Reflection: Of Leaves and Water

My first mini collection of short stories is available for purchase on Amazon: Of Leaves and Water: A mini collection

To be honest, I never planned to publish my first collection while in the middle of a pandemic. But I guess it’s more because I didn’t think 2020 would be The Year of the Coronavirus.

I often joke that we all knew 2020 would be a big year; we just didn’t know how big. Back in the beginning of the year – that seems like a lifetime ago! – I had discarded an idea to revisit some work I’d done in 2018. My thoughts at the time had been that a momentous year required an equally momentous project. And as much as I loved the writing project I’d undertaken in 2018, it wasn’t something I’d call “momentous.”

2020 was the year to make my writing momentous. To be bold and exciting, push boundaries, inspire new thoughts.

But then the first reports came. And the pandemic grew.

I remember sitting at a cafe in March, hearing in every conversation so much tension and worry and I wondered, maybe this wasn’t the time for momentous.

I’d always felt embarrassed of my writing because I never felt it was momentous enough – there’s not enough magic to really be called fantasy, not enough tension to be considered coming of age and certainly not enough conflict or action to be a thriller. My stories have always about the in between – the pause before picking up the phone, the swallow after a door closes.

A piece of quiet in the corner of a world suddenly thrown into chaos.

So I went back to that idea that I had thought wasn’t momentous enough and said hey, 2020 is supposed to be a big year. Let’s do the things I’d always meant to do. So I took a set of quiet stories to make my very first collection.

The stories still aren’t perfect though. The production very much not perfect as well. But if there’s anything I know in this year of craziness, it’s that 2020 is not the year for perfection. It’s a big year of first steps, of quiet attempts, of deep breaths as we dive under the waves.

Who knows what the rest of 2020 will bring, what other waves will come, or what we will see when everything settles. We’ll face it together, one step, one breath at a time.