The Gatekeeper’s Key Archives

Preparing Your Writer’s Garden to Grow: 6 Steps to a Fruitful Manuscript Harvest by Kathryn Ross

Kathryn Ross is our guest today on Thyme for Writers as she shares the next in her Write Spice Series: Preparing Your Writer’s Garden to Grow: 6 Steps to a Fruitful Manuscript Harvest.

The Write Spice: Writing Tips for Flavorful Words, The Gatekeeper’s Key, Kathryn Ross, writing tips, manuscript, garden, harvest, ideas, grow, writing life, inspiration, harvest, fruitful writing, procrastination, work space, clutter, organize, journey, editing, focus — Preparing Your Writer’s Garden to Grow

March is still pretty chilly where I live. Unseasonable warm days are kept in check with bursts of unseasonable cold and the last few roars of winter snow storms. I am dreaming about springtime and harvest, but not keen to venture out into the yard with spade and hoe in preparation for such dreams to come true.

In fact, I tend to regularly make the mistake of waiting until a happy, sunny day in May before I venture to the local garden shop looking for some green veggies to plant or springtime bulbs the wise gardener buried last fall. With a patient smile, the shop attendant explains that the reason there are so few vegetable greens left for planting in May is that they should have been planted in March for a truly fruitful harvest. But in March, I was only dreaming about such a thing, bundled in my sweater and hoping the wind chill and gray sky wasn’t so foreboding.

sweet Italian Basil, garden, herbs, farmers market — Sweet Italian Basil — Home Grown

Better gardeners than I brave chilly March days with solid plans and preparations for lush foliage and home-grown vegetable goodness later in the year. Whether it is planting trays of select seeds to sprout indoors before replanting after the frost dies or taking hoe in hand to whack away at the winter hardened earth, clearing away the leftover debris of last season greenery, smart and serious gardeners get to work by March to reap rewards in summer and fall.

I may never attain Master Gardener when it comes to preparing my floral and vegetable fields in a timely manner. But I can apply this principle of preparation and planning to my writing life and the harvests I dream of reaping from my Writer’s Garden.

The Writer’s Garden

When we don’t take care to prepare our fields for the desired harvest of a fruitful writing life, we reap little, with no healthy green goods to take to market. Here are six things you can do for properly preparing your Writer’s Garden in hopes of harvesting a manuscript in due season:

Break Up Fallow Ground in your lifestyle to prepare your Writer’s Garden soil for creating life-giving words. Removing the things that block you from your writing goals. This can be bad habits like procrastination, poor organization, a cluttered workspace, or an overburdened schedule of busy activities that dry up your mental focus and vitality. List the fallow ground blockages that keep your creative soils from being prepared and whack away at them.
Plant Inspiration Seeds Early by jotting down your ideas as soon as they come to you in a file or binder. When you come across a resource that you think will prove fruitful in the future, plant it right away. This could be a book (hard-copy or digital) you know will be invaluable to your research, or a computer file with website URLs saved to follow-up on later. Perhaps an image is inspiring to you for your project purposes, or even a physical object. Collect them as you find them and plant them in your creative space where you can brood over them for a time.
Water Ideas Daily with free writing on your project topic. If you’re working on a series of online posts, a fiction book, a non-fiction manuscript, poem, play, or what-all, visit your ideas on the project regularly. Discipline yourself to water it, in effect, by expanding on your previous work. This could mean reading another resource to add notes to your research. It could mean writing another chapter, or just adding another layer to a character description or plot outline. Visiting your Writer’s Garden with the water can of daily work feeds your inspiration seeds to take root and sprout.
Weed Carefully, at least once a week, with focused editing. Clear out unnecessary material and keep your writing and project work focused so only the strongest shoots are getting the nutrients of your skilled efforts. Don’t allow unruly vines to grow and choke out the full potential of your project.
Control Pests that seek to steal, kill, and destroy your precious harvest potential. Culprits such as Fear, Complaint, Laziness, Stress, Depression, Envy, Disobedience, and more can eat away at every new stem of writing produced if allowed to remain in your Writer’s Garden. Look for them hiding under the leaves of your work and brutally remove them.
Harvest on Time—not too early and not too late—to get the best nutrient return on your fruitful garden of words. In due season, under the blessing of the Lord, you will reap the benefits of what you have sown and stewarded, enriching both writer and reader.

