Raven O'Fiernan

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The Rose Tender

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The Rose Tender
by Raven O’Fiernan

Lord Sirio looked over his landscape to make sure everything was as it should be. He was hosting his daughter’s coming out gala in a fortnight, and it was essential that nothing be out of place. He turned his gaze to the south, where a row of poplar trees grew, creating a natural fence and backdrop. Then he looked back at the design of Fortunato’s line of trees. No, as he suspected, the trees were not right. They were too tall and skinny, and there were too many of them. He’d only planted the twelve indicated on the garden plans, but there were, he counted, nineteen now. Some of them must have put up shoots in the early days. He’d told the gardener to uproot them, but apparently the man hadn’t gotten them all. That was the problem with having an ordinary gardener instead of a Botanist. A Botanist could have used magic to make the change at any time, but now, if the gardener removed any trees, it would leave unsightly empty gaps. But after his brother had bankrupted the family coffers, Sirio could not afford to hire a Botanist, so he had to make do with the gardener. He hoped the other nobles wouldn’t notice the differences.

The line of trees wasn’t the only area of concern. To the east was the rose garden, patterned after Lady Emilia’s exquisite garden. It wasn’t quite right even from the beginning because some of the varieties of roses had been impossible to find, so he’d had to settle for similar varieties. It was a disappointment, especially since the new varieties didn’t bloom at the same time as the originals, and some of the roses, whether new or original, were susceptible to bugs. Some were even dying and the gardener said he didn’t know if he could save them. The man said that certainly a Botanist could cure them, but not a common gardener.

At least in the north and west, Sirio had obtained a measure of success. The south was an orchard of peach and pear trees. Those at least were perfect, exactly as the late Lord Francesco had recommended. And the west was empty — just rocks and sculptures reminiscent of the poet Gregor’s collection. It was all ready for the gala.

He sighed, looking again at the line of trees in the south and the imperfect rose garden where the gardener was weeding. It would have to do. If Rochesa was going to get married, it had to be as good as possible, and he’d invited all the eligible men in the realm. If they weren’t impressed, if they saw the imperfections, it could affect her happiness, and that wouldn’t do.

He called her out: the gala was two weeks away, so they still had time.

“Yes, father?” she asked.

Sirio frowned at her. Her hair was too light to match the painting he had bought of the Black-Haired-Irina, and her eyes were blue instead of black. He’d tried to make her into the old beauty, but nothing seemed to take.

“Go to town. Go see the magician,” he told her, handing her some coins, hoping it would be enough. “Ask again about the hair. And the eyes.”

“Yes, Father,” she said and left.

A palpable emptiness spread over him. Something was wrong. Was it the trees? He looked again at the poplars and back to the design. He’d talk to the gardener. Maybe there was still something to be done. Maybe the man knew a Botanist that would be affordable.

As he turned to the south to approach the gardener, he saw that his daughter had not followed his instructions. She was bent over the roses with the gardener, who had his hand at the small of her back. As he watched, she reached out a hand, and one of the dying roses suddenly bloomed, fresh and new. She clapped her hands and let out a gale of laughter as the gardener spun her around.

But what Lord Sirio wanted to know was: when had his daughter become a Botanist?

The End

Thanks for reading!  Please check out the other stories in this July’s Storytime Blog Hop:

The Last Sleeping Beauty by Tamara Ruth

Freeman by Elizabeth McCleary

Hell’s Play by Juneta Key

The Token by Eli Winfield

Moshe 4th by Chris Makowski

To The Moon And Beyond, by Fanni Sütő

Surprise by Katharina Gerlach

In A Picture by Erica Damon

The Past Tastes Better by Karen Lynn

Revealing Space by Barbara Lund

 

My Review Guidelines

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I will try to remember to link to this every time I write a review, to let you know the guidelines I set for myself.

1.  I will recommend everything I review.  Basically, the point of a review, even if I discuss problems, is to share things I love.  I have no desire to spend time writing about or discussing things I don’t love.

2.  I will state where I obtained the item, and if it is legally available online, I will provide a link where you can get it.

Why you don’t need “thick skin” to be a writer

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A lot of you have probably run into the expression that if you want to succeed as a writer, you need to have thick skin. The idea is that since you will get critical feedback from others, you need to be somewhat impervious to that criticism. Having thin skin, on the other hand, means letting the criticism “get to you” in some way. There are some major problems that can only happen if you let criticism “get to you” emotionally, which is why people advocate “thick skin”: if the criticism doesn’t get to you, you won’t react in a way that will harm your career.

So, here are some of the problems with “thin skin”:

1. Unprofessionalism. The most obvious reason people tell other writers to get “thick skin” is that they have seen an example of a writer doing something unprofessional. Some writers have lashed out defensively at people offering criticism, often their own readers. This alienates readers, publishers, other writers, other professionals, and the general public, including other potential readers.

2. Hubris. Another problem with letting criticism “get to you” is that it might keep you from making changes to improve your writing. If you feel the criticism too sharply, it’s easy to retreat into the idea that the critic is stupid and that therefore, the criticism is useless. While it is important to be confident as a writer, ignoring useful feedback is dangerous, even if you do it privately.

3. Writing paralysis. The most dangerous problem is that you’ll become paralyzed and not be able to either sell your current work or not write new work because you are upset about the criticism. According to Dean Wesley Smith, the only way you can kill your career is to stop writing. So if the criticism stops you from writing or selling your work, it is harming your career.

Obviously, having “thick skin” avoids these problems. However, there is an alternative, at least for writers. Almost all criticism comes to writers in the form of writing. This usually means that you are in a private place when you receive it. Maybe family is present, but the critic himself usually is far away. This privacy is why I say that you can still have “thin skin” and avoid the three problems above if you are a writer.

That alternative is to develop resilience. This is my method. When I receive criticism, it does get to me. For anywhere from an hour to a day, I am overwhelmed with the emotional impact of the criticism. But because I know I have thin skin, there are two things I don’t do during that period: 1) I don’t make any decisions concerning my work, and 2) I do not react to the criticism in any way the public or the critic can discover. I keep my reaction private, and I usually remind myself and others that this will pass. It always does. And then, I think about the criticism rationally, and I deal with it as if I had thick skin.

Only I don’t. And there are advantages to using the resilience approach rather than the thicker skin approach.

If you actually have thick skin, it means you aren’t letting the emotional impact hit you, or you are softening the blow before it hits your core. This makes it much easier to avoid giving up on writing, ignoring useful feedback, and behaving badly in public. That’s good. But it also means you aren’t feeling as deeply. Since a lot of good writing comes from intense emotion, having thin skin allows you to draw on emotion much more easily.

What about you? What are your strategies for dealing with unpleasant criticism?