J.G. Chayko

A few weeks ago my partner was out on our deck, potting and planting seeds for our yearly herbal garden. It’s inspiring to catch a glimpse of those first green sprouts as push their heads up through the moist earth and reach towards the sunlight.

Just like a garden plot, stories begin with a small seed of an idea planted in our imagination. The germination period is our brainstorming phase, as we try to assemble the nucleus of our story, much like a seed incubating in the earth. Language is taking shape in our mind, slowly pushing through each section of our narrative until, one fine day, it bursts through in lyrical splendour. Sometimes it only takes a sprinkling of words for our initial inspiration to blossom – other times it can take pages of free-writing before our idea is ready to swell on the page. Once it has burst through the mire of our vision, it’s ready to take on a life of its own. Now we need to water, prune, and sow to ensure its development.

Sometimes it can take a long time before those first baby shoots pop up– patience is a necessary evil, but once they’ve made it through the first stage, they will start to bloom, and then it’s up to us to cultivate their growth.