Digging Up Words

Nothing is like the taste of a fresh, vine-ripened homegrown tomato. Yum, yum. Although planted late because of the torrential, continuous Spring rains, and suffering under the harsh record breaking heat of Summer and drought, our vines have given us some of those wonderful fruit this year.

It has taken effort. We dug the garden with a shovel, smoothed it with a rake, planted the seedlings, fertilized, watered and nurtured the plants. Gaining the tasty reward took a lot of preparation, patience, persistence, and perspiration. We got the result we wanted.

Every time I bite into the juicy red fruit I know the work was worth the effort. I find this a metaphor for whatever goal you want to achieve in life. Each takes preparation, patience, persistence, and perspiration.

My current writing goals are to complete an essay and a short story for two magazine contests. The process is like getting the garden dug and producing.

First, there is all this excess to weed out--excess distractions.

Second, all the thoughts need to be dug up and words smoothed out so ideas can be planted, germinate, and grow strong.

Third, I have to persist in doing what's necessary to make the fruit grow, ripen and become worthy of enjoying.

All of this takes much preparation and perspiration. More perspiration and patience, too, will come in later while awaiting the results of submitting the harvest of words.

Whether it will be a prize winner or not, the fruit of my mental labors will be sweet because of my achievement in getting the work done. Tasty.