Perfection!

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Outside the front door

I’ve been working hard lately, despite the fact nothing’s been visible here. I finished a draft of the novel. I started with a bright shiny idea and am struggling with the frustration that what ends up on the screen doesn’t match the vision in my head. It never does, but for some reason it’s really bothering me with this piece. I thought I’d gotten past being a perfectionist. Apparently not.

It works the same way out in the garden. In April everything looks glorious. Old friends are coming up. I’m planting new things. It looks to be a fabulous year. And then comes May. The weeds and grasses shoot up, smothering everything and I can’t keep up.

So, both in the garden and in my fiction. It’s time to pull some weeds. And plant new stuff to fill in the holes. The difference is that the fiction is just the piece of writing and myself. The garden is a collaboration with nature. And nature this year has brought a wealth of tent caterpillars, masses of slugs and snails and dubious weather, after a brutal winter. The predators have yet to deal with the tent caterpillars, but at least I’m not sustaining as much damage as I see driving around. They’ve defoliated entire trees out on the road! Yikes. I think we have more birds here who are working hard. I tossed a caterpillar into the pond to see if that was an option, but the koi had just eaten and weren’t paying attention.

So, I believe (fingers crossed) that I’ve wrestled my technology problems to the ground. I’ll be getting more stories up in the next few weeks. I’ve been so busy writing new stuff, that I just haven’t gotten around to the publishing part. This week I’ll be passing my word count for the entire year of 2013. And we’re not quite through the first half of the year. If I can keep things going, this will be a very productive year for my writing. I just need to carve out the time to make covers and format things and get them up for sale. After the weeding and planting thing!

Baby Spiders!
Baby Spiders!

It’s a crazy time of year. School’s ending in a couple of weeks, which involves a lot of extra social things. Especially since Zoe will be leaving elementary school and heading towards middle school. And there are plant sales, birthdays and in June I’m going to a Plant Study Weekend, which is actually 4 days and involves touring hundreds of gardens. Yippee! My phone’s battery will probably run out every day from taking so many photos! I toured a garden last week and took 175 photos. It was one amazing garden.

And the Clarion West Writeathon starts in a couple of weeks as well. I’m planning on participating, but still have to nail down my writing goals for the six weeks. What do I want to work on? A novel? Short fiction? Just haven’t been able to get clear on that yet. I’ve got two weeks to figure it out.

So, I’ll leave you with a photo of my garden walk partner for today, Tiger.

She was out romping in the wet, chasing me throughout the garden. The other cats were inside being lumps.

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