I’m starting to get excited. Every time I see a new crocus peeking out of the grass I feel a flutter. So too for the leaf buds, the yellow daffodils, the local fields showing a shimmer of green growth above their dark soil. It’s starting, I think to myself. Soon it will be here in full bloom.
Spring, I’ve missed you.
I’ve missed your sunny face, your breeze that’s just the warmer side of winter, the promise of you.
Your assurance that soon I will have the freedom of leaving the house without a coat, of stepping outside at 9 pm to see the sun still shining. Knowing I’ll be greeted by that same sun when my son wakes me up at 5 am.
I don’t like the dark.
I don’t like the cold.
I like the Summer.
And, as with all good things in life, there is nothing quite like the promise of it. And the promise of Summer is Spring. The build-up, the prelude, the appetiser.
There is another promise I love, another sense of build up and excitement and that is, of course, writing. I’m in full flow of book two, about ten chapter in. The pace is building, the characters blooming, the story developing at a beautiful rate. The writing is pretty awful because it’s the first draft, but the promise is there. And that’s what I love.
The first draft of a novel is like the spring’s prelude to summer. As it develops more buds begin to unfurl, more daisies pop up in the grass, more ideas, more twists, more hooks. It can, at times, be terrifying to stare at that blank screen, not knowing where to start. But when I think of it in this way, as a promise of something complete, the fear melts away. Excitement kicks in.
The blank, white screen, no longer frightening, stares back at me and says let’s go.
Rebecca Tinnelly 