This month, when farmers are already tilling the soil and planting crops for summer and fall harvests, are you planning how you’ll prepare and tend your Writer’s Garden?

clove, lemon oil, cinnamon, garden, harvestwriters, spice, fall recipes, editors, healing, manuscript — The Write Spice: Writing Tips for Flavorful Words
By Kathryn Ross

Writer-speaker, Kathryn Ross, ignites a love of literature and learning through Pageant Wagon Productions and Publishing. She writes and publishes homeschool enrichment and Christian living books for home, church, and school. Her passion is to equip women and families in developing a Family Literacy Lifestyle, producing readers and thinkers who can engage the world from a biblical worldview. She blogs and podcasts at TheWritersReverie.com and PageantWagonPublishing.com. Connect with Miss Kathy on Facebook.

Writer, speaker, teacher, and enrichment artist, Kathryn Ross, sweeps readers into the story-worlds of Jane Austen, C. S. Lewis, Hannah Hurnard, Marguerite de Angeli, John Bunyan, and others, exploring powerful truths to fulfilling God’s plan for your life in her latest publication, The Gatekeeper’s Key—nominated for the Christian Indie Awards 2018 in the devotional genre. Discern your place and season, with encouragement to see purpose in boundaries, find comfort in trials, and gain fortitude in going forth. Short story, personal testimony, excerpts from classic literature, visual imagery, challenge questions for discussion, and journal prompts for writing assignments draw you before the Gatekeeper. It’s quite a journey—but you’re never alone. Always in His Presence, with an Invitation, a Gatekeeper, and a Key. Perhaps more than one. Purchase on Amazon or direct from Pageant Wagon Publishing.

Chocolate: Are You a Cacao or Cocoa Writer? by Kathryn Ross

Welcome back Kathryn Ross to Thyme for Writers! Chocolate: Are You a Cacao or Cocoa Writer? is Kathryn’s next article in her series, The Write Spice: Writing Tips for Flavorful Words.

Chocolate, The Write Spice, Kathryn Ross, The Gatekeeper’s Key, cocoa, cacao, Valentine’s Day, chocolate lovers, selah, empty calories, quality words, rich, flavor, health benefits, writing tips — Series—The Write Spice: Writing Tips for Flavorful Words
Chocolate: Are You a Cacao or Cocoa Writer?
By Kathryn Ross

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Chocolate is sweet
And super-good for you!

February winter chills warm when lovers celebrate Valentine’s Day with time-honored flair. Romantic dinners, handcrafted card exchanges, flower deliveries, and close to 60 million pounds of chocolate candy consumed on Valentine’s Day, mark the traditions of this holiday, sharing expressions of love.

Chocolate

The glory of a heart-shaped box of chocolates may tickle your taste-buds with luscious flavors, but the cost to your body in cocoa-calories and sugar content has little real health benefits or love for your body in the aftermath. Chocolate is delicious and satisfying to enjoy—but, if overindulged, extra pounds on the scale and sugar-related maladies will require editing.

Cocoa verses Cacao

Why, then, do doctors claim that chocolate has health benefits? Don’t be deceived—not all chocolate is created equal. Cacao is the raw seed from the pod of an evergreen tree grown in South America and West Africa. It possesses a host of health benefits. But, the process used to create cocoa—the type of chocolate that is commonly found in candies and desserts—includes the application of high heat to raw cacao. Minimal nutritional benefits remain, and are further negated with the addition of sugar, oils, or milk fat. Here’s a terrific article to further explain this confusion regarding chocolate.

Only dark chocolate with cacao amounts of 70% and above affect the body for wellness. Quality dark chocolate is less sweet and still adds calories. However, its nutritional value in the areas of anti-oxidants, cardio wellness, brain function, cholesterol control, blood pressure regulation, and more, suggest that cacao chocolate makes it beneficial for daily consumption. A very small square, savored slowly after dinner, will do the job. It won’t satisfy like a typical milk chocolate bar, which feeds disease rather than fights it. Those sinfully delicious candies nestled in a Valentine box are predominately sugar and very addictive. You can’t eat just one! Cacao chocolate is slightly bitter to taste and very rich. You won’t be able to eat a lot of it at one time, forcing you to savor it in your mouth longer. Eating cacao chocolate cannot be rushed.

