When Someone Laughs at Your Pumpkin Patch

 

The best revenge is success.  The second best is becoming mildly inconveniently successful.

If you create, let alone exist long enough, it's going to happen.  Someone will dismiss your work.  They'll roll their eyes at your dream.  They'll tell you your idea is silly, unrealistic, childish, strange, or not worth pursuing.

For the longest time, I believed the solution was to prove them wrong.  If I could explain myself clearly enough, work hard enough, or create something impressive enough surely then they'd understand.  They'd see what I saw.

And that's all nonsense.

Some people will comment because they genuinely want to help you.  Their feedback may be difficult to hear, but it comes from a place of honestly and respect.

Others are not interested in helping at all.  Maybe they're interested in being right, in feeling superior, or want a reaction.

Learning the difference between these two groups may be one of the most valuable skills you can develop not only as a writer but a person.

Constructive criticism:

• Asks questions.
• Points towards improvement

Contempt will:

• Dismiss you.
• Points towards discouragement.

One helps build you up not only as an artist but a person.  The other simply tries to tear you down.

The painful part is both can sting.

We pour our hearts into a story, a business, a dream, and criticism can feel personal.  Creativity requires you to be vulnerable.  We're sharing something that didn't exist before we made it.

However, not every opinion requires equal weight.

A trusted mentor who takes the time to offer thoughtful feedback deserves consideration.

A person whose only goal is to simply mock, belittle, bully, or discourage?

Blockity, block, block, block!

You don't need to attend every argument you're invited to.

You don't have to defend every dream.

You're not required to explain your worth to people who have already decided not to see it.

I want to present to you a real life example that happened to me late May.  I dated this person for five months and then blocked him because he would violate my boundaries.  What struck me about it wasn't the criticism itself, but the assumption that disagreement meant I was stubborn.  That my decision to step away somehow made me responsible for his unhappiness.

To put this into healthy criticism it would've been something along the lines of "Here's a problem I see, and here's why."  Healthy criticism helps us grow.

Manipulation or unhealthy criticism is "You should have listened to me, and bad things happened after you didn't."  Manipulation tries to make you feel guilty for having boundaries and/or the courage to say "no."

Rather than respond personally I banned him from my page and blocked him.  Sometimes the most powerful response is silence.

There are times the most powerful response is continuing your work.  Continue to live and you do you.

Write that next chapter, plant that garden, open that shop, put that demon back where you found it.  Don't lick it, I say!

A pumpkin doesn't stop growing because someone calls it a squash.  It continues to soak up the sunshine.  It continues to grow roots.  It continues to become what it was meant to become.

Perhaps people should do the same.

Not everyone is going to appreciate who you are and what you do.  Not every person is going to understand your vision or cheer for your success.

And that's all right.

Your job is not to convince everyone.

Your job is to keep creating.

The people who need your stories, your art, your ideas, and your voice will find them.

And when they do, they will be glad you kept going.

Even Pumpkins Need Time to Grow

I am not procrastinating.  I am participating in seasonal root development.

These days there seems to be a great deal of pressure to always be creating.

Write the next chapter.

Finish that next project.

Launch that next idea.

Post more content.

Work harder!

The message seems to be that if we're not constantly producing something, we're somehow falling behind.  The rat race wouldn't be so bad if the rats actually lost once in a while.

As a writer, I have certainly felt that pressure myself.

There are days when the blank page glares accusingly at me.  Days where I've only been able to do one paragraph.  Days where I've looked back at all I've accomplished and feel like I've done nothing at all.

But nature rarely moves quickly.

A pumpkin seed doesn't apologize for spending weeks beneath the soil before anyone sees any evidence of growth.

A field isn't harvested every day of the year ad yet somehow we expect ourselves to be productive in every season of our lives.  Yet, somehow we expect ourselves to be productive in every season of our lives.

Creativity doesn't work that way.

Sometimes our minds are in spring.  Ideas arrive in abundance.  New stories appear everywhere we look leaving us feeling energized and excited by the possibilities.

Sometimes we find ourselves in summer.  We are doing the work, tending to the projects, solving the problems, and watching our efforts begin to take shape.

Autumn is the season of the harvest.  It's when we complete manuscripts, finish costumes, launch projects, and finally share our work with the world.

But winter has its purpose too.  Winter is the season many creatives fear.  It's the season when inspiration feels distant.  The season when projects slow down.  The season when we rest, recover, and question whether anything is growing at all.

