Face Down in the Dirt

It pays to have wise friends. When I was feeling very low and very worn out, I had lunch with the always-beautiful, always-lovely author Gigi Amateau. If you don't know her work, she is an amazing YA author who has a very powerful novel coming up. And Gigi listened as I poured my heart out and her first question was "Where are you in all that?" Indeed, like most mothers, most multi-tasking, insanely busy women, I was last on my own list. I was nowhere. Invisible.

What did I do to ease the stress? So I mentioned how much my garden meant to me, but that last year, it fell to disarray because I was in the hospital, and while there, it was untended and became overgrown with weeds--a good metaphor for my life. When I came home from the hospital, I was too weak to tend it. So Gigi told me that this year, no matter what, I should get out there in the dirt, really feel the soil.

So while I was working on my vegetable bed, I literally rested in the dirt (bet you thought the blog post title meant something bad, right?). My cheek pressed in the soil, I just felt the warmth of Mother Earth. The smell of rich soil and new plants surrounded me. I literally felt my cares leaving me.

My garden is me. MAke that gardens. My vegetable garden is the mom-me, because it will hopefully feed and nourish my family. And my front gardens are the other me. The woman-me, the writer me. There are Buddha heads tucked in with plants. But also a gnome because it reminds me of my late grandmother, who had one in her garden. St. Francis of Assisi is there . . . reflecting my love of animals. A Japanese lantern. Bird feeders. And there are wild strawberries and raspberry plants because I like wild things. I have a whole huge wildflower garden because . . . well, it's unruly and unfettered and the butterflies like it. There are no neat rows in my gardens--any of them--because I'm not neat or organized. I am untamed.

Gardening is hard work. I know. I spent about eight solid hours working it this weekend. It doesn't seem like hard work, but it requires digging deep in that earth. And digging deep brings us around to writing.

My friend Jon and I started Editing for Authors. And we're insanely busy.  And along the way, I can't help but become very involved and close to some of our projects. As I told one author recently, I like the idea that I am a doula for manuscripts (he may not like the metaphor--I don't know--maybe he'll comment). Even when my own fiction career took off, I always edited because  . . . well, I'm good at it and passionate about it. And the manuscripts I come to really adore, like W.R.R. Munro's (and I could pick dozens, but his is new and just out) are the ones where the authors "dig deep." They take their revisions and are not afraid to get dirty and really do the hard work required to take a manuscript to the next level.

I don't think I've ever been afraid of the weeds and the hard work and the sweat equity it takes to grow a garden or write a book. At this point, I smile to myself when someone at a cocktail party comments on my career with, "Oh, yeah, I have a great idea for a book and one of these days I'll sit down to do it." Because I know a tiny, tiny fraction of those people--as in maybe I've seen two do it--actually follow through. Writing all the way to The End takes tremendous effort.

But then comes the digging deep. Because revisions can damn near kill you sometimes.

But when what you've planted blooms . . . . like sitting back and being with my flowers, it's a feeling like no other. And interestingly, Jon is--in tomato circles--FAMOUS. Like been-on-TV fame.

Thoughts? What restores your soul?

And fellow writers . . .  what's the hardest part of the writing process, when you have to dig the deepest? (For me, it's the MIDDLE.)