The Article Garden: The writer’s secret to a bountiful harvest of good writing

Imagine walking through a lush, green garden just outside your kitchen.

Each morning, while sipping your freshly brewed coffee, you walk outside and note the changes and additional growth that occurred since your previous visit.

Some of the seedlings are sprouting little green shoots; others are developing thicker stems and leaf buds are beginning to open. As you walk further into your garden you note that some of your plants are beginning to bear fruit while others are heavy with ripened produce. Their branches are bending under the weight of another healthy crop.

The secret to a year-round bountiful harvest from any garden is regular, loving attention to the development of each plant as well as putting in the required work to produce a healthy harvest.

Now imagine that the fruit that greets you during your morning inspection are not apples, pears, or berries, but little articles each in different stages of development.

An article garden
Of course I’m not talking about a conventional garden, but an article garden. Yes, that’s right: An article garden - the writer’s secret to a bountiful harvest of good writing.

Planting a garden in your laptop
Like the fruit and herb garden outside my own kitchen, I also tend an article garden. But this garden isn’t located outside. Instead, it’s located inside my laptop computer.

Growing in this article garden is a collection of writing - all in various stages of development. Some are seedlings - just raw ideas really - submerged a few centimeters under my cerebral topsoil.

Others are sprouting little roots - a basic outline is taking shape; a few sentences and some notes exist under each point.

Some are growing into maturity with a well-developed outline, headline possibilities, supporting paragraphs, and perhaps a draft conclusion.

Finally, some of the articles in my garden have ripened to their full potential and are in need of transplanting to a larger space where they can take root and bear fruit for years to come.

The constant gardener
I learned the article garden system of writing from the late Dr. Craig Skinner, a writer, speaker, and theology professor from Australia. I was fortunate to learn this method directly from Dr. Skinner in a speaking course I took while working on a Master’s degree over twenty years ago.

His concept of tending an article garden resonated with me and I have used in ever since to continually produce a steady harvest of articles ready to go forth and bear fruit for readers worldwide. You can also use Dr. Skinner’s article garden method to produce a steady crop of articles.

How to begin working your article garden
Let’s look at what you’ll need to begin growing a bountiful harvest of articles. Like any garden, planning is important to your success. The first step in growing an article garden involves mapping.

Mapping out the terrain & planting seeds
Starting any garden requires a bit of real estate. For an article garden, if you’ve got a computer and a few parcels of hard drive space that you can dedicate to the process, then you’re off to a good start.

Next, you’ll need some seeds to plant. The seeds in your article garden are simply ideas that occur to you that you wish to explore. They don’t have to be anything more than ideas. They can come from literally anywhere.

Ideas come to me for articles mainly from reading: books, articles, blog posts, email, forum posts, etc. I usually make a note about the idea in my handy dandy notebook and then plant it the garden later that day. Since I walk in my article garden on a daily basis, it’s become almost second nature to plant new seeds every day.

An important distinction should be made here: Similar to the seeds you plant in the garden outside your kitchen, not all seedlings will germinate or develop fully into the fruit bearing stage. Some will just sit there no matter what you do. Some will grow wildly and flourish into fruit bearing articles while others will develop a bit and then die on the vine. Don’t worry about it. It’s all part of the gardening process; Johnny Appleseed planted a lot more seeds than eventually grew into mature apple trees!

OK, so seeds are one thing you need, but water is another.

Watering your seedlings
Any garden with freshly planted seeds requires an ample supply of water. Watering idea-seedlings, for me, occurs with reading and thinking and then some writing. For example, this article began as an idea-seedling when I posted the concept in a writer’s forum. Readers reacted positively to the concept of an article garden and I shared the same idea in an online forum with other business owners.

The owner of the forum suggested I write an article on the idea to share with others in the community. These reactions and positive encouragements further nourished the idea. I then turned to Dr. Skinner’s out of print book to reread the original work on the concept. I created an outline of the article and diligently filled in the gaps to ultimate produce this finished work.

Reading, thinking, writing: All are part of the watering process. But from those seedlings often come wayward shoots that twist and turn sometimes creating a gnarled mess of tangled tendrils.