Are You a Cacao or Cocoa Writer?

Writing is work.
Composition takes time.
Like a bite of dark chocolate
Savored slowly, makes prime.

Chocolate, The Write Spice, Kathryn Ross, cocoa, cacao, Valentine’s Day, chocolate lovers, selah, empty calories, quality words, rich, flavor, health benefits — Chocolate: Are You a Cacao or Cocoa Writer?
By Kathryn Ross

When we rush our writing, we run the risk of overloading it with empty calories and a host of unhealthy ingredients. It’s like binging on the wrong kind of chocolate—cocoa not cacao.

Take your time. Savor each word in your work.
Don’t rush the plot. Tell your story, but chew slowly to be sure you extract its fullest flavors.
Critically assess the purpose of each line, removing unnecessary filler ingredients to deliver optimum reader benefits.
Use quality words rich in meaning, imagery, and depth for full effectiveness. Depending upon your unique writing voice, be it flowery or sharp and concise, word choice enhances every style.

One of my favorite Hebrew words found repeatedly throughout the Psalms is “selah.” It comes between verses ripe with meaning and impact, inviting the reader to stop and think about what they’ve just read. Like slowly savoring a quality piece of chocolate, mining the full essence and zest of the sweet, employ “selah” to your writing life.

So, how do you approach your writing? Are you a cacao writer or a cocoa writer?

clove, lemon oil, cinnamon, writers, spice, fall recipes, editors, healing, manuscript — The Write Spice: Writing Tips for Flavorful Words
By Kathryn Ross

cinnamon, writers, spice, fall recipes, editors, healing, manuscript, pumpkins, cloves, Kathryn Ross, The Gatekeeper’s Key, Pageant Wagon Publishing, The Writers Reverie, publishing, thesaurus — The Write Spice: Writing Tips for Flavorful Words
Kathryn Ross

Writer, speaker, teacher, and enrichment artist, Kathryn Ross, sweeps readers into the story-worlds of Jane Austen, C. S. Lewis, Hannah Hurnard, Marguerite de Angeli, John Bunyan, and others, exploring powerful truths to fulfilling God’s plan for your life in her latest publication, The Gatekeeper’s Key. Discern your place and season, with encouragement to see purpose in boundaries, find comfort in trials, and gain fortitude in going forth. Short story, personal testimony, excerpts from classic literature, visual imagery, challenge questions for discussion, and journal prompts for writing assignments draw you before the Gatekeeper. It’s quite a journey—but you’re never alone. Always in His Presence, with an Invitation, a Gatekeeper, and a Key. Perhaps more than one. Purchase on Amazon or direct from Pageant Wagon Publishing.

Lemon Oil: Clearing Out for a Clean Start By Kathryn Ross

Welcome back Kathryn Ross for January’s The Write Spice Series — Lemon Oil: Clearing Out for a Clean Start. **

Kathryn Ross, cinnamon, writers, spice, fall recipes, editors, healing, manuscript, When Cinnamon Bark, clove, peppermint, Christmas, Thanksgiving, spice, words, peppermint oil, The Gatekeeper's Key, lemon oil — The Write Spice: Writing Tips for Flavorful Words

Did you eat too many sweets over the holidays?

I did. And far too many second helpings of festive foods prepared and enjoyed only at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Though my taste-buds have been blessed, my body cries out for relief from all the celebration. The post-holiday lethargy sets in as my digestive system attempts to process the influx of sugar, cheese, and carbs consumed.

The Gatekeeper’s Key, Kathryn Ross, Pageant Wagon Publishing, Lemon Oil, clean, sweets, holiday, writing tips, clutter, essential oils — The Lemon Oil January Principle. Clearing Out for a Clean Start

That’s when I reach for the little miracles in my essential oils cabinet—and one in particular: Lemon Oil.

