Spring promises

I’ve been gone a while. Things piled up and blogging seemed low on the priority list. Today sees me enjoying the end of a week off from teaching and catching up on MA reading, whilst also pausing to catch breath. On the television, in my background, the opening ceremony of the Winter Games has just begun. As so much of my schedule is tailored around the Chinese calendar, it seems particularly fitting that I have picked up my blog on the first day of spring, the tail end of the Chinese New Year festivities, and a time when so many people in the world welcome new beginnings and the end of Major Cold, or winter.

I begin, then, by saying Happy New Year. Welcome to spring. Or, those of you in the southern hemisphere, I guess are welcoming the opposite end of the year, where you will be beginning to gather yourselves in, wrap up, hold close. Wherever you are, it’s always a good time to begin.

Because I know these last few weeks before the launch date of Dear Isobel will be busy and frantic, and as my MA work also becomes increasingly intense, I’ve decided to lessen the pressure of returning to this blog by sharing snippets of my MA weekly writing, instead of finding new ideas to talk about. This will allow me to share more of my writing; the parts that otherwise would not be seen. Some of this may be raw; work in progress. Some may be a piece that has been workshopped. Sometimes I may share a ‘before’ and ‘after’ piece to show how my writing evolves after feedback from my peers. Sometimes I may just share a thought or observation from my notebook.

Today, I give you ‘Gardener’. This was a hastily-written response to a workshop task and may be changed once more peer feedback arrives on it, or may not. It may become more, or less, or simply forgotten. The task was to consider someone we see often.

Meanwhile, it’s only a little over a month until the official publication of Dear Isobel, but you can, of course, pre-order it here, where you will also find links to all the short story anthologies in which I have a story.

May you, too, find a new beginning, as here in Ireland we welcome the longer days and promise of spring.

Love, Jinny