Linda M. Hasselstrom, Spring 2012
. . .
How Gardening Resembles the Well-Planned Writing Life
A Beltane Message from Linda
Ancient lore as well as practical reality in South Dakota makes this the time of fertility and new beginnings after a long winter. This spring has been unusual: we had little moisture in January and February and none at all in March, while the temperatures were above average. Though our last average frost date is May 25, many gardeners have been unable to resist planting something, even as we mumble to ourselves that our deepest snowfalls and coldest temperatures can come in April.
Outside my window, my two sometimes-white Westies sprawl in the raised bed, sniffing the clods of dirt, nibbling on eggshells that didn’t quite turn into compost. I can hardly blame them; I have three pots of herbs and three rows of lettuce and radishes growing in my unheated greenhouse.
In Celtic tradition, Beltane is one of the great festivals of the year, appropriately calling our attention to the death of the past year in the rebirth of the new. Celebrants wish for a year of strong crops and good health and many rites a symbolic of union between the Great Mother and the Horned God. Dancing around that phallic maypole was intended to make the fields, the domestic animals and the women fertile. Participants gather flowers and herbs and chant verses dedicated to love, wash their faces in dew at sunrise, make daisy chains and wish on particular trees.
How does knowing about these ancient customs apply to your writing life? You know it does, because so far I’ve managed to tie each one of these home page messages to my favorite topic.
Continued below . . .
Click here for the rest of the Beltane message. Linda links gardening to a plan for writing.
Welcome to Windbreak House Writing Retreat
In the center of the nation, deep in the grasslands of western South Dakota, essayist and poet Linda M. Hasselstrom grew up as an only child on a family cattle ranch homesteaded by a Swedish cobbler in 1899.
Today she invites you to benefit from a writing retreat on that same ranch. Come to the house where she discovered the Great Plains outside her windows, where she began to write the poetry and non-fiction books that have established her as one of the strongest voices on behalf of the prairie.
Linda holds a BA in English and Journalism, an MA in American Literature, and has been a teacher of writing for more than 40 years. She has hosted writing retreats at her ranch since 1996.
Not a writer but a reader? Enjoy Linda's vivid descriptions of her life and work on the ranch, as a writer, and as an advocate for the preservation of the prairies and the people and wildlife who inhabit them.
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What's Here on the Website?
What's New?
Linda's newest book,
Dirt Songs: A Plains Duet, was published by The Backwaters Press in 2011.
Click here to learn all about this book of poems and Linda's co-author Twyla Hansen.
Read the
newest blog posts, for
Linda's blog Notes from a Western Life.
Linda accidentally became a blogger when she began sending her assistant various essays and musings, suggesting they be posted "somewhere on the website."
Other new things in 2011 include new and improved content plus additional photos on the following website pages:
The Retreats Page --- the list of available dates for 2012 will be posted soon.
The Homestead House Page --- new photos have been added for the photo tour of the retreat house and surroundings.
The Writing Conversations By eMail Page --- the sign-up process to work with Linda via email was streamlined in 2011.
The Books & More Page --- a new Poetry Page, more featured books and expanded material in many of the articles.
Linda's Books
If you want information about Linda's books, see
The Non-fiction Page
The Poetry Page
The Wind Anthologies Page
The Additional Books Page
Check out these "Featured Books" for some behind-the-scenes stories and photos.
Land Circle
No Place Like Home
Roadside History of South Dakota
Windbreak
Want to know more about a particular story or poem? Post a question for Linda on the
Ask Linda Page.
Windbreak House Writing Retreats
Would you like to have Linda help you improve your own writing in a relaxing and creative environment? See the
Retreats Page to learn about Windbreak House Writing Retreats. Linda offers an individualized retreat for each attending writer.
Look here for a photo tour of
Homestead House and its surroundings. This is where you'll stay if you attend a retreat.
The
Ask Linda Page has answers to some additional questions about writing help and the writing retreat experience. Don't find what you want to know? Post your own question or send us an e-mail (use the link in the left-hand column).
