Overflowing with Rain & Ideas

My rain barrel runneth over. Last summer's brutal heat prompted many of us to find ways to save water. I got this cool rain barrel to catch water from my gutter. April showers now, and it's overflowing. I'll catch what I can to keep the shade garden in the back lush when the dry heat of July sets in.

Ideas work like that, too. For first drafts, especially. Gushing sometimes, overflowing so you write as fast as you can to catch it all, to keep your garden of words lush, too. You'll need that pure fount of inspiration, of metaphor, of vivid dreaminess to sustain you later when the first draft is finished, and ready for sifting through, deleting, editing, revision. Kill your darlings, Faulkner said.

I've been talking a lot about first drafts lately. Writing first drafts of novels is such a different experience from subsequent drafts and the revision and editing that comes later. [And because my extended metaphor today runs watery and fluid, here's a dry and dirty take: Stephen King likens writing a novel to dusting off fossils-- as if the ideas and characters, the stories, are already there, waiting to be discovered.]

As tempting as it is to tread water and start editing or tinkering with sentences midway in a first draft, I've found--and heard other novelists say--one should try to keep the momentum, and don't get snagged. This seems especially true with first chapters: one tends to re-read and polish those opening pages again and again, investing so much time and energy in them that you'll naturally resist any revisions or major edits [or deletions] to them later, when you have a whole organic manuscript to consider. Keep on going.

A worthy goal for a first draft: 1,000 words a day. Let it pour.

Slow Gardening & Fast Writing

I have an excuse for saving all my Jameson Whiskey bottles for a new bottle tree! Man, it's gonna be a big tree.

Now I know there's a term for my yard: slow gardening. LOVE this profile in the NyTimes today on Felder Rushing. (Pictured at right)

I'm mulching over the last remnant of lawn this week, and have always been a big fan of outsider garden art--using what you have on hand for containers and decor.

Now that I think about it, my obsession--er, interest-- in "slow gardening"-- reared it's flowery head while I was writing SECRET KEEPERS. A major theme: manicured lawns and landscapers versus wild beauty and the stubborn grace of plants.

I think surrendering to the rhythms of nature is tremendously gratifying-- aligning yourself, really, with the seasonal cycles and inherent design unfolding right there in your garden or clay pots--without imposing by adding chemicals or pruning something to a nub.

It's all about letting go, being open to what is.

I've found there's a similar kind of alignment in writing. Ironically, getting in "the zone" is often, at first, fast and full of energy. Not editing or revising, which comes later with subsequent drafts, but honoring the flow of pure inspiration in first drafts, of surrendering to characters who take on a life of their own.

As the prolific Stephen King writes in his memoir, ON WRITING: A MEMOIR OF THE CRAFT, "Writing is at its best--always, always, always-- when it is a kind of inspired play for the writer. I can write in cold blood if I have to, but I like it best when it's fresh and almost too hot to handle."