What’s In Your Writing Garden?

by Kimberly A. Cook         (Twitter @WarriorTales)

Last Saturday I cleaned up my garden plants to get ready for winter. Made notes about what worked, what didn’t and what I might plant next year.  Had trouble when my pruner went MIA.

My gardening tools are collected in a white plastic carry cart so I can keep my gloves and digger implements handy. Pruner not in its spot. Hate that.

Turned the garage upside down and could have gnawed the dead roses off with my teeth twice with the time I spent hunting the pruner. Opted to use the grass cutters, not the best solution, but it worked. 

Writing is like that. Keep your tools handy, sharp and updated. Sometimes pruning, aka editing, is needed. My biggest pruning/editing toss was more than 200 pages of a 320 page manuscript.

Silhouette Books had requested that manuscript, then sent me a lovely rejection leter telling me why it needed to be pruned. Drastically.

Since I don’t like to trim basil that is going to seed, let alone a manuscript, it took a lot of gumption to prune that book. Did it. They requested again. Rejected again.

That book manuscript is under the bed with others, maybe becoming compost, but I learned how to do tree surgery size edits/prunes on that one.

Whether gardening or writing, we have to kill our darlings, shovel manure and keep at it to grow our manuscripts. Because Spring is just around the corner and the Burpree catalog will arrrive in January.

My garden started out with one sweet cherry 100 tomato plant in a 5-gallon plastic bucket. Now I have many containers and pots in my garden. Trial and error in gardening, writing and life.

Figured out I may have accidently heaved the pruner out with the yard debris. Note to self; garish bright colored handle on next pruner. As we used to say in the Air Force Reserve, remember the “F” word. Flexible, that is. Lifelong learning is fun.

What seeds will be in your next garden? What writing projects are now seeds? Juvenile plants? Full-grown? Mature? Or need drastic pruning, re-potting or to be pulled out by the roots? What’s in your writing garden?