GOOD WRITING IS LIKE CAREFUL GARDENING

Are you a good gardener? I’m not. My husband is a wonderful gardener, and occasionally, he asks me to help him. A few weeks ago, he asked me to weed a section of the front yard.

I did bad job.

 I worked for maybe 30 minutes. I pulled lots of weeds and filled up half of one of our green cans. My husband looked at my work and said, “You missed some.” 

So, even though I did 30 minutes of hard work, I got no credit. No “thank you.” Just “you missed some.” 

Truth told, I didn’t have my heart in it, and so, I wasn’t very conscientious. I did a first pass; I did not go back to look for any missed weeds.

A week later, my husband asked me to do another weeding job, this time the backyard steps. I had been looking at the weeds around these steps for a long time and they really bothered me. The sun was very strong the day I did this job, and I sweated a lot. No matter. I was bound and determined to get every last weed. 

 I did an amazing job. My husband was very pleased – as was I. 

 How was this job different from the other? Same task, same weeds.

 I was motivated, committed, “all in” with the second job. 

So, What Does This Have to Do With Writing?

If you approach writing as I approached my first job: in a lackadaisical, half-assed manner, it will permeate your writing, no matter how much time you put into it.

With good writing, as with good gardening (or weeding), you have to be committed to it. You have to be “all in.” You have to do your best. Consider carefully and with a clear head the whole of what you’re writing: where you want to start and where you are going. 

Every writing project starts with a first draft (as Anne LaMott says, “butt in the chair,” write a “shitty first draft”), and then importantly, you return to that draft, review it, revise it, maybe rearrange text here and there, think of a better word or phrase for saying something, make adjustments, maybe add text, maybe delete some text. 

Then, when you turn it in – or do whatever you plan to do with it – your reader will know that you put your heart into it. You may not be Maya Angelou or William Shakespeare, but if you put your heart into your writing and go “all in,” whatever you write – regardless of your writing ability – it will have merit and you can be proud of it.

Caveat: Being “all in” and having your heart in your work is not the same as trying to be perfect. Trying to be perfect will simply get you into trouble. You can do a really good job, knowing that it will never be perfect.