Writing Conversations by eMail
Can't take a retreat vacation right now? Want to work with Linda during the winter when driving to a writing retreat is difficult? See the
Online Writing Help Page for complete details on how to sign up for a Writing Conversation by eMail.
For additional information on Linda's philosophy of working with writers and a sample of Linda's writing hand-outs,
click here.
And, as always, the
Ask Linda Page has answers to some questions about working with Linda on your writing. Don't find what you want to know? Post your own question or send us an email (use the link in the left-hand column).
Linda's Calendars
Hoping to meet Linda in your hometown? See
"Where in the World is Linda M. Hasselstrom?" for a list of Linda's upcoming appearances and other newsworthy events. Sign up for one of her workshops, attend a reading, stop by to chat and get an autograph at one of her booksignings.
Look on the
Retreats Page for the list of "Available Retreat Dates" before you schedule your retreat.
Information about Linda
Want to know more about Linda for that school project or just out of idle curiosity?
Read
Linda's biography and see photos of Linda and a few of her relatives.
The
"See What You Read" Page shows people, places, animals, and things mentioned in Linda's writings.
Check out this year's
"Where in the World is Linda M. Hasselstrom?" for information on events in Linda's writing life and perhaps a magazine or two in which Linda is featured or has published essays. (There were quite a few magazines in 2010, so check out the archives on that page.)
Still want to know more? The
Ask Linda Page has many more details and you're encouraged to be as nosy as you wish with your own questions. Though be sure to read "The Rules" in the left-hand column of that page.
Environmental Projects on Linda's Ranch
Linda has worked with the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory to improve bird and wildlife habitat on her ranch.
Click here to read more about this project. Some lists of birds and animals seen on Linda's ranch are posted here, along with a few short stories about some of them. Many Windbreak House retreat participants enjoy bird-watching and wildlife-viewing during their stay.
The Great Plains Native Plant Society is creating a public garden on 350 acres of Linda's ranch. The article about the
Claude A. Barr Memorial Great Plains Garden has details, including a list of plant species found on the ranch. The garden is an easy walk from Homestead House; retreat participants are welcome to tour the garden.
"See What You Read"
This web page lets you
see photos of the actual people, places, animals, and things Linda mentions in her writing. Brief descriptions and excerpts of Linda's work accompany the photos.
Let us know what you'd like to see!
Home Page Essay Archives
Linda posts a new message on her Home Page a number of times each year. We've
archived the essays so you can read the ones you missed and re-read the ones you enjoyed. Some of them include recipes, all have photos.
The Fun Stuff
This website also has some fun stuff. See the Books & More Page for stories and photos about:
The dogs in Linda's life. A number of NEW stories and photos have been posted in 2011.
Some cows Linda has known.
Rendezvous stories and photos about mountain man reenactment camping.
Birds and wildlife at Linda's ranch.
The Gallimaufry Page: a jumble of photos and stories that don't fit elsewhere on the website.
Note: I am working on activating the inactive links and adding the missing content to the portions of the website still under construction. If you find any typos, errors in content, or (horrors!) mistakes in grammar, please let me know, using the email link in the left-hand column. Thanks! -- Linda's webmaster.
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Page through and imagine what you might create.
The Home Page Message continues . . .
How does knowing about these ancient customs apply to your writing life?
Preparation, of course. Naturally, you want to plow right into that new essay or poem, as much as you want to rush outside and plant seeds for the garden. But rushing wildly into either gardening or writing can create chaos. Prepare.
1. Order seeds.
This may be the best part of gardening: paging through the catalog looking at all those luscious pictures of dewy strawberries and crunchy corn, deciding what to order.
Do the same with your journal: page through and imagine what you might create from the random thoughts you’ve noted down. Be extravagant; note anything that might possibly turn into that perfect poem or that transcendent short story. Maybe you’ll open a new folder for each one, either on paper or on the computer.
Then study and prioritize. Without considerable research, you probably cannot write the story of the Russian revolution from the point of view of a peasant. Instead, you might put together a manuscript of poems from the drafts you already have. Or you could set up a card table to organize and identify those family photos, maybe just before you invite the clan to gather for the Fourth of July celebration.
