X Is For Xeriscaping

For the Blogging From A to Z Challenge I’m doing you all a huge favor and filling you in on the 26 Things To Hate About Writing.** I’m hoping by the end of April, I will have convinced all of you not to indulge in the wild insanity of becoming a writer. If I can save even one person from offering themselves up in sacrifice to the mad and fickle word gods, I will have done some good in this world.

Check out each letter’s post here.
[image error]XERISCAPING

I always hate when we get to X on this challenge, because I have to get creative and as we’ve all learned from this theme, I need to preserve all the creativity I have for my writing. But here we are, on the worst letter day.

Xeriscape means to landscape with plants that need little moisture and irrigation, when you live in a xeric, or arid, area. I’m going to oh-so-cleverly use this as a metaphor for trying to make our stories grow when they’ve gotten dry and shriveled. This can include shoving a cactus up that difficult character’s rear end, or throwing a shrub on the fire to liven things up. When you need to xeriscape, you may find it difficult because:

– The story may need to be reworked if it’s stumbled into the desert and can’t find water. If you let it bake in the sun too long, it’s going to get crusty.

– Not everything grows in arid soil, so you might have to go back to the place where it was fertile and try again. If you’re terrible at gardening like I am, try watering the soil with your tears of frustration.

– You may be already delirious from heat stroke and think that mirage of a good story on the horizon is real. You may be dead wrong.

If a story has galloped off into the vast wasteland and gotten all turned around, giving it water might be hard. It’s important to step back and look at the parts that are still growing, and try to bring that growth back, if you can. This can be frustrating and difficult, but might be worth it in the end. Or, as it’s a mystery why humans insist on living in inhospitable areas of our planet, like it’s some kind of challenge from the earth and we simply must answer it, you might realize you’re just insane, not plucky.

**Disclaimer: If you haven’t figured it out, these posts are pure satire and simply a humorous way to vent my writing frustrations. No offense is intended to anyone. Please, become or continue being a writer. It’s awesome, I swear. It’s super…duper, awesome…heh heh.

Filed under: A to Z Challenge, A to Z Challenge 2017 Tagged: blog hop, funny, writing