I'm a Gardener

Do you know what I discovered in the past week or so? My favorite part of gardening is planting seeds, watching them emerge, and waiting to see what I'm going to get.

I haven't planted seeds in a couple of years. Instead I've bought three-gallon plants at the local farmers market and transplanted them into my flower garden.But,this year I picked up a couple of flower packets and put the seeds in the dirt. I have sweet peas, Icelandic poppies, and wildflowers in a patio upright flower box. I planted chamomile in a Terra-cotta planter and sunflowers along my fence line.

Every day I rush out to see how much they've grown. I'm much more excited about this year's garden than I have been for the past couple of years.

Then this week, I read a Rolling Stone interview with George R.R. Martin in which he was asked about plotting or pantsing (how many times have we asked or been asked that) and here was his most wonderful reply:

I have names for those types of writers: I call them architects and gardeners. The architect, before he drives a nail into the plank, has all the blueprints and knows what the house is going to be like and where the pipes are going to run.

Then there are the gardeners, who dig a hole in the ground and plant a seed and water it--with their blood sometimes--and something comes up. They know what they planted but there are still lots of surprises.

How great is that analogy?? He goes on more so if you can get a hold of last week's Rolling Stone, totally worth it. 

And for the record, I am a gardener. When I started Bix, all I knew was that he was an only child of a single mother and they were moving to a small town. And that he was short. That's it. Oh, and that he liked to blog. I was four or five chapters into the original version before I realized they were in witness protection and Darby became a lesbian because I didn't want the first person Bix connected with to be "the" girl--that'd be too easy. And the rest just evolved as I wrote it. 

Give me a seed and I'll grow you a book.