Pruning wayward branches
Sometimes, after watering my idea-seedlings and watching them develop into mature little shoots, I am forced to prune a few wayward branches. These twisted sprouts can be outline divisions that don’t fit with the rest; or they might be paragraphs that don’t support their headlines or subheads.

Like gardening, writing often involves pruning paragraphs, subheads, and sometimes entire pages. It’s painful at times to prune these developing articles, but ultimately they bear a better quality fruit. But just like any garden, weeds can make rapid inroads into a healthy garden and make all kinds of trouble for your developing crop of articles.

Weeding the garden
What kind of weeds infiltrate my article garden? Often they’re the dreaded Typogius morrisium variety. My article garden is full of these little critters. Despite my best efforts, they often creep into my otherwise stellar prose. But a busy gardener is a savvy gardener; as such, he must do what it takes to rid his garden of this particularly persistent pest.

Keys to creating a bountiful article garden
In this article we’ve seen how simple ideas can germinate in the proper environment and grow into mature works that will yield fruit for your readers. Proper care is needed to make your article garden a fertile and productive parcel for years to come.

Here are four keys for keeping your article garden flourishing year-round:

Key #1: Read, read, and… read.
Stephen King, the successful and prolific novelist, says: “Writers do two things; they read a lot and write a lot.” If you want to keep your writing sharp, read. If you want to find continual sources of inspiration, read. If you want to acquire wisdom and insight, well, I think you know where I’m going with this: Read! I read business and marketing books to enhance my business. I read fiction for enjoyment and for honing my prose. And I read biographies for insight into the human condition.

Dr. Skinner told me years ago that reading biographies would yield authentic and memorable illustrations from history into my writing. He was right. Reading must occupy a top spot in the hierarchy of every writer’s To Do list. In my opinion, reading is the link between inspiration and writing. If there’s inspiration missing in your writing, it may be a sign that you’re not reading enough. Which brings us to the second key.

Key #2: Write, write, and… write
Stephen King…….OK, I said that already. But it bears repeating. “Writers do two things; they read a lot and write a lot.” I am continually amazed by the number of copywriters who don’t write on a daily basis. For years, I didn’t either. When I started writing every day and tending my article garden, my writing was transformed. A copywriter is first, and foremost, a writer. If you’re a copywriter and you’re not writing everyday, you aren’t doing your clients and potential clients any favors.

Writing is a skill, not a natural ability. Like a muscle, the more often you exercise it, the more powerful it becomes. If you want your client-based writing to be as powerful and effective as possible, then exercise your writing muscles on a daily basis. An article garden is the perfect way to do this.

Another benefit of keeping an article garden is that it produces continual output. In fact, that’s the third key.

Key #3: Set a target for output.
The number of articles your particular article garden will produce is dependent on the amount of time you spend in it. The pace at which each article grows is determined by the amount of care and attention you give them.

One of my colleagues writes 300 articles a year. That’s almost one each day. His article garden is very healthy - and not because he’s a particularly talented writer, but because he diligently tends his article garden each day. With a little practice, it’s not hard to write one article per week, a day, sometimes even an hour. I know this to be true. My target for 2007 is to write 100 articles. I know that with the proper amount of diligence in the garden, I can reach that target.

What’s your target for writing this coming year? How many articles will your article garden produce in 2007? How many will you transplant into a wider space?

Key #4: Transplant your ripe articles.
I’ve watched a friend of mine, a consummate gardener, delicately transplant orchids, pansies, and portulacas from one place in the garden to another. She takes considerable care to make sure that the new environment is one that will support each plant. She makes sure that it will receive the proper amount of sunlight; that the irrigation is sufficient for the new soil; and a hundred other considerations that designates her as an expert.

Likewise, the article gardener needs to consider the placement of the ripened article when it’s time to harvest its bounty. As it nears this stage the gardener must give thought to transplanting it into the appropriate venue. Where will this article be transplanted? Will it receive the right amount of exposure and visibility? Ultimately you want to share your article with your clients, your mailing list, and the world.

But that’s the topic of another article growing in my article garden.

What about you?
What’s keeping you from planting your article garden? Do you have a secret to share for producing a bountiful harvest of good writing year-round? I’d love to have you share it here.

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