A Little Life List When You Need Fierce Clarity
Four Things Flowers Taught Me
Little Life Lists are for the complicated, unruly things life throws at us. I encourage you to write your own, too. With coffee. xoxo
Recently, I’ve become obsessed with flowers.
Chatting with my friend, she confessed the same fuzzy-flower feelings. Perhaps it's something about mid-life and discovering a moment of beauty in the frantic chaos of raising children while juggling a career and caring for aging parents.
Either it’s beauty or the pop of colour and calm—the flower balm.
Anyway, as usual, I was going about my days, racing between various kid sports, pausing to enjoy coaching calls with writers, and sitting with my mother-in-law when she wept. And wept. And wept.
Saturday came around.
My oma had various days of the week that she did various tasks. She kept a tidy home and all I can remember of her advice was that Wednesdays were for polishing the cutlery.
This isn’t an activity we partake in. But, conceptually, it speaks to me.
So, flowers are for Saturdays in my mind. At the supermarket after a lively hurtle with my two youngest boys, both with ADHD, I gathered a quick, inexpensive bouquet. I love local florists but with no way to get to one, I promised next week I’d make more time to shop locally and scarpered.
Back at home, I took out the old flowers and piled them up.
That’s when it struck me.
I was editing.
As I’ve shared with many of you before, I’m a novelist, working on the sixth draft of an adult crime novel. This edit is hard.
The flowers made it easier. See, the mess of old flowers looked like draft five.
Starting with empty vases, I began anew.
This gave me a pile of old flowers, some still lovely, some not so much.
From this, I pulled what was beautiful and kept it. I considered what to throw out. Some flowers needed trimming. I tugged off old leaves.
I selected new flowers from the bouquet I’d playfully picked up. Glints of colour led to new ideas of how to put all the flowers into the vases.
I threw out what was no longer beautiful.
So this is my little life list for fierce clarity.
Start over if you need to.
Look for what’s still beautiful.
Don’t be afraid to play and add something new.
Let go of what you no longer need.
In this mid-life fuzzy-flower phase, I’m finding more and more that life is like writing and writing is like life.
What I learn in my day-to-day helps me show up for the work of this edit. And what I learn in the edit, helps me navigate my bonkers day-to-day.
The flowers were a lot of fun. I told three bleary-eyed teenagers who were trying to eat their breakfast, all about my flowers and editing theory and they blinked at me, baffled.
But I thought you might like reading this.
Have you got any editing tips? Tips for flower arranging?
Did something happen to you this week that you want to share?
Your comments are colour in my writing days and I’m grateful.
xoxox
Alice
If you’re new here, my name is Alice Kuipers and I’m a writer, mother and dog-owner transplanted twenty years ago to the Canadian prairies from England. I’ve published fourteen books in 36 countries and my writing has been described as: “For storytellers and story lovers,” by Kirkus Reviews; ‘Gorgeous, heart-ripping, important,” by VOYA; and “Intense and wonderful” by Bif Naked. Join me for coffee breaks to look at lines from great writers.
Xoxo
Read: Oh, so many of you were amazing and generous with book suggestions of life changing books for me. These are just some of the books that I noticed and it made me wonder if we should read some of these together—a Life Changing Book Club, perhaps? Have you read any of these?
suggests The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green, suggests The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer, suggests The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, suggests Roots by Alex Haley, Vicky (who I’m having trouble tagging) suggests Wild by Jay Griffiths, Bernadette (same tagging troubles) suggests The Diviners by Margaret Laurence, suggests Pillars Of The Earth - Ken Follett, suggests When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, and suggests The Hobbit…Coming up: As a thank you to my amazing group of paid subscribers, I’m sending the opening of Spark, my new book to them. Consider joining them to support my writing. I’m going to have an in person launch with three local writers on November 23rd and a virtual launch before that. I’ll keep you updated here with extra sneak peeks for all of you as my subscribers.
Now! Coffee.
xoxoxox
I really love this little list. It's so common-sense, but deeply wise! And I enjoy flowers too 😊 my flower arranging tip is to secure the bunch of flowers with a rubberband if they aren't sitting in the vase the way you'd like them too. Sometimes that helps, particularly if the stems aren't straight. 💐
I edit my flowers too and love that you've tied this delightful chore with writing. Well done!