Last week my chickens *finally* started laying again, as did one of my geese, and I got my first duck egg today. I have daffodils and crocuses blooming in my yard (I could swear crocuses are supposed to come first, aren’t they?) and I planted seeds for my garden the other day.

Spring is in the air!

Spring is like a blank Word document–full of possibilities, hopes and expectations. Of course, before I go crazy planting new annuals and replacing any perennials that didn’t survive the winter, I have to clear away last year’s dead plants, prep the ground and makes some plans.

It’s much the same with my writing. I have to do research, figure out who my characters are, the situation, and clear away the fears and lingering doubts about my abilities left over from the edits I’ve been working on that make me hate my writing. It’s not good enough just to have a patch of ground (if it were, those rocks in the back yard wouldn’t be stopping me from planting grass). I have to have a plan, even if it isn’t as detailed as some peoples’. I have to prepare the groundwork and believe that if I do my job right, it’ll all come out okay. And just like the way I experiment with different plants in my yard, try new things each year, I have to try different things in my writing, change them up. If one plot line isn’t working, I have to be willing to prune and cut, and even remove it entirely and try something completely different.

I hate that, but sometimes–okay, almost always–it’s the best way. Because my yard, my writing, and yes, even myself–we’re all works in progress.

But like that blank page when I have a character who’s yapping away in my mind, spring fills me with possibilities.

And as a side note: If spring makes you as happy as it does me, come to the Author Extravaganza in Ephraim on April 9th. It’s running all day. Details are on my sidebar.