July 6, 2020-I’m hoping to grow some massive, prize-winning pumpkins this year to the tune of 2500 pounds; knowing this is quite a feat, I thought I’d enlist the help of experts. I went to Amazon to look for a book on pumpkin growing when I stumbled across a book titled, The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz. The book is NOT about growing pumpkins, but growing your business like you would a gigantic pumpkin, there are steps that need to be taken! To grow a pumpkin, you need to:
- Plant seeds
- Water the seeds
- Remove diseased/damaged pumpkins
- Weed the plant
- Identify the stronger faster-growing pumpkin leaves and get rid of the rest, repeat until there’s only one pumpkin per vine
- Focus ALL of your attention on the big, beautiful, strong pumpkin and nurture it like a human baby
- Watch it grow
What does any of this have to do with your writing?
- Plant seeds. Brainstorm ideas for your writing, write down as many possible topics or themes as you can think of. Don’t hold back and don’t self-edit at this point.
- Water seeds, removed diseased damaged pumpkins, weed the plant and identify the fastest growing pumpkin leaving one per vine. Pick one idea and go with it, get rid of the bad ideas and focus on your very best one.
- Focus all of your attention on the strong pumpkin and nurture it. Focus on your idea for your novel and forget about writing anything else. Nurture your novel, take care of it, edit, rewrite, be thorough with your research and make necessary changes, add more plot twists, develop characters further etc.
- Watch it grow. Put the work in and watch yourself grow as an author. Keep growing and developing your skills.
Who knew that such good writing advice could come from pumpkin growing? Happy planting, X LLB
