Watering the Seeds to Grow Your Ideas

My actual garden in June 2016. (It needs watered.)

What does this have to do with writing?

All writers get seed ideas. We sometimes plant them by jotting them down. (If you don’t have a notebook where you jot down ideas, get one!) But they will never grow if we don’t work on them.

Aha.

Watering your idea makes it grow. Tending to it, nurturing it, and adding to it turns it from a seed idea into a novel.

Outlining, researching, and then writing scenes and characters is sometimes exhausting. It takes perseverance to get to The End. Then comes editing, which can be even more daunting! But if you keep at it, you will end up with a story that bears fruit; that holds up against the tests of time, critique, and review.

Go back to that journal and pick an idea. (Check out my ko-fi page for a bunch of fantasy and sci-fi writing prompts) Write what those words conjure up. Who is it about? What are they doing? What is their problem? Who helps them? Where are they? Who are their enemies? What obstacles are in their path? Now you have a basic outline for a story.

It doesn’t have to be a long story, either. It doesn’t even have to be GOOD. Just write for the sake of writing, for the practice, for yourself. You won’t get better without practice. If you have questions, ask them. The writing community on Twitter is helpful. Use #writingcommunity.

Water your seeds. There is a writer in you or you wouldn’t be reading this post.