To weed or not to weed

This morning, I spent about 45 minutes weeding and cutting back dead flowers. I mean, I'm not a gardener. I haven't had my own home or flower bed in which to really hone my skills. However, if there is a garden at my disposal in the fall, and there are any shriveled, brown, dead plants to be pulled out, I'm your gardener, as long as I don't have to spend too much time at it or make decisions. As with most physical chores, I'm best at the really obvious kinds of gardening, not detailed minutiae. I spent hours this summer removing enormous ferns that had taken over a garden. It required brute strength and some twisting of the below-ground seed pods, but there were hundreds of these suckers and they all had to come out. I could only stand to do it for about an hour at a stretch, but it's amazing how much you can get done in an hour when you are just a culling machine.

In another area of my life, I am trying not to weed. Yes, I've gotten back to work again on my book, and, reminded by my friends of Annie Lamott and the concept of the "shitty first draft," I'm trying to curb all my natural instincts to sound good. To please people. To write logically. To be nice. I'm just typing into the computer like a wild woman for short stretches, and even resisting the temptation to re-read each section once I am done. For now anyway. It's very, very hard for someone who has spent her lifetime self-editing. I've had the darnedest experiences, but until now I hoped, in effect, that no one would notice, that I'd slip under the radar screen of life. Well, I've managed to survive six decades, so I guess the time has come to just be and grow and have these adventures, and not self-prune so much. Lordy, enough other factors regularly cut me down to size without my help! This blog is teaching me to write faster and more freely and instinctively, and these qualities are beginning to color my other writing projects. I'm so thankful.