When I first saw a demonstration of this powerful little therapeutic grade* oil, I made sure I was first in line to get a bottle and make it a regular go-to remedy for internal cleansing. The demonstrator put one drop on a Styrofoam plate. I watched in amazement as it virtually disintegrated the plate, promising to do the same to all manner of artery and intestinal-clogging enemies in my body. SOLD!

Lemon oil remains a daily part of my nutritional regime. Just a drop in my morning water and evening tea keeps the pipes clear and clean. In January, I tend to double my lemon oil intake, to compensate for all my jolly holiday no-guilt feasting in December. The lethargy of stressed digestion is cleansed. The mental fog of too much busy and Christmas cake clears, energizing my body for the new year to come.

If only those little drops of lemon oil could make quick work of cleaning out my office and desktop in January. Like a healthy digestive cleanse, I need to collect myself after a busy year, clean the debris left behind, and see clearly my path for writing goals in the new year.

You, too?

It’s a common malady for all of us—but especially writers. We tend to begin each year with a plan. As winter turns to spring, new inspirations and opportunities arrest our attention. We collect ideas, layering them in random computer files and hard-copy folders on both our virtual and physical desktops. Working on new projects battle the monthly writing deadlines we’re already committed to, for our time and creative energy. The busy of home, family, church activities, and school responsibilities shift into hyper-drive once September rolls around, and spins into warp speed come Christmas.

It’s no wonder I can’t see an ounce of wood grain on my desk and have only a path from the door to the printer in my backroom office. I’ve stuffed myself full in my life and work and need to apply some lemon oil to clear the way and make a clean start for a healthy and productive new year. To accomplish this, I schedule a week early in January to purge and purpose.

Purge:

Toss or file all paper items that are unnecessary. Be wise and selective.
Clean out desk drawers. Be brutal.
Remove unnecessary objects from your work area. Everything has a place—put it there.
Delete random images and documents saved on your computer that are no longer useful. Watch the temptation to get sidelined with distractions.

Purpose:

Re-think the use of your work and storage space. Think outside the box.
Re-organize how you use your work and storage space. Plan for your new projects.
Chart the new year with all monthly deadlines, project goals, conference plans, and personal/family aspirations.
File random images and documents saved on your computer in new folders that are better organized for easy access. Create a folder marked Inspiration 2017 for anything you can’t quite categorize but want to keep.

Once you clear and clean your work spaces, you’ll find the new year lethargy dissipates, replaced with fresh energy and insight for stepping into a new season of activity and accomplishment. Drink a tall glass of lemon water and get to work for a productive new year! Do you have any specific tips or annual rituals you use for clearing out and making a clean start each year?

*Only ingest quality certified therapeutic grade oils. Do your research before buying!

** Please speak to your physician before making any changes to your health care regime.

Writer, speaker, teacher, and enrichment artist, Kathryn Ross, sweeps readers into the story-worlds of Jane Austen, C. S. Lewis, Hannah Hurnard, Marguerite de Angeli, John Bunyan, and others, exploring powerful truths to fulfilling God’s plan for your life in her latest publication, The Gatekeeper’s Key. Discern your place and season, with encouragement to see purpose in boundaries, find comfort in trials, and gain fortitude in going forth. Short story, personal testimony, excerpts from classic literature, visual imagery, challenge questions for discussion, and journal prompts for writing assignments draw you before the Gatekeeper. It’s quite a journey—but you’re never alone. Always in His Presence, with an Invitation, a Gatekeeper, and a Key. Perhaps more than one. Purchase on Amazon or direct from Pageant Wagon Publishing.

Peppermint Bits—Words Spun, Broken and Sweet By Kathryn Ross

Welcome Kathryn Ross to Thyme for Writers. Peppermint Bits — Words Spun, Broken and Sweet is Kathryn’s third in the The Write Spice: Writing Tips for Flavorful Words series! What better way to bring in the Christmas season than with Kathryn’s words of wisdom…

Like a good book, the sense of smell possesses the power to whisk a person into another time and place.

Memories

Memory connects a life experience stored in the brain to our senses, ready to unleash it upon our being should we come in contact with that particular sense trigger again. We flood with remembrance as nostalgia works a spa-like treatment upon our hearts—if the memories are sweet.

