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Wending Words


As the last days of December run like water to the ocean that is (was) 2021, this is a quick and very patchy self-reflection. 

On the writing front in 2021, I was delighted to be a contributor to the short fiction anthology, The Shadows We Breathe (vol 1), the brainchild of the remarkable Sarah Brentyn. Creativity and crafting words doesn't always come easily to me, but this was one of those experiences where showing up at the keyboard eventually got the words to show up too. I wrote about it here. It's nice to remember that I got some nice feedback about one of my stories, "The Coma". (Also, there's a TSWB volume 2! Check it out here!)

Something I did do a bit more regularly in 2021 was blogging - especially during the Australian spring. Mainly nature- or parenting-focussed. Which is lovely and right and good as they're important things in my life. 

But I haven't blogged as much about the creativity side of things. Which is interesting, and on the one hand reflects that it's been a slow year, creatively-speaking (despite my TSWB anthology contributions). But on the other hand, it also aligns with the fact that, my slow creativity has bled into my urge/ability to write any playful microfics on twitter. 

This (for want of a better word) 'loss' of daily creativity is a bit at odds with my TSWB antho experience of showing up until the words do, but... that's the crunchy, pesky truth. Twitter microfics have been hard for me to come by this year. Microfics have always been a mainstay and my raison d'être for using Twitter, so I'm quite lost on how/why I should use Twitter without microfics. In fact, it's been kind of easier to focus on blogging than it has been to work on crafting microfics. I don't have an answer to this one yet, so bear with me while I muddle through. 

I fell off the blogging bandwagon towards the end of the year, but I'm cutting myself slack about this. In the middle of a very frenetic and frantic Brisbane housing market, we managed to buy a house. A house which ticked most of our wishlist of things we wanted. The house-buying process itself was an ... interesting/exhausting/traumatic one. In that, everything that could have gone smoothly - didn't!* But, we made it. 

This Christmas break has been one of unpacking a bit, sorting a bit more, too many 4am wake-ups, and starting to feel settled and at home.

So. New house, new year. 

And hopefully some new energies to put into my words.

Wishing you all the good things in 2022, and see you next year💜

Du fond du coeur x



*I might write about this sometime. Or, I might not. Some things are best left adrift - to dull, soften and be forgotten. 

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