The kids love marigolds, so we got two packs of those, along with some wave petunias. The “centerpiece” of each of their containers is a vegetable plant: Ari has a grape tomato plant, and Donovan has a red bell pepper. I got my own container garden going this year, with chives, rosemary, sage, cilantro and oregano. Oh, and thyme. Mustn’t forget thyme. The rosemary and chives are in their own pots because they’re perennials, and when we move, I intend to put them in the ground. We got a bunch of other plants, mostly perennials, to round out the garden. Matt’s out now buying the mulch because the bags are really too big for me to lift.

We planted the container gardens yesterday, and we just finished doing the two beds. I hurt now, and I’m going to hurt even more tonight and tomorrow, but that’s all good. I’m going to be able to enjoy the garden for the rest of the year (and it should help with the value of the house).

(And wouldn’t you know it, it’s starting to rain, so maybe I didn’t have to water everything after all. )

Now, I bet you’re wondering why I wrote all this and what it has to do with writing.

Getting my garden planted reminded me of the process of writing. Just like picking out plants, you pick out ideas that you think might go well together. You work with what you planted last year, just like you use ideas that have already been rumbling around in your head. And sometimes, things you’ve already done have a way of surprising you.

I love violas. Their tiny, delicate flowers make me really happy – I smile every time I see one. I planted two types of violas in the new bed we made in the front of the house last year. Now, violas are “supposed” to be annuals. The ones I planted last year most definitely weren’t. Not only have they come back with glorious abandon, but they’ve spread throughout the bed. It’s like someone took handfuls of baby violas and scattered them across the bed like someone scattering seed for chickens.

And that’s kind of the way inspiration works, doesn’t it? From one idea, a million others can spring up, often in the most surprising way.

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Why Gardening Is Like Writing (or vice versa) originally appeared on LisaHartjes.com on April 26, 2009.

Oh, email. How do I love thee, how do I loathe thee.

I’ve been involved with the internet since… wow, at least 1990. I’m certain was using it before then, but can’t confirm it (please don’t ask why). As such, I’ve seen its growth, and am pretty comfortable with it, and computers in general. With web pages – especially ones that are more than just vanity pages – come spam, because you post email addresses so people can contact you. Some of the spam I get have extremely humorous subject lines. (As a side note, I seem to get mainly ED pill spam, while Matt gets mainly breast enhancement spam. As a woman, I should hope I don’t need ED pills, and Matt certainly does not (nor does he want to) have breasts.) However, some of the legitimate emails I get can be just as amusing.

This brings me to the subject line of this blog post. I buy a lot of stuff online, so I get emails from the places I’ve purchased from. On the weekend, I received an email with the subject line “Wild shoe savings, 50% off expires tomorrow!” The first thing that popped into my mind? “OMG. You mean there are still wild shoes in the world?” And that was the beginning of the footwear-related deluge. Enough, I think, to do a decent humorous short story about a shoe wrangler in Boot Lick, TX, and her herd of Spotted Pradas. Well, maybe not decent, but I’m sure there’s a story in there somewhere.Similar Posts:

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Look Out for the Wild Shoes! originally appeared on LisaHartjes.com on February 10, 2009.

I don’t know why or where we were, but we were in the parking lot at a restaurant, trying to find a parking space. Someone had parked a sixteen-wheeler so that it took up half a dozen spots. The driver sighed in frustration and said “See, that’s the problem with dead people. They don’t care if they’re double parked.”

So what do you all think? Something that can be used in a story?Similar Posts:

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Strange Dreams, Part 2 originally appeared on LisaHartjes.com on February 4, 2009.

1. Subscribe to a dozen RSS feeds on various subjects you are most interested in. Scan through the feeds every morning or at night and select a few articles for thorough reading. After reading the articles, tag them using your own classification system.

Classifying articles in different categories helps locate them quickly. Use Google’s RSS reader for reading and tagging the RSS feeds. You will have access to your categorized articles from any computers connected to the Internet.

2. Subscribe to a few print magazines and read them regularly. (I subscribe to Smithsonian, Saveur, This Old House and several others.) If you can’t afford to, or simply don’t want to, go to your local public library. After you finish reading an article, record the main points of the article in a Google note. You will have access to these notes anywhere in the World.

3. Use a PDA and carry it with you wherever you go. Better yet, get a PDA with a camera and cell phone. You will only carry one gadget for all your communication, organization, and content generation needs.

Take pictures of interesting places, events, and moments you come across in your daily life. Use the voice recorder of the PDA to record whenever an idea hits you. Every night, transfer the ideas from your PDA to Google notes and upload your pictures to flickr.

4. Scan through the comments posted by others on the online articles you read regularly. Record interesting ideas, pros and cons of an issue, and strong opinions posted by others in your Google notes. Leverage the wisdom of the crowd.

5. Have lunch with friends at least once a week. Bounce ideas off them on any topic. Mix ideas from divergent topics to create new ideas in you own subjects.

6. Use the time like driving, watching TV while exercising in a treadmill, etc. to think about your favorite topics and try to relate to things you observe on the road and on the TV. When you get an idea, record it in your PDA.

7. Go through all the ideas and articles you have recorded in Google notes and your RSS reader to create new ideas by giving new twists to the old ideas. Combine two or more ideas and change or improve an existing idea to come up with your own idea.

8. Use a variety of online tools like Technorati, Digg, Delicious, etc. for writing inspiration. Every hour, hundreds of new articles and news stories are posted in these sites. Check Yahoo’s buzz log to find out what people are talking about and searching for. Quickly scan them to hit a few gold nuggets that can serve as springboards for new ideas.