Christmas may come but once a year, yet when I smell pine and peppermint in July, I have a momentary urge to string lights and plug A Charlie Brown Christmas into the DVD player while consuming sweetness in a cup of hot chocolate stirred with the red and white swirl of a fragrant peppermint candy cane.

But, what if the scents that stir us connect to less than sweet memories? Brokenness. Heart sick moments in our lives we’d rather not return to even in the fleeting imagery of the mind. Sometimes, we don’t want our memories stirred. We don’t want to return to painful moments.

As writers, our words act like the power of scent whisking us to another time and place—both broken and sweet. We stir within our readers either a curse or a blessing. How we balance the ingredients of the words we write and the messages we convey by knowing and targeting a specific audience, determines the value our work is to those we hope to influence.

Powerful vehicles, our senses. Much like trigger words in a story. Swirled together like the red and white of a candy cane, they become effective communication tools for the writer and speaker, spun wisely.

The Blessing Comes through the Broken

In the late 1800s, America was growing with European immigrants from many diverse Western cultures. Christmas was a holiday marked by all, though celebrations differed. One thing many did hold in common from the Old World was to see the pig as a symbol of good health and prosperity—something all families hoped for as the new year approached. A candy maker in Saratoga Springs, New York created a unique trinket, to bolster his sales, built on this commonality. He mixed sugar and peppermint into a bright pink concoction and poured it into small molds of a pig. Then, cleverly, he packaged it with a cloth bag, a little metal hammer, and directions for instituting a new family Christmas tradition. After the meal on Christmas day, the pig was placed into the cloth bag and hammered to broken bits. Emptying the bag onto the table, chucks of fragrant peppermint candy poured out—enough for everyone to eat and enjoy,making memories bathed in the scent of peppermint and a wish for good health and prosperity in the new year. Only in brokenness came the blessing.

The Sweetness Comes through Consumption

The scent of peppermint has long been connected to Christmas celebrations. As far back as the 1670s in Germany, folkore tells us about the choirmaster petitioning a candy maker to come up with a sugar stick to keep noisy children silent in the solemn part of their worship service. The clever candy maker designed the peppermint flavored candy cane we still use today in the shape of a shepherd’s crook. He swirled the sugar mixture with red and white colors in remembrance of the blood of Jesus shed to make us all whiter than snow. Story spun with tangible stimulants for the senses spoke directly to the youthful audience it was meant to still, as they consumed the sweet. Sticky and forever connected to Christmas, we consume tons of peppermint candy cane confections each year. Only in consumption comes the sweet.

As a writer, I compose my most effective words from a place of brokenness because of the bitter, and the consumption of a sweet remedy discovered. Memories I prefer to tuck away must be stirred to the surface to remember well the sour moments in time, so I might write the way to find the sweet blessing there. For me. For my readers.

Scent, like words, heal. Medicinally, peppermint oil is used to invigorate the mind and senses. It tingles the skin with coolness, aids digestion, comforts stomach upset, and washes over one with an inspiring a sense of peace.

Do the words you write and speak do the same? Are they flavored to draw to the surface bitter things and so heal with the sweet? How can you add a dose of peppermint to your work and minister peace to your readers?

clove, cinnamon, writers, spice, fall recipes, editors, healing, manuscript — The Write Spice: Writing Tips for Flavorful Words
When Cinnamon Bark Editors Bite
By Kathryn Ross

Writer, speaker, teacher, and enrichment artist, Kathryn Ross, sweeps readers into the story-worlds of Jane Austen, C. S. Lewis, Hannah Hurnard, Marguerite de Angeli, John Bunyan, and others, exploring powerful truths to fulfilling God’s plan for your life in her latest publication, The Gatekeeper’s Key. Discern your place and season, with encouragement to see purpose in boundaries, find comfort in trials, and gain fortitude in going forth. Short story, personal testimony, excerpts from classic literature, visual imagery, challenge questions for discussion, and journal prompts for writing assignments draw you before the Gatekeeper. It’s quite a journey—but you’re never alone. Always in His Presence, with an Invitation, a Gatekeeper, and a Key. Perhaps more than one. Purchase on Amazon or direct from Pageant Wagon Publishing.

