Gardening

My husband has begun reading the novel. We're not sure if he'll finish. Having started the novel, he felt he could finally come to the blog. And now the blog has gotten it into his head that there is nothing redeeming about the novel. I assured him there is no payoff. He's read 40 pages. That's enough for me. When we all sign the front inside cover of a copy as a memorial to time lost on this novel, he can sign his name.

So there we were yesterday, him reading the blog and me trying to enjoy doing nothing, when it popped into my head: Gardening. Why are BOTH of these women gardening in the story?

You might think this is a trivial complaint, but this is a trivial blog. Bev lives in her mother's house. That is her garden. What is Angela doing meddling with the landscape? Shouldn't this be something they fight about?

There are a myriad of reasons why a woman getting a divorce would be out spending gobs of money at the garden center and toiling away in the backyard, but these reasons do not surface. Again, it's thoughtless writing. You needed Angela to leave the house, so she goes the nursery. But we never see Angela planting the flowers she purchases. We actually don't even see her at the nursery. We just know she spends the entire day there and a young man tries to help her carry the load to her car based on what she says later.

We see Bev in the garden. Is she working out all the frustrations of her life, trying to do something productive or beautiful to counter all the dirty adult diapers and lack of response from Mama? No. Bev just happens to be gardening.

Could it be that both characters are gardening because you were gardening while you wrote this novel? And both characters are you?

That was my husband's first thoughts on the novel. "They're all pieces of her personality. Angela, Bev and Carolyn—they're all [the author]."

"Who's Carolyn?"

My husband seemed dumbfounded by this question. He's 40 pages into the story. He's just read about Carolyn, a.k.a. Miss Nevada. I assure him he will forget her name and the title of the book in another 50 pages.

So you only write what you know, which means that your characters aren't very good caregivers or wedding coordinators or mistresses or teenagers because you are none of those things. You go shopping at nurseries and buy plants, though. So now your characters do, too. Exciting...

We've figured out what the payoff should be: All of the characters are one person. They are all Mama. She is actually in a nursing home already and dreams the whole thing. She has no daughters, no grandchildren. She is just babbling in the corner to that portrait of Jesus. The end. Ta-daaa...