When I was a little girl, my grandfather used to play the most delightful pranks in the garden. If you planted a watermelon seed there first thing in the morning, it would be grown and ripe by dinnertime. Cheerios sprouted entire boxes of doughnuts still in their packaging. Popsicle sticks similarly bloomed, the audacity of their frozen liquid popping out of the ground making my sister and me giggle as we raced to “pick” them before they could melt in the last rays of an August evening.
Of course, as we got older, we knew such things couldn’t be. For something to bear fruit, whether it’s a flower or an idea, simply planting a seed isn’t enough – there’s an incredible amount of time and work involved in preparing the ground to accept the seed, digging out the weeds that threaten the plant, picking off the bugs and parasites that threaten the plant’s well-being. The list goes on. Some of my earliest memories are of helping my grandfather thin out the seedlings to give the others room to grow, which just goes to show how many seeds may sprout and then not continue in that garden.*
My adventures in writing and podcasting remind me of working in that garden. To be successful, you have to take the time to prepare – what do I want to accomplish? In which section of the garden (in our case the Internet) do we need to be in order to thrive? Is there enough sunshine (content material) available to remain healthy and vibrant? Have I properly molded the mounds around the seeds and provided enough drainage so that when the rains of negativity inevitably come, the plant (or in this case, the creator) is able to weather them without drowning?
An important factor, of course, is time. Eddie Cantor once quipped that it takes twenty years to make an overnight success, and in a lot of ways, that’s true. Sure, every so often you’ll find those rare exceptions to the rule who have the stage presence to do everything off the cuff and put on an entertaining show, or who bang out a script that takes Hollywood by storm. But by and large, successful projects – the projects that last – are the ones where the people running them put in the time required to nurture it. It isn’t easy. Looking at podcasting as an example, outside of the prep work and the actual broadcasting time, there’s also post-production, marketing, and networking to think about. Are you interacting with your fan base to build loyalty to your brand? If you decide to use marketing materials or giveaways to spread your name, you’re spending extra time for that whether you make it yourself or work to earn the money to hire someone else to do it. Depending on how far you want to take things, a show can easily become a full-time job in and of itself, and in most cases can take years to grow to the point where it could be more than a hobby – if it gets to that point at all. Perseverance and consistency are vital to success, and few are those who have the stamina to keep up both the workload and the morale needed to push a show from infancy to the big time.
But as I alluded to before, showmanship and connecting to one’s audience are vital. When my grandfather was sneaking around to plant magic when my sister and I weren’t looking, it wasn’t the end result that delighted us nearly as much as the fact that we never caught him doing it. Even when we hit college age, when old age took the spring from his step and the beginning of Alzheimer’s kicked in, he never slipped up in his tricks: a handful of cereal produced a box of Entenmann’s donuts – chocolate if my sister planted it, plain if it was me. To this day I still don’t know how he was able to slip away and out of sight, up the hill to the garden and back before we missed him. Just thinking of the pranks we’ve pulled for the benefit of Rivalcast, even the simple ones took a lot of time and teamwork and slight-of-hand that I’d never have been able to pull off on my own. I know the kind of effort it takes to make something look effortless, while giving that bang of surprise and joy to the people watching. It’s a lot of work, but for me, anyway, it’s worth it. There’s a sort of magic to that never goes away.
I hope it never does.
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*A lot of gardeners will compost the thinned seedlings, but my sister and I would get very upset about having to kill the “baby plants.” Most times would put them in little pots to give them a chance elsewhere, a habit I continue as an adult. When we lived in the apartment, I’d plant those discarded seedlings in pots on our balcony and grow tiny carrots.
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