Spring

You walk away because you think the story’s dead – there’s nothing growing here. Your writer-garden used to be abundant. Things grew. It was fertile and people liked to walk about in it, but now your writer-garden is bare branches, frozen earth and you can’t even hack the spade tip into it. You walk away. You write other things and read about psychology of place, watch ‘Man on Wire’ or listen back-to-back to every crime drama on Radio 4 Extra. You fold up pants and hunt odd socks and even scrub the grouting. And then your friend says, ‘Try this: give it up. Walk away. You don’t have to write this any more,’ and you go back to the writer-garden and lock the tools up in the shed, but before you go, you stand and look about because, after all, you have invested hours, months, years in this writer-garden and…