2. Till the ground.
In gardening, sharpen the shovel or check the oil and gas in the tiller.
In writing, consider your schedule for the coming months. What time might you spend writing? Diagram a week and note the number of hours you could write. Then consider your other obligations realistically and list the hours you really believe you will write. Post that schedule in your journal, on your bathroom mirror, on your refrigerator, and everywhere else it will help you remind yourself.
(Look for
my blog on "Monitoring Your Time" [posted April 30, 2012]; try the time-monitoring exercise to see if it helps you understand where your time goes.)
Harvest and enjoy your garden
. . . and your writing.
3. Fertilize the garden.
Make time to think about your priorities and to make plans based on the reality of your life. Lay in a supply of chocolate or any other tidbit that helps you think. Read writers who inspire you.
4. Mark straight rows and plant.
What do you need to accomplish your writing goals?
Of course you can recycle all kinds of waste paper by printing on the second side and reuse old file folders, but if you really believe a new file cabinet will help you keep track of your work, get it. (Writing expenses are generally deductible, within reason, if you submit work to be published.) Rearrange your work space to make it as efficient and as private as possible.
If your project requires research, decide how you might do that most efficiently. If you take your folder of poems to work, will you make revisions while you eat lunch at your desk? Do you need to get up an hour earlier to write with fewer interruptions?
5. Water, preferably by using drip irrigation hoses to make the best use of your resources.
Allot time to think about your writing– perhaps during that long commute to work. Think about the work, how it is progressing, what you have accomplished, how close to your goal you are getting. Plan to type, revise and read what you have written during times when you may not be as alert as you are during your best writing time.
6. Weed.
Sharpen the hoe and go after those thistles.
Sharpen your pencil and chop out weedy sentences, prickly adverbs, proliferating adjectives.
7. Sit in the shade and watch the garden; you may discover what is nibbling the lettuce or tunneling under the kale.
Consider part of your writing job to be researching possible publishing venues. Do you need to find a commercial publisher or is this a project you might produce yourself, either online or by self-publishing? Be realistic; is the book going to sell or would it serve your writing goals best to self-publish it and give it to editors, audiences and others as an example of the quality and type of your work.
8. Harvest and enjoy!
Print out a fine copy of the finished product. Provide yourself with something you enjoy sipping. Sit in your favorite chair. Read the piece as though someone else had written it; enjoy the fine phrases, the gorgeous words, the sturdy paragraphs.
And of course because this is your favorite reading chair, you will find an ample supply of pens and pencils and notepads and sticky arrows close by, just in case you find a flaw or two in the finished product: a weed that leaps up overnight.
Planting Peas.
Today I planted a double row of peas, listening to the woodpecker in the dead tree near the garden, the screek and yawk and trill and plink! and treeeeeee of the redwing blackbirds and robins celebrating spring. And I remembered my grandmother and the poem I wrote about her in another spring. (“Planting Peas,”
Dakota Bones. Page 56)
I see my grandmother’s hand,
doing just this, dropping peas
into gray gumbo that clings like clay. . . .
I miss
her smile, her blue eyes, her biscuits and gravy
but mostly her hands.
I push a pea into the earth,
feel her hands pushing me back. She’ll come in May,
she says, in long straight rows,
dancing in light green dresses.
* * *
May your garden and your writing be blessed.
Linda M. Hasselstrom
Beltane-- May Day Eve-- April 30, 2012
Windbreak House
Hermosa, South Dakota
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For more information:
Go look at
my blog about the Time Monitor, posted April 30, 2012.
Just as a checkbook, properly used, can tell you what your financial priorities are by revealing where you spend your money, the time monitor will tell you-- bluntly-- exactly where your time goes.
These Home Page Essays Are Archived --- Linda posts a new message on her Home Page a number of times each year. We've
archived the essays so you can read the ones you missed and re-read the ones you enjoyed. Some of them include recipes or poems or writing suggestions. All of them have photos.
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