You may recall this past winter I mentioned we had a plumbing problem. I’m happy to report a second miracle in connection that rather expensive inconvenience. The first was that it allowed us the opportunity to save a salamander (click here to read about that). This second miracle has to do with my hosta plants. (Okay, so I’m using the word “miracle” a bit liberally, but stick with me!)
This is not the picture any homeowner (or their neighbors) likes to see, but this is what our front yard looked like in the dead of winter.
Here is what it looked like after the digging was done:
(Kind of looks like a grave, doesn’t it? But all that’s buried there are pipes.)
After the pipe was repaired, the workmen filled in the area with the same dirt, and when the weather warmed up a bit my husband cleaned it up, flattened out the mound (which, incidentally, also looked like a grave). He saved our burning bushes but never once gave a thought to the hostas that used to fill the area. I assumed they’d been lost with the initial dig, so imagine my surprise when three of them started popping up a few weeks ago.
Do you see the ones in the foreground, the ones that are a bit smaller than the ones farther back? Granted, their arrival is later than the ones that hadn’t been jostled, but after all they must have been tossed and turned with all of the upheaval. I’m just amazed they showed up at all!
Somehow they still knew which way was up. Well, at least three of them did.
I’m sharing this incident because it reminded me of how I feel with my writing sometimes. I must admit there are times I feel like I don’t know which way is up.
I just typed “The End” on my current work-in-progress. I started it months ago with the same high hopes and great expectations, lots of enthusiasm and deep gratitude that I get paid to have so much fun. As usual, I had a vague idea of how the story would end, that the characters would have a happy ending, but as usual getting to that point sometimes seemed impossible. In fact, one day when my husband came home and I’d had a particularly unproductive day, I told him I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to save my characters, after all.
But like those buried plant roots, even though the plot twisted unexpectedly, the story revealed itself after all. On another day when my husband came home, after a “breakthrough” I told him the story was saved, after all. To which he just looked at me with a sort of perplexity and told me I should never, ever try to teach someone else how to write a book. Clearly I don’t even understand the process myself. (Which is of course true.)
These plants (which I can see from my desk) will certainly come in handy when I start my next book and somewhere past the middle but still far from the ending I’ll probably feel this way again. Sometimes my book ideas get twisted and turned and I’m not sure where the end is, much like those tossed and turned roots might have temporarily forgotten which way was up. I’ll recall how something innate kicked in and the process worked itself out.
All I’ll need to do is look out my window for a bit of hosta-inspiration.
Join Me!