Our 101st Post!

Random thoughts followed by a paid five things essay

Happy Belated 100^th!

Last week, Rural Reflections-The Reboot hit a milestone with our 100^th post. I meant to say something then, but once I got to writing, it slipped my mind. So happy 100^th newsletter to me and Ruth!

It has been a summer of growing leafy things—flowers, peppers, tomatoes—and also of growing this book. I have been at it in some form most days, even if it’s just a couple hundred words or a bit of easy-ish revision (as opposed to the rest of the revision which is equal parts brutal and rewarding). I thought I would share in a little more detail some of the surprises, not all of them bad, that I have encountered in doing this work.

Last month, I decided not to do a paid post, for reasons you can read about here, but for those who are investing in this newsletter and my writing, I did not want to wait too much longer. For everyone else, you will soon hit a paywall, though if you want to keep reading, I think you have the option to see one paid post for free, or you can contact me and I can figure out how to give you access.

Also, thanks to Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash for the cover photo on this week’s post. The photos in the post itself are mine.

For the first time ever, I am successfully growing enough tomatoes to recoup my investment in the tomato plant!

Learning by doing: A Five Things Essay

1. I draft better by hand, despite my atrocious handwriting. I recently tried writing a section directly on my laptop, thinking it would save me time.

It did not, nor should it have. Writing takes time. On some level, I think I believed going straight to screen would obviate the need for what Anne Lamott famously calls a “shitty first draft,” though in hindsight I see how ridiculous that is. Instead, I lost the rush of creation that usually accompanies an initial draft as the ideas flow through the pen in my hand. I fought to get the words out, lost my train of thought, and found myself looking up details that I normally save for later—details like dates or spellings, synonyms for overused or inaccurate words. I finally wrangled a decent draft of the chapter in question, then went back to how I had been doing things. So far, it is going much better.