Mothers & Persistence

Many years ago, my mother travelled with a group from her church to England. On this trip, she visited the birthplace of John Wesley, the founder of the Wesleyan denomination of the Protestant Methodist Church. When she returned, she gave me a few packets of seeds from the shop associated with the site.

Although I was still a student, I had a small garden in my rented suburban house, in which I grew a few flowers, the proverbial and ubiquitous tomatoes as well as a six-foot by ten-foot lawn. I made every effort to plant and grow the seeds but without success. Instead, in an attempt at atonement, I wrote a short story, “John Wesley’s Hollyhocks,” and included it in my Master of Arts Degree thesis in Creative Writing. The opening paragraph begins:

Mrs. Fortinbrough approached the ground, all her weight braced heavily against the brick border of the flowerbed and, stroking the fine, new shoots, raised her face to the window. The girl let the curtain fall back over the window and disappeared. Her daughter was no more interested in this season’s hollyhocks than she was interested in going to church….

This is a story about the relationship between an adolescent daughter and her mother. As we can all imagine and is indicated by the closure of the curtain, the relationship is strained at this stage. Happily, my actual relationship with my mother, though frequently contentious—as is any interpersonal interaction—was healthy and positive. Her passing has not lessened my love for and dependence on her wisdom.

This year, for the first time in nearly thirty years, I have a garden which has eventually proved to be responsive to hollyhock propagation. When I first planted the seeds, directly into the soil in the spring of 2018 with absolutely no response, the letdown was palpable. The soil in these high desert plains is river-bottom clay—as hard as rock when it’s dry. This spring, I started hollyhocks and delphinium among other varieties in the proper potting soil in seedling pots.

I then prepared an area of the garden with compost and other organic material. When I transplanted the seedlings, I had to protect the young plants from the wild rabbits with plastic collars. Once the hollyhocks began to grow above where the bunnies could reach the leaves, the plants flourished.

In many ways, I equate gardening with writing. Persistence is the key to success. As Steven Pressfield remarks in his writers’ guide, The War of Art, procrastination is a form of resistance. Persistence and perseverance get results, just as Mrs. Fortinbrough will get results with her daughter:

…Just as the hollyhocks had needed her care and discipline, so did the daughter. It was not too late for her roots to be tapped and the plant to grow straight again….

Displacement Activity

I am not working on Pavane for Miss Marcher today. Instead, I have swept the balcony, cleaned the kitchen drain, done the extra shopping with a comprehensive list from Dear Hubby who is teaching as usual, talked to several members of my family at great length.

Although Pavane is close to first draft completion, I have sought displacement activity at random for weeks. Today is no different, but I had similar difficulties last week. Also not different: work commitments, family commitments, special requests, time of year: in other words, any excuse.

With eleven books published, a twelfth should be straightforward but this one has always caused trouble, perhaps because the subject matter and historical period are more challenging than others I have undertaken. 

The characters are no problem, they have behaved admirably from Page One. If I wanted to write a character-driven story, I would be done and dusted. But, from the beginning, the other story elements make writing a bit harder. Some of those are the period research although this historical period is well-documented.

That can prove to be a barrier to creative narrative: you dare not question, dispute or fail the historical authorities. Even if the focus of the story is not the accepted written history, many readers will expect the appropriate tributes and markers. When I first mentioned I was writing a novel set in this period of American history, one colleague responded "You had better be on the right side of history then."

The "right side of history" is entirely dependent on which side the consumer of your fictional tale prefers: another good excuse to delay finishing the book.

The historical writer, Ursula Renee, has many good suggestions for researching historical material. The trouble is getting involved in research can be an end in itself. Many writers are notoriously easy to sidetrack with the shiny baubles of getting the traveling fashions,  men's hats, vehicles, soap products of the era right.

All of these distractions are what the screenwriter and author of The War of Art, Steven Pressfield, calls "resistance". You know you are resistant to finishing your book when finding room on your desk for that new pencil holder much more compelling than working on that tricky scene where your protagonists have to come to grips with the conflict between their knowledge and their desires.

I have recommended Pressfield's book to writers, actors, artists of all kinds. The gist of the book is simple: "Do your work." Accept that you have a job to do and do it. Manage your job as if you are the employee, hold yourself responsible.

I have set a deadline to finish. The only one I can blame if I don't meet that deadline is the same person who is, at this very moment, doing something/anything to put off doing the work.

Three Daunting Ps

At my local RWA chapter’s Christmas party last month (yes, it was only last month), the book exchange was a mixed blessing for me. One of my colleagues received a book he had read and kept a copy of, so he gave me the book and offered to trade with the one I chose. He already had and read that one too.

The first one he rejected is the one that is the subject of this piece.



January is the time of year we pressure ourselves to make changes. So, when I finished reading The War of Art I was in the right frame of mind to take on the premise that Steven Pressfield eloquently presents.

With due diligence, I set my goals and leapt into the new year (which also happens to be a Leap Year but no pun intended there) with renewed determination. Pressfield’s major premise is that we are at war with ourselves in the form of resistance to our creative goals.
I think we can all raise our hands when we’re honest about how easily we slip into some self-defeating behaviors.

Chief among my self-sabotaging activity is Procrastination. I have another name for it: Displacement Activity. I use those two words as a Category on one of my blogs to disguise the truth behind them. There are ways and ways to NOT write. Blogging is just one. Some call it a necessary marketing/promoting/branding effort. As may be, but it is also a substitute for “real writing”. While I’m blogging, I am satisfying that niggling drive to put words together.

Another of my “resistance” efforts is to Prioritize. This always sounds as though I’m truly setting forth on a planned mission but the items on the list of Things To Do aren’t always about what is necessary to do for my work: writing. I prioritize interesting activities that I can excuse as creative or enhancing my creative drive, freeing my creative brain cells, structuring my creative efforts to be more efficient.  

And there is always Planning which brings me to the second book of the Secret Book Elf tome I have read over the past few days, K M Weiland’s outling your NOVEL: Map Your Way to Success. In all my writing life, I have never “planned” a book. I’m one of those: “put some words on the page and see what happens next” writers. But I see Weiland’s point and questioned myself about my “process” (another P but not as daunting). The other P word that is used for those of us who “see what happens” is Pantsers – flying by the seat of your pants – I prefer the O word that Ian McEwan calls his “process”: Organic.


I attended many business seminars in another life. We said it this way: Those who fail to plan, plan to fail. We also had a different set of daunting Ps but the messages are the same: Get to Work and Don’t Give Up.