The other day my husband suggested I write my post here about how to grow a book the same way I do a plant in my garden. He had a good point, because a story, like a plant, needs the right conditions at each stage of growth, from seedling to transplanting, and finally to bearing fruit that will reward the gardener for their labor. Planting the seed of a story idea in the fertile imagination. Watering that seed with research, which could be factual or just reading other books in the same genre if we’re talking about the wild flights of fancy that are fantasy. Or, perhaps, fertilizing the story seed by spending lots of time daydreaming, letting the world build up in your head… and then you start writing it down.

In a garden, I’ll often start a seed inside, protected from the elements. Unfortunately, this also means it’s not getting any wind, which plants need to grow sturdy. Thigmomorphogenesis… ain’t it an ugly word so much that you like it? I’ll come back to that later. Right now is the time to consider the soil you’re putting your story seed into; the audience that you’re writing for. What are the genre expectations? What readers is this story going out to? Don’t write to market. Do consider the market if you want this little seed to bring forth fruit and not wither, stunted for lack of finding its readers.  

When I transplant a seedling out into the garden, well, maybe that’s when I start writing the story down. This is where the seedling is in the most danger, from frosts of lack of time, from the slugs of self-doubt, from the burning heat of overthinking. If you can overcome all of those things, then it’s got a real chance of producing fruit, or flowers, whichever that plant is destined for.

It’s up to you, oh gardener of the soul, to nurture your story through the perils. You need to find the time to write, and guard that jealously. When you take that time, sit down and write. This isn’t the time to research, or do your marketing (much less doomscrolling social media. No, your story needs words and only you can keep it alive by adding them.

Don’t let the slugs, snails, and pillbugs of your own internal editor start nibbling at the story. Write, don’t edit. You can edit when you’re done. You may not be done when you think you’re done, but don’t worry about that until after you’re done. Write the story. Then, in revisions, you may realize you should add material, sometimes a few sentences for foreshadowing, sometimes an entire chapter to develop something that stayed in your head instead of on the page. If you perpetually go back over the unfinished story thinking it’s not good enough, you’re going to burn out just like that seedling under the blazing sun for the first time.

Once you have the story on the page, that’s when the care for the future can truly begin. Now you get to pull out the secateurs and snip a little here, graft a little there, to form the thing into your vision of what it can be. Imagine a tiny bonsai tree. You’ve got a tiny world in your novel: what can you do to prune the story into the shape it needs to be? Be willing to deadhead spent blooms, in the form of cutting off beloved scenes that don’t fit the finished story. Personally, I think you can leave a few things that don’t drive the plot forward, but if you have too many, the reader is going to lose sight of the essence of your story, the way the bonsai will lose its shape when left to grow unchecked.

And fruiting? Well, that’s only going to come when the story has gone to maturity. Pruned, fed with marketing, given the sun of exposure to audience, and watered with the tears of the author… ok, maybe that’s just me. However you want to stretch this metaphor, the fruit of the book is the money in your pocket. Perhaps literally fruit, if you take some of your royalty check to the farmer’s market and purchase nice ripe peaches!

Oh, right, and thigmomorphogenesis? Well, I’m thinking of that as a metaphor as well. In my seed starting I run a fan on my seedlings to help them develop the fibres they need in their stems to withstand the winds of the world. Your story needs to be run past some fans who are willing to be honest and critical and batter your little seedling around a bit because that will make it strong enough to bear the gust front of reviews out in the real world. Until you do that, you’ll have a hothouse plant that only looks good when protected, and you should never try and earn the fruits of your labor with one of those.

Plant the seeds in the right soil blends of genres, which dictate your use of tropes and structure, write the whole thing before you start pruning with editing, and let the winds of honest feedback make it sturdy enough to endure public opinion. Only then will your story bear the fruit it was always meant to.