Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run
From “To Autumn,” – John Keats
More on Keats another time…
Word Raccoon has seen students waiting at the bus stop the past few days. She noticed when I forgot (again) my sweater at home and shivered on the cafe porch this morning. (It warmed up pretty quickly.)
In short, she knows fall is coming.
After all this heat, she’s not sorry. But she asked me what this means for our writing.
First of all, WR, don’t take credit for my writing. Ok, fine, you may take some.
This fall, let’s call my writing life a garden I can (I hope) grow, since I don’t have a green thumb.
Not the tidy kind where every weed is pulled (because uh, that’s not my style. At all.), but the real kind: lush, a little overgrown, and forever surprising me with volunteer plants.
Dormant bulbs begin to make their way upwards, eagerly awaiting spring, at last. (That’s probably not how it works, but give me a break, I just said I don’t have a green thumb. LOL. It’s a crooked metaphor, Herbert.)
I did plant some crocuses, finally, around the lamppost. I kept missing them since I couldn’t take the long walks to drink them in that I used to, so I planted some and crossed my fingers.
They came up. It took a year, but they showed up just when I was feeling mopey about them. John Gardner had mentioned them in a book and I wanted to study them to see what he meant by his comment, because I hadn’t observed them that way.
When I spotted some on a walk just after reading his comments, the family who had them in the front yard must have thought I was strange, the way I stared at them, took pictures, not seeing them the way he did but trying desperately to.
I decided at last that maybe his were a different variety, or were somehow taller. Or, this is just occurring to me, being a novelist, maybe he took creative license.
Better to have my own to peer into, and at.
There are worse reasons to grow flowers, I suppose. And now I have another small spring delight just outside the window.
But we were talking about fall, weren’t we?
Here’s how I’m plotting my autumn (and early winter) “writing garden.”
🌱 Poems = Perennials
They pop up nearly daily, sometimes uninvited, persistently, often inconveniently.
Occasionally I will force one because I worry if I haven’t written one, afraid they will go away, but those seldom have much to offer more than the reinforcing of the discipline of writing.
Some will be cut for the vase (literary journals), some will be gathered into chapbooks (here’s hoping), and some will just delight me when I read them.
Even the funny, misshapen ones. (Because it’s always me trying to get at the truth of something, no matter the outcome. Plenty of photos come out blurry; why shouldn’t some poems? And sometimes they capture something you weren’t even aiming for.)
Fall practice: write poems as they come to me; revise or submit a few each week. Hmm.. “few” is vague. Let’s say 2 packets? Packets, as you may know, vary in size. Some journals want 3 poems, some 5, some no more than ten pages…
I have a solid 30 poems that are ready, in my estimation, anyway. Several have been moved to the “published” category, which is gratifying on several levels, none of which is outstripped by the fire, joy, and release of writing them to begin with.
There are two, maybe three, poems that I feel like will find their home. I hope soon, because they are super special to me. If they don’t find a home soon enough to suit, I will just share them here. Win/win.
🌻 Journals = Flower Market
The poems that travel out into the world are in this planter. Sending them to journals feels like handing bouquets to strangers and friends; Word Raccoon has volunteered to be the one to hand them out. Please do, WR!
Fall practice: keep 8–12 polished poems circulating. Replace with others that have been revised by then. Repeat. (Is this the way to do it? Just guessing.)
🌿 Chapbooks = Test Gardens
Smaller clusters of themed poems, my experiments will likely land in chapbooks. Love, grief, and other “Drema things” that I don’t know how to classify.
Thoughts/fears/questions/philosophical musings fall in this category. (Of which I have MANY.)
Fall practice: submit Waxing the Parasitical Muse to fall competitions/ select publishers. Definitely needs some revising. Those two a.m. poems are face melters! I don’t know how many of those we need.
And while I’m at it, I’m thinking those little stubs need to be either further developed or put away. No one wants amuse-bouche instead of poems. Though wait, mini-poems are a thing. So??
🍎 Full-Length Collection = Legacy Orchard
This is where the trees grow: Look, I Built a Cathedral and, eventually, other full-length manuscripts. These will take patience, pruning, and vision.
Fall practice: shape the manuscript, consider weaving in newer poems. (Actually, I’m pretty happy with Cathedral as it is. But I might plant a new one behind it.)
🌾 The Novel = Grain Field
The big crop of the year. I have 80K+ words drafted, but the field needs re-seeding and reshaping. It’s my primary harvest for fall: revising and preparing a first real draft for winter rest.
(Word Raccoon just peeked at the novel and says it actually stands at 85K, thank you very much. But so many miles to go…)
Fall practice: novel blocks 2–3 times a week; aim for a revised roadmap and draft by year’s end.
Novels want fall, don’t they? They want quiet and a hint of cool. They want leaves turning color but still clinging. They want chili with saltines and the sound of outdoor sports. They want sweaters and long novels to read, too.
They want nostalgia: for the past and for the things that aren’t fully here yet. They want intrigue and drama, but also peace and just sitting in silence.
They want trays displaying the prettiest leaves on the dining room table and mugs of tea for puzzling over passages.
They do not want pumpkin spice, dearest. (Pumpkin? Yes. NOTHING CLOVE. EVER. LOL.)
They want to watch the dapper dans and dressy bessies parading in their fall best.
They want their eyes and ears so full of all of the things they love the most so that, first of all, they can feast. Secondly, so they can share that feast with others by creating art from it.
♻️ Compost = Rest & Craft
Abandoned drafts, fragments, and the books I’m reading (Nine Gates, Gilead, all the rest) all go into the compost pile. They’ll feed next season’s growth. If I can keep Word Raccoon out of it, that trash panda.
Fall practice: let things sit until I need some fertilizer.
Maybe it sounds a little much to write all this out, but I needed to see it. To know that all of this matters, and that I don’t have to do it all at once.
If you have any suggestions, you know I value your advice.
I long for eyes to see, heart to read, some of these things. I know that’s the opposite of what I once felt for my writing, but it is what it is.
Creating is its own reward, foremost. I haven’t lost sight of that. But I must admit, when I write something and blush, it makes me wonder what others would think of it.
Word Raccoon says she wants to read the novel, see where we’re at. I warned her it’s probably not her kind of story. She raised one eyebrow and said, “Sure, Jan.”
She’s so damn sassy.
I finished reading Gilead today. Exquisitely written. Dear Reader, I think you’d adore it.
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