Thursday 15 September 2016

Cobwebs



They aren’t everyone’s favourite, but even the most ardent arachnophobe can’t help but be awestruck by the beauty that these misty autumn mornings reveal. The hedge in my back garden was covered in silver when I opened the door this morning.


I must pay tribute to the tenacity and patience of the spider who lives in my car’s nearside wing mirror. Despite regularly having his web destroyed when I brush past, or attempt to wash the car windows, or drive at speed, by the next morning the web will have been rebuilt.

Maybe I can learn from him how to be persistent? In writing terms, if I submit my delicate manuscript and it is destroyed by rejection, I need to practice that same determination: pick up the threads and reconstruct my story, one strand at a time, until it is stronger and better and ready again to be submitted.

The same lesson can be applied to overcoming life’s setbacks, silken thread by silken thread. OK, maybe that’s a bit deep and pushing the analogy too far.

On a lighter note, here’s a little something I prepared earlier which was published last year on Paragraph Planet. Hope you enjoy it.