AJ Alanson Author

Perusing the forums for writers, I’ve often read – or given – the advice that a writing career is like planting a garden. You’ll invest endless hours of preparation with no guarantee of return and often the season passes with nothing to show for your effort. Autumn arrives, and once again, you tear out the old vines, pull up the exhausted ideas, and plow under any remaining vestiges of your hard work. The eventual frost is definitive, enlightening, and freeing all at once. It’s no wonder our feelings get complicated.

I’ve planted many gardens over my lifetime, both literally and figuratively. I remember dropping dandelion heads in holes about the time I was learning to read. Writing came soon after informed by gardening’s natural world of beginnings, middles, and ends. I also produced more than a few great finger paintings, but that’s the point. Some ideas, even our completed creations, are best shelved for another time, or can’t stand alone but suffice as scaffold for something new, or, smoldering in the burn pile, become “lessons” to build upon. What you’re building is a healthy ecosystem in which you, the author, can succeed and this can only be accomplished by you. No short cuts.

With each new idea you try, you win or you lose, I’m not sure which, but I am sure you will learn. You stretch. You grow. Those projects which flourished, you fawned over every day as you sat down at your desk and opened the garden gate, gazing upon your favorite plant while pulling up weeds, watering, and feeding the rest of your tiny farm. And more often than not, the plants falter and wilt for no apparent reason. That’s it, done and dusted. “We won’t be getting a crop this year, Ma.” For many writers, they won’t be eating, either.

The harsh reality is that the gardener is at fault in almost all cases, but sparking the tales and learning the craft while juggling all the finances, all the marketing, and caring for the creator – and other humans – is nigh-on to impossible for one person. Not to mention predicting the weather, the trends, the technological future, while guarding your burgeoning empire against predation. Ah, the “rear flank.”

Unfortunately, outside forces often break our hearts and drive us off our land. No matter how dedicated we are, we can lose our dreams to a plague of locusts, a shiny new AI toy, or a thousand-mile-wide rolling cloud of black dust. What I know, for sure and beyond all doubt, is that a story teller, just like a gardener, is born, not made. Wherever we land, our ideas, efforts, or dreams that we’ve plowed under become fertilizer for the next chapter. The soil is that much richer, our ideas grow that much stronger, and our stories evolve in both complexity and clarity.

Because, and this is the immutable truth of a writer, we are digesting the world, licking our finger and testing the breezes, synthesizing the patterns and themes, and slapping that manuscript down in front of society through either parable or commentary. Regardless of the world’s taste for our brand of carrot, we are born to garden, in one way or another, and we will find a way tell our stories until the trowel falls from our hand. You, the writer, are after all, the prized specimen you grew.

Below is a video of my walk through my garden mid summer. The cover photo is of my outdoor shiitake log farm. That particular garden takes up to two years to produce but then, much like writing, the rewards can last from five to eight years with minimal attention. Feel free to comment, subscribe, like, and follow. Keep writing.