by Tel on February 5, 2010
Life Tiny Tips & Sparks
Dear Friends and Visitors,
Effective immediately, this site will be consolidated with Inspired Pen’s Tiny Tips and Sparklers due mainly to technical reasons. Perhaps, it’s timely as it has provided a path to reduce effort from maintenance of two web sites.
Contents of this site will be included under the Categories — “Writers Writing” and “Writing Tips and Ideas.” Various interest topics will be continuously shared, to entertain, inform, and hopefully, to inspire and motivate from that spark.
Thank you very much.
Tel
by Tel on February 3, 2010
(For February 2010, Valentine’s month, Inspired Pen’s guest writer is Chris Eirschele, Feature Writer of Flower Gardens, Suite101.com)
On Being a Garden Writer
By Christine Eirschele
Being a garden writer draws me into the two worlds I love with equal pull. It becomes most apparent when I want to be outside planting at the same time sitting indoors at my desk. The balance is always in dispute.
I came to writing professionally later in life, a 3rd or 4th career, I think. Gardening and horticulture was always around me; I am the product of garden parents. The smell of flowers, as well as composted manure, and soil trapped in their nails were common in my ordinary life.
Yes, I wrote in diaries and garden journals. But, it was when I came smack up against my physical limitations that I seriously pondered writing to earn a living. I already proved I could talk all day about plants, I was sure I could write about them, too.
I get the most satisfaction writing a story of plants impacting the human existence. So, it is not all about the money. The healing garden at a metropolitan hospital or a high school teacher using his Japanese design experience to expose students to new careers are stories we can learn much from, if only we hear more than the cold hard facts. It is my function to tell these stories in a way people want to read.
I tend to be a solitary gardener, where only my dog is my company. That is completely compatible with the life of a professional writer. At least it is the one I appreciate. When I venture out it is to do research: traipsing around someone’s garden, listening to his or her thoughts and shooting lots of photographs. Then it is back to sitting at my desk and getting it down in a form others will enjoy.
For me, my world is a perfect balance where a garden is always found in my writing.
Chris Eirschele
(Bio: Chris is a garden writer who lives in the hardiness zone 5 of south central Ohio. She and her husband live with their Dachshund in their home surrounded by plants. Here, more musings by Chris can be found.)
Tel