Grow, dammit!

I saw that sign in a garden store the other day and thought how cool it was.
I feel like that after we plant our tomato plants. I love tomatoes.

 



 Especially the little ones you can just pick off the vine and pop them in your mouth. So, I really want my tomatoes to grow quickly.
This saying applies to our writing career as well. Most of us don't want to think of it as a career, but that is what it is. Whether you publish a bestseller or best of the cellar, or a blog that may only be for family and friends.
 It is a career and we want it to grow.
 We want to grow as writers, as people, as friends.
So, how do we do that?
Let's have a look at the steps we need to take to grow a plant and a writer.


 Well, when you want a plant, you plant a seed. You look for a good place for it to grow. A place where it will receive water and light. You choose good soil, and fertilize it to feed it.

Well you have to do the same when you become a writer. Let's look at some of the tools you can use to become a writer.    
 

 1. Read/Plant
Planting for a writer is reading. You need to read. About writing, the world, people and what interests you.

2. Write/Water
Writing is essential for a writer. Not just a sometime thing, but an all the time thing. You need to write while standing in line, waiting in a waiting room, or just sitting. It may not be the great American novel you write, but it may be the seed for the great American novel. Keep pad and pencil handy or what ever electronic baby you carry to do that with.

3.Observe/Soil
This can be done anywhere, anytime and for as long as you like, then write down some of those observations down in your handy dandy notebook for reference when you sit down to some serious writing time. Set aside time to write and guard it religiously, because if you don't, it won't happen.

4. Experience New Things/Fertilize
We all experience things everyday. We need to add new things, but we also need to add a new way to look at the old everyday things.

5.Publish/Light
You need to get your writing to light or it will just sit there and bear no fruit. A blog is a good place to start or even writing letters to the editor of your newspaper. To make you a better writer you need feedback.

Changes

Change is the way we grow. We may not like some of them, but through them we learn and grow.
Change can be of our own making, or a result of the universe. It can be a change of heart or a change of locale.

The change of heart can be in your thoughts or the love you thought would be there forever.Someone can come into our lives, and someone can go. How we handle the change is way more important than what the change is. If we accept it as a challenge to go on without what or whoever is gone, we learn more of ourselves and others than if we fight it to the bitter end. They will still be gone. Hanging on to them in heart, mind and body will make the final acceptance harder and will leave some lessons unlearned.

If it is a change of locale, you can try to make the new place exactly like the old place, or you can adapt to the new one the way it is. If it is smaller than where you were, you can downsize your stuff to match it, or throw it all out and start anew. If it is larger, you can expand to match it. If you decide to live in just the space that you have stuff for, you will loose the opportunity to grow into something.


I believe that change is a chance to grow and learn.


Here's to growing and learning. Growing into new things and learning what old things will help us in our growing.