Yet beneath that frozen ground, important work is still taking place.

The roots deepen and the seed waits.  The earth prepares for what comes next.

Creativity often follows the same pattern.

Creativity often asks for patience.  Sometimes the best thing we can do is step away for a while.  Rest isn't the opposite of creativity.

The mind needs space to wander.

The imagination needs room to breathe.

Sometimes the most productive thing we can do is step away for a while.

A field that is harvested endlessly eventually becomes exhausted and unable to produce.  So do people.

Trust that not every season is meant for harvesting.

Some seasons are meant for growing roots.

The next story will come and the next idea will arrive.

The next season will come.

After all, even pumpkins need time to grow.

Finding Magic in Ordinary Places

If you can't summon your own inspiration store bought is fine.

I think there's a misconception that we all fall into.  It's that inspiration arrives with fanfare.  We tend to imagine it descending from the heavens with a flash of lightning, announcing it with trumpets and certainty.  We like to imagine writers sitting at their desks when suddenly an entire story appears, fully formed and demanding to be written.

In my experience, it's rarely so dramatic.

More often I get ideas at 3 AM, when I'm in the shower, or when I'm doing the most mundane task imaginable.

I have found inspiration in antique stores.  There's something magical about walking among objects that have outlived their original owners.  A tarnished brooch.  A faded post card.  A well-worn book with someone else's name written inside the cover.  Each item carries questions that can't really be fully answered.  Who was the owner?  What became of them?  What stories could they tell?

Writers, I suspect, are especially vulnerable to such questions.

Then there are the crows.

I like crows.  I often find myself watching for them when I should be doing something more practical.  A crow perched on a fence can transform an everyday afternoon into something that feels pulled out of folklore.  Crows really do possess an intelligence and confidence that I admire.  Whenever I see one sitting quietly and observing the world, I always wonder what secrets does it have?

Perhaps none.

Perhaps all of them.

It may be sitting there thinking "I have solved all the world's problems.  Now get the hell off the planet."

Perhaps that is why I enjoy storytelling so much.

Stories teach us to pay attention.  They remind us that the ordinary is not always so ordinary.  Every object has a history to it.  Every stranger has a story.  Every crow on a fence post, ever forgotten photograph, every fog-covered road holds the potential for wonder.

The magic was never hidden.

It's quietly waiting for you to discover it.

Nerding out and the Mother I Borrowed from the Stars

 

I'm an acquired taste.  If you don't like me acquire some taste.  Lwaxana Troi, probably.

For the life of me, I couldn't think of a good writing journal entry so I'm going to make you sit through some nerding out.

In the past, and to some extent in the present, I am often told by people who do truly mean well that I'm "too much."  I could benefit from being more ordinary.

Even my late father once made a remark that "She has to live in her own world because this one refuses to accept her."

To be honest, there was a time where I'd give a lot to be like everybody else.  To be neurotypical and even normal.

Because the truth is, I wasn't made for living small.  None of us are.  I was built for stories that spill over their edges, for candlelight that flickers just a bit too dramatically, and laughter when people shouldn't be laughing.  I was built for autumn, and all the beauty that comes with it.

And yet, I remember her.

Lwaxana Troi, Ambassador, scandal,  and absolute delight.

This was the woman who entered a room as though it had been waiting for her.  The woman who refused to be less than she naturally is for anyone's comfort.  The woman who feels everything fully and then has the very audacity to call it strength.

She is, in every sense, absolutely unbearable.

She is also entirely correct.

There's something powerful in her refusal to shrink.  In the way she turns embarrassment into theater and expectation into something that's ignored.  She doesn't ask for permission to exist loudly.  She simply does and then dares the universe to keep up.

I have always admired that.  

Perhaps because I needed it.

So I bothered a fictional mother from the stars.  This woman would look at me ink-stained, velvet clad, hauling a pumpkin behind me, and say without any sort of hesitation: “Darling, you are not too much. They are simply not enough.”

And really, who am I to argue with a Betazoid?

So no, I will not be ordinary.

I have tried it. It doesn't suit me.

I will be strange.  I will be excessive.  I will be precisely as dramatic as the moment requires, and occasionally more so, just to be safe.

Because somewhere, across the stars, my space mother would expect nothing less.

And I have no intention of disappointing her.

Also, a brief administrative note:  if you are reading this, I have quietly adopted you.  I am your pumpkin auntie now.  There will be tea.  Resistance is futile.