THINK outside of the box. The phrase could be interpreted in many ways by different people.
Learning how to write agricultural development stories in college, a good professor once told me, “think like an alien, and write like an Angel.”
That is thinking outside of the box too. You search and write about your topic with “manner and form.” Do not stop there. It is not good enough. Go beyond the norm. Give your topic life, “spirit and substance.”
If your topic is about urban agriculture, study the basics, its purposes and objectives. What is possible and what is not compared to the other forms of farming? There are many problems, like cats, dogs, lack of sunlight, lack of soil, lack of water, pests, diseases, and lack of time. Can you still do urban farming with what you know under the conditions in your place?
The form and the standards of urban farming and the problems that confront you are very limiting. They suggest two things: It is pointless to undertake urban farming, or under the given circumstances, you can yet do something. That is the spirit and what you do constitutes for you the substance of success.
Now, I am a farmer who happens to write and live in the city. I am an alien who understands that unless I produce food wherever I am, people will not live.
So, despite the challenges and difficulties, I find ways to plant my crops on top of the poles, or above the railings of our balcony where sunlight is abundant. I hang pots planted with vegetables on the wall of the house. I study the habits of cats and dogs and figure out how they will not touch or destroy my potted plants on the ground. I do whatever it takes to understand and overcome the problems of urban farming.
Experiencing what you write is just one side of the story. A writer explores his mind by going through an actual process, and then push further and dig deeper until he reaches a strange country. People imagine it as the future while others write about it as science fiction.
Whatever you think, you cannot describe or choose to keep silent about what you see in your dreams. You attempt to make the future a real place and explore parts of it now where you are.
It is said things are not what they seem. It is because people see the manner and form than the spirit of things, like the story of the naked emperor, who in “manner and form” spent his time in luxuriant existence and sartorial splendor flaunting his power but with hardly a thought or care for his subjects. He was just an Emperor without “spirit and substance.”
We see these people today too. They appear rich, ride-on SUVs or flashy cars, dresses well, talk like kings or queens, indeed, men and women of status and positions in the community, with manner and form and with the appearance of substance but do not have the true substance of the “spirit” of the ideal epitome of a humble, generous, civilized, educated, “tower of light” in these dark times?
I am a religious man who happens to write about agriculture. With urban farming, I am trying to experience it, understand what is right and good about it, and then write about its manner or form and substance, in light of the on-going population explosion, extinction of natural, resources, and climate change, in an age of pandemics.
Good agriculture can help a lot but the subject must not just be written like it is crap.
It is said in Genesis 41:38 “Then Pharaoh said to his servants, ‘Can we find a man like this, in whom is a divine spirit?’”
To have the divine spirit means you are good in God’s sight and what you have is intangible in the spirit as in wisdom, knowledge and joy.
To those who write about agriculture, do not just write, but write like an Angel.
I trust you get the picture.