The Clove Principle: Puncture Your Writing with Warmth By Kathryn Ross

Kathryn Ross, cinnamon, writers, spice, fall recipes, editors, healing, manuscript, When Cinnamon Bark — The Write Spice: Writing Tips for Flavorful Words
The Clove Principle: Puncture Your Writing with Warmth by Kathryn Ross

In Thyme for Writers, The Clove Principle: Puncture Your Writing with Warmth is the second in the The Write Spice: Writing Tips for Flavorful Words series by Kathryn Ross.

Thanksgiving

The pantry, fragrant in Thanksgiving spices, overflows with all the ingredients for holiday baking. Not the least of which are the cloves necessary for flavor-filled pumpkin pie, succulent hams, and first aid should the need arise.

In fact, with diets thrown out the window in the season of family feasts and horn-o-plenty holiday entertaining, a bit of clove oil on hand, rubbed on the tummy, aids digestion and stomach upset when over-eating overtakes the merry-maker at the dinner table.

The chill in the air outside impels us to seek warm things, and clove is the spice to warm traditional dishes this time of year, as well as symbolically impart the inviting fervor of affection in gift-giving.

Victorian Times

In Victorian times, the simplicity of homemade gifts from the kitchen or treasures crafted by hand found a warm welcome. Popular gifts were aromatic pomanders made of tiny, stick-like, brown floral cloves inserted into an orange, like beads studded on a ball ornament for a tree. They, too, hung by a ribbon or nestled in a bowl, releasing the citrus scent of the fruit, mingled with the clove’s own pungent passion. A room enhanced by such fragrance stimulated the human senses, mind, and heart, inviting intimacy.

Puncture your writing with clove to inject warmth and the fragrance of human emotion into your descriptive writing.

writing, Kathryn Ross, publishing, Thyme for Writers, thesaurus, The Gatekeeper's Key, The Write Spice — The Clove Principle: Puncture Your Writing with Warmth
By Kathryn Ross

When I write my first drafts, I’m more concerned with laying out the meat and potatoes of the work without garnished language. Facts must be represented accurately if I’m writing non-fiction; the scene must be played out if I’m writing fiction. Technical language in early drafts, though properly in place, often lack the visceral quality necessary to arrest the senses of the reader and inflame heart and mind with the story material. The select insertion of spicy words help draw out the full flavor of a manuscript.

Use the thesaurus tool in your writing program to locate quality words:

Keep the thesaurus window open throughout a writing project to have ready access.
Find descriptive words that connect to one or more of the five senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch) to engage gut responses from your reader.
Don’t overuse words—one evocative and intimate descriptor can do the job more efficiently than a handful of mediocre modifiers.

Clove adds stimulating, warm flavors to the traditional Thanksgiving menu fare, as it aids digestion when eating generous portions. Help your reader better digest your inviting words by applying The Clove Principle to your manuscripts.

Writer, speaker, teacher, and enrichment artist, Kathryn Ross, sweeps readers into the story-worlds of Jane Austen, C. S. Lewis, Hannah Hurnard, Marguerite de Angeli, John Bunyan, and others, exploring powerful truths to fulfilling God’s plan for your life in her latest publication, The Gatekeeper’s Key. Discern your place and season, with encouragement to see purpose in boundaries, find comfort in trials, and gain fortitude in going forth. Short story, personal testimony, excerpts from classic literature, visual imagery, challenge questions for discussion, and journal prompts for writing assignments draw you before the Gatekeeper. It’s quite a journey—but you’re never alone. Always in His Presence, with an Invitation, a Gatekeeper, and a Key. Perhaps more than one. Purchase on Amazon or direct from Pageant Wagon Publishing.

The Writer’s Garden

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Chocolate

Cocoa verses Cacao

Are You a Cacao or Cocoa Writer?

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Memories

The Blessing Comes through the Broken

The Sweetness Comes through Consumption

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Thanksgiving

Victorian Times

Puncture your writing with clove to inject warmth and the fragrance of human emotion into your descriptive writing.

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