestern reticent to jump on a soapbox and shout about my beans and short stories.

But you just might hear a little more often from me on social media.
​
The Body in the Cattails - A Rose Creek Mystery - Book 1
The Body in the Cornfield - A Rose Creek Mystery - Book 2
The Rock Shop Mystery series

The garden is in a stage of intense growth. I haven’t harvested much besides chives. But plants will produce eventually, gradually building to a late summer harvest of quantities of vegetables.

In writing, this period might be when a writer is putting lots of words down, but not completing stories. Or sending stories out into the world, but not achieving publication.

No one can seem to pin down the origin of the writing advice that you don’t get good until you’ve written a million words. Or how that is defined. But one blogger did attempt to discover who uttered the often quoted advice first, believing it might have been Ray Bradbury.

What does one million words equal? Ten 100,000 word books, which are approximately 400 pages each. Or thirteen 300 page books. You don’t need to have that many books published. You just need to write the equivalent of that many books. Easy, right?

Malcolm Gladwell presented the idea in his book Outliers that it requires 10,000 hours of practice in a field in order to develop world-class skill. That equals 250 forty hour weeks. Approximately five years. But who writes forty hours a week? Even if you’re truly diligent, figure twenty hours a week, and it’ll take you ten years to achieve Gladwell’s goal.

That rings true for me. I published my first paid work in 2012. Many years before that, I was plugging away at fiction, and for many years after, fitting writing around the day job and family obligations.

At this point in life, I have written a million words, and then some. I’ve put in more than 10,000 hours. I just now feel I’m hitting my stride writing fiction. I’m a slow learner and writer. Hopefully your journey will be much speedier.

And the garden? It has taken me years to achieve the level of competency I now enjoy. Even so, I have much to learn about gardening. I have put in less hours trying to grow vegetables and flowers than I have writing fiction. I’m fortunate I don’t rely on my ability to grow food to survive, unlike my farmer ancestors (photo of my Norwegian immigrant great-grandparents' homestead in South Dakota).

If you’re just starting out, either writing fiction or gardening, don’t be discouraged. Time will pass swiftly. You’ll look back at some point in the near future to fruiting pole beans and tomato vines, or perhaps a body of published work.
​
That million word, 10,000 hour goal is within reach!

A couple weeks ago, I talked about my attempt to grow blue columbine flowers from seed. Last year I succeeded in growing plants, but they didn't flower.

This is the year! The plants survived winter, and this spring, they blossomed.

I attempt to grow vegetables to supplement our groceries - a tricky project in our climate. Just doing container gardening, I grew enough jalapeno peppers one year to provide for two or three years. I don't buy green beans - I grow them, freezing the excess to use during the winter. By late summer, I have plenty of tomatoes and cucumbers. Enough to make pickle relish and frozen tomato sauce.

But I also like flowers. My grandma and grandpa had amazing flower beds. In 2020, when my husband began working from home, he took an interest in marigolds and petunias. That's when our flower gardening kicked into high gear.

Our front yard was a bit of a wasteland when we moved into this house a couple decades ago. Now the gravel pit is a showcase of Shasta daisies, irises, day lilies, dianthus, and more. ​Our former neighbor gave me two peony plants when she moved out of state. The peonies look amazing this year.

What do flowers have to do with writing? 

Trying to earn your living from your writing is like gardening to feed yourself in Colorado. Yes, you may have bumper crops of various vegetables some years. But I never made enough from writing fiction to quit the day job.

We grow flowers for the visual and olfactory pleasure, with no expectation of a reward in the form of saving on the grocery bill. For me, writing fiction has been about finding the balance between writing for the pure enjoyment of creation, and seeking the rewards of financial gain and reader recognition. 

If it's all about the money, we lose the joy.

Years ago, someone gave me a few chive plants. The chives liked where I planted them, spreading and producing nicely every year.

If only all garden herbs and vegetables grew as reliably! Some take dedicated effort to bring to fruition. 

With experience and experimentation, plus a little luck, I can get a decent crop of tomatoes. I'm getting close to conquering peppers in our fickle climate.

But chives? This weekend I had to enlist my husband's help to get them harvested, chopped, and placed in the dehydrator.

Writing mimics my gardening efforts. Some projects just seem to line right up, flowing from start to finish. Never easily, don't get me wrong. I agonize over every word I write. Some projects lead to easier success than others.

Chives are the first thing I can harvest from my garden. It's a quick, easy reward. Well, sorting and chopping aren't exactly easy tasks, but definitely a simpler process than preserving and putting up most veggies.

In my writing world, short stories would be my version of chives. Quicker coming to fruition. A novel takes a minimum of six months, all the way to several years, to complete. Again, I have to qualify this. It might take me a year to complete a short story. Depends on the story.

Writing a variety of lengths and styles means I have something coming "ripe" a few times a year. In the garden, my season runs April (in a good year) through possibly as late as October.

​It's so satisfying to harvest a crop! Or finish a story. Just like every season presents different gardening challenges, each writing project has its own journey from start to - hopefully - finish.