I’m a Seed, Baby: How California’s Super Bloom Influenced My Debut Novel

Every few days, a reader of my novel Super Bloom sends me a picture of the actual super blooms in California right now. Wildflower seeds lying dormant in deserts have bloomed, and the effect is magnificent. Together, we marvel at the timing: One of nature’s rare phenomenon, requiring just the right amount of heat and rainfall, is happening as my debut makes its way into the world, my title named for this explosion of flowers. It feels like a gift, much like it felt years ago when I hit a wall with this novel, wondering if it would ever see the light of day.

(How I Stopped Sabotaging My Writing Goals.)

It was 2019, and I was spinning my wheels writing about a down-and-out massage therapist who rediscovers a passion for fiction after years of burying her writing ambitions. Something wasn’t working.

I was in my kitchen in Massachusetts, unloading groceries, likely bags of dried chickpeas since my husband and I were in a homemade hummus phase that excused the six chocolate bars I bought. With NPR on the radio in the background, I mulled over my book’s plot points: Protagonist Joan is grieving the loss of her boyfriend and she’s about to get fired from her job at a luxury spa in Vermont until a new client—a famous novelist—asks her to dish dirt about the spa, where the novelist wants to set her next bestseller. Instead, Joan wonders if writing her own book might help her heal.

The pages felt flat, Joan’s motivations unclear. At the time, my novel was titled Big Inspiration, likely because I was searching for one. I wanted to knock myself in the head with that bag of chickpeas. And then, I kid you not, a news story interrupted my regularly scheduled handwringing: A super bloom was happening in Southern California.

What in the heck, I thought, was a super bloom?

Finding out the answer felt paramount to refrigerating the milk, so I raced upstairs to my laptop, punched the words into my keyboard, and then gasped at the beauty of the images: entire mountainsides and valleys covered with the most vibrant wildflowers I’d ever seen. So striking in color, so bounteous, that the super bloom was visible from space—a new and fleeting ocean on the planet made out of petals and pistils and pollen.

I sat back in my chair, my hand to my mouth. This was it. The through line I was searching for, a metaphor so seemingly perfect it felt handcrafted for my novel. I read more. I scrawled notes. I called my husband.

“I’m renaming my novel,” I rushed to say. “I’m calling it Super Bloom. There’s one happening right now. And the seeds, they’ve been in the dirt, waiting to bloom. Don’t you see?”

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He did not see. Isn’t that how it worked with all seeds? Okay, so I had some fleshing out to do. Still, I knew these hardy little seeds were not like all seeds, and that they had something to teach me, and to teach Joan, about life.

Over time, it became this: Unlike, say, a lettuce seed, which could shrivel at the hint of a 100-degree day, these wildflower seeds withstand the hottest, driest weather, often for years. They bide their time, patiently waiting, no big rush. Coiled inside these seeds is dormant potential, a hardwired knowledge that one day, when the conditions are just right—the perfect amount of rain, the key amount of heat and sun—they’ll sprout forth to throw their arms (well, leaves) wide to the world, wowing everyone, literally stopping traffic. They’ll become what they were always meant to be: wildflowers.

Back to Joan, who also nearly shriveled up in her grief and despair. And yet—underneath the heat and hostility of life, her lack of confidence enough to scorch any dreams—was dormant potential waiting to be released. Biding its time for the perfect conditions, plus a little sprinkling of fertilizer. In her case: bravery. And then she does it. She sprouts. Joan becomes what she was always meant to be: a writer.

Toward the end of the novel (no spoilers!), Joan also stands in her kitchen when an NPR story about a super bloom spurs her into action. She’ll fight for her fictional voice rather than lose the novel that helped her heal.

“I’m a seed, baby, and I cannot be denied,” she says in her kitchen to no one, to her cat, to herself.

Like Joan, it took me a long time to discover that I wanted to write fiction. Another batch of years went by before I could even articulate this dream out loud. Who was I to write a book? Once I did start seriously pursuing my novel, I had to withstand some pretty harsh conditions during my publishing journey, somehow trusting that it would work out. I had rejections and retooled my manuscript more times than I can count. But I found that rejection wasn’t failure; it was nutrients, making both me and my book stronger. My biggest asset, I learned, wasn’t just skill, it was patience. My novel needed to hit at just the right moment. And guess what? It did.

In California, the wildflowers are blooming. In my book, Joan is blooming. And right here at home, I’m blooming, too. I’m becoming what I was meant to be: a novelist. Because after all, I’m a seed, baby, and I cannot be denied.