9. Using on-line tools discussed earlier, select an issue and jot down all the pros and cons. Search Google to enhance the idea by adding more pros and cons. Once you have collected a dozen diverse opinions, you will be able to write an article based on those facts in a pro-con format.

10. If you are good at using data for analysis and comfortable in the use of a spreadsheet, draw charts in the spreadsheet and look for patterns in the data. Provide you own interpretation to the data. Illustrate your articles with charts and graphs.

11. To generate topics for your article, use overture keyword selector. Select a single keyword and run it through the overture. You will see a dozen or more keywords based on the search popularity. Copy a few selected keywords to a notepad. Now, take each keyword and do a search in online sites like Digg, Technorati, etc. You will see a number of articles. Read them to generate ideas.

12. Ask yourself what if, what else, and why not questions on an issue and search the Internet to find answers from different sources. Create new ideas generated from existing materials, provide step-by-step guide for somebody to practice an obvious idea, or offer benefits of practicing an old idea.

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12 Tips For Generating Ideas For Writing originally appeared on LisaHartjes.com on January 15, 2009.

The old Cherokee replied simply, “The one you feed.”

My dad emailed me this story, and I thought it was perfect. I don’t care if it’s real or completely fictitious. The point is the message it gives. It’s all about the choices we make. We can choose to give in to anger and guilt, or we can practice kindness and generosity.

It’s the same thing with writing. We can give in to self-doubt and the fear of rejection, or we can battle through it, with hope and faith in ourselves and our abilities.
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Two Wolves originally appeared on LisaHartjes.com on December 22, 2008.

So how does this relate to writing and goals? Sometimes the muse – or whatever you call the slave-driver of your creativity – gives you an opportunity that you really shouldn’t ignore or postpone. Take advantage of it. It’s yours to use, after all. If an idea strikes, make sure you record it in some way. If you’ve got a notebook, write it down. If you’ve got a cell phone that lets you enter notes, do that. Got text messaging? Text yourself. Access to a computer? Email yourself your idea. Got an MP3 player that let’s you record? Record a note to yourself. In the past, I’ve used my cell phone to call my cell phone, so I could get the voice mail and leave a message with my idea. Sure, my friend looked at me funny, but when I explained why I did it, she understood.

If, when you’ve got some available time and an idea hits you like a ton of bricks, use your time wisely. As I said above, today’s blog post about digital scrapbooking was written yesterday because that’s when I got the idea and the time to write it. Rachel Ray, one of my family’s favorite chefs (she says she’s only a cook, because chefs have pieces of paper from culinary school) talks about pockets of time when doing 30 minute meals. You get one item going, and while you’re waiting for it to cook, you’ve got a little pocket of time with which to do something else.

Don’t let those pockets of time go to waste. If you’re already at the computer, and find yourself with 15 minutes of free time, put it to good use. Write up a blog entry and post it immediately, or post-date it if you can and want to. Write a couple sentences in your WIP. Find something else on your to-do list that can be done right now. Don’t waste the time you’ve got.

Oh, and before I forget, I’ve posted a new recipe to Chef Lisa.Similar Posts:

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Pockets of Time originally appeared on LisaHartjes.com on November 3, 2008.

It turns out, November 1 was Digital Scrapbooking Day. Then it hit me. I mean, what a cool thing to do. Do a scrapbook page for your character. Find a picture of someone who looks like a character, slap it up on the page. Find something to represent where they live, and what their interests are. Does your character have a phobia? Up on the page it goes.

You could do the same thing when working on the theme or plot of your story. Your character goes running to a remote cabin in the mountains to get away from her troubles. Find pictures of a cabin in the mountains, and of things that might happen there. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be pictures. Words would work just as well.Similar Posts:

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Creative Stuff For Character Creation originally appeared on LisaHartjes.com on November 3, 2008.

Anyway, I drag myself out of bed this morning. I knew we were getting snow. We’d gotten about half an inch before we went to bed last night, and there was a snow advisory. Half asleep, I walk past the kitchen window and glance outside and see the snow on the tree branches. (The picture to the left is the view out of that window.)

The sight serves to remind me how beautiful nature can be – and how much I dislike winter. Don’t get me wrong. I’m Canadian, so I’ve seen my share of snow. I like hockey (though I prefer baseball). I loved making snowmen and snow forts and having snowball fights when I was a kid. Problem is winter is cold, and cold makes my hands hurt.

Winter’s also a great time for writing. When that blanket of white covers the ground, it’s a blank slate for inspiration. A path left by someone trudging through the fresh fallen snow. Where are they going? Where did they come from? What are they thinking? The wind blows the snow into a huge drift that partially covers a car. What if it wasn’t snow, but sand?

Some of great ideas can be found in the world around us. The March 2008 issue of the Smithsonian magazine arrived in my mailbox yesterday. It has an article about cheetahs. From a quick scan of the article, I saw that cheetahs are considered to be easily “tamed”. What kind of stories spring to mind from that tidbit of information (regardless of whether or not I remembered that info correctly)? If you were going to anthropomorphize a cheetah, or create a shapeshifter or race based on the cheetah, how might that define their personalities?

It’s this kind of thing that I think encourages a writer to become more aware of the world around them, and what’s in it. More than just people watching, they should nature watch. Writers should read, but not just fiction. Nonfiction not only helps a writer making her world more “real”, making sure she gets her facts right, but is a source for all kinds of different ideas.Similar Posts:

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The World As Inspiration originally appeared on LisaHartjes.com on February 26, 2008.