SOMETHING I GIVE MY HEART TO

When I visit schools to talk about my books and about being an author, one question I'm often asked is if I have any hobbies. I always answer without hesitation, "I love to garden." It is something I came to rather late in life and sometimes wonder what I ever did before the gardening bug bit me. Actually, I know what I was doing, and even wrote a poem about it:

My neighbors, with their winning roses,

Cringe as they look down their noses;

My yard's a patch of dirt, I fear -

I'm growing kids again this year.

But at last, when the youngest of my four sons started kindergarten, I felt as if I had some time to try something new. So I picked up a trowel and timidly dug in. I didn't have Wanda's confidence and was pleasantly surprised when something actually grew.

I wrote WANDA'S ROSES one day when winter was almost over but spring hadn't yet arrived. Wanda's longing for something beautiful was mine, too. But, of course, this longing is not entirely for roses - it is for something beautiful beyond ourselves, something worth striving for, something we can give our hearts to.

My writing is that for me. I don't write every day, but after a while, the need to write gnaws at me. I want to write because I want that satisfying feeling of doing something worthwhile, which I get when I finish a story. I also want to find out what it is I'm going to say. When I sit down to write a story, I generally don't have much more than paper and pencil - maybe I have a character's name or the first sentence, or a tiny seed of an idea, but not much more.

I like stories very much, and when I sit down to write one, I do it to find out what the story is. I make it up as I go along. It's not always easy, because I don't know what I'm going to write until I write it.

I often wish it weren't this way. I wish I were brimming with ideas for stories that would flow forth as soon as pencil met paper. But for me writing is work - occasionally frustrating, generally satisfying, but always worth striving for. Like Wanda with her roses, it is something I believe in, something I have given my heart to.