Concerning Pixels and Peonies

If I’m not at my computer writing--at least in the summer--I’m often in the garden. Although you’d think these pursuits diverge, actually they overlap.

In both cases

·     You plant, you water, you prune;

·     You transplant, you fertilize;

·     Volunteers spring up unforeseen;

·     Ripeness takes years.

Sometimes I think that all I do is move pixels around a bed of white, or delete weeds from beds of green.

Even the downsides are remarkably similar: both entail physical challenges. The computer screen dries your eyes and sitting makes your back stiff, while carting mulch pulls your muscles and sweat stings your eyes. Which hurts more—those yellow jacket stings or the sting of having a manuscript rejected? Which itch is more maddening—that patch of poison ivy blisters or the worry that you’ve chosen the wrong approach?

Generally, no one forces you write or garden—these are vocations of choice, arising from the privilege of having the time “to waste” in Sisyphean vocations.

Just as deer may decapitate your lilies and slugs turn your hostas into ribbons, the book may not find its readers. You can control neither the weather nor the literary market.

In both cases you have the opportunity to build a world, a world that might thrive and create . . . for one brief, shining moment, a Camelot of a pattern of order, harmony--even beauty. But you have to launch such projects knowing that it is more likely your world will suffer from drought, frost, and Japanese beetles.

As Margaret Atwood once said, “Gardening is not a rational act.” 

The irrational writer/gardener needs to love the hours doing the work,not pin her hopes on some fantasy result.

The author, about to tackle a hill full of poison ivy, thistles, and blood-sucking mosquitos.