The main reason for this long winter over the last few years, where everything seems an effort and motivation is hard to come by, was grief due to family drama (which I won't go into). It was hard to focus on the complexity of my characters' journey and intricate plots when my heart was dealing with the jagged edges of emotional pain.
Thank God for short stories - that keep the creative juices going - and poetry. And time and healing and mending.
Short stories are bite sized - though mine tend to be giant-sized bites - with simplier arcs and shorter timelines. Poetry is even more condensed, where every word can matter - and can express emotion in a way prose can struggle to do.
Despite a hiatus of a couple weeks travelling, I participated in the Month of Poetry again this January - with a special challenge each Saturday - ranging from ekphrastic poems inspired by an art work (sculpture, painting, photograph etc), writing a poem inspired by or in the voice of a favourite book character, writing a compunctual poem (two poems interlaced in interaction with each other - hard to do), a poem inspired by a line of poetry you admire, and finally, a poem about what poetry means to you (Five Saturdays in January this year).
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases:
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
Have you experienced fallow times - what has helped renew your creativity?
P. S. here's two of my poems form MOP (I resisted the urge to share a third) - the first on the stillness of cats, the other an acrotic on inspiration. Enjoy.
suspends time, tears at the curtain of reality
Thank God for short stories - that keep the creative juices going - and poetry. And time and healing and mending.
Short stories are bite sized - though mine tend to be giant-sized bites - with simplier arcs and shorter timelines. Poetry is even more condensed, where every word can matter - and can express emotion in a way prose can struggle to do.
Despite a hiatus of a couple weeks travelling, I participated in the Month of Poetry again this January - with a special challenge each Saturday - ranging from ekphrastic poems inspired by an art work (sculpture, painting, photograph etc), writing a poem inspired by or in the voice of a favourite book character, writing a compunctual poem (two poems interlaced in interaction with each other - hard to do), a poem inspired by a line of poetry you admire, and finally, a poem about what poetry means to you (Five Saturdays in January this year).
I also went to my very first Genre-Con this year - on the theme of Inklings - and it was particularly inspiring. Apparently even after 15 years of seriously pursuing writing and getting a Masters in writing, there are indeed new things to learn. I loved the Manga stream under Professor Belne from Japan with a hands-on workshop. The three golden nuggets I took away from the weekend (as Lori-Jay Ellis encouraged us to look for)
1 ) the comparion of the 3 Act Hero's Journey popular in the West with both the lesser known Heroine's Journey and the 4 Act Eastern KishÅtenketsu (with a unexpected asteroid-sized shift in Act 3) (Thanks Belne, Queenie Chan, Genieve Flynn and L.E. Daniels).
2) Scott Wilson's enthuiasm was uplifting as he explained the making of the Indigiverse - and how the powers of his superheros are based on the character and strengths of his great-grandmother, mother, and other people important in his life.
3) I also enjoyed Michelle Birrell's demonstration of using mind-maps to take an idea of a story to one with legs (or rather characters, conflict and context).
And the whole weekend was so much better sharing it with a friend.
Filling the creative well helps keep the creatve spark alive (to mix metaphors).
Though, in many ways, it's also time and God's healing presence that mends.
2) Scott Wilson's enthuiasm was uplifting as he explained the making of the Indigiverse - and how the powers of his superheros are based on the character and strengths of his great-grandmother, mother, and other people important in his life.
3) I also enjoyed Michelle Birrell's demonstration of using mind-maps to take an idea of a story to one with legs (or rather characters, conflict and context).
And the whole weekend was so much better sharing it with a friend.
Filling the creative well helps keep the creatve spark alive (to mix metaphors).
Though, in many ways, it's also time and God's healing presence that mends.
I prefer to avoid pain, like things to be easy - yet life isn't easy and sometimes it can break you. God walks with us even when we can't feel his presence, maybe especially then. And it's often in those dark winter fallow times when nothing (or very little) seems to be happening, that the soil is broken up and enriched and the seed grows.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases:
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23, ESV*
Have you experienced fallow times - what has helped renew your creativity?
P. S. here's two of my poems form MOP (I resisted the urge to share a third) - the first on the stillness of cats, the other an acrotic on inspiration. Enjoy.
The Stillness of Cats
The stillness of cats
a movable feast of perfected rest
stretched out trapeze like to impossible length,
curled pretzel close, nose to tail,
spine twisted in unlikely spiral,
or paws curled in post-mortem pose
not a whisker or a muscle twitching
as still as death, yet replete with curled up life
a fracture in reality and time.
suspends time, tears at the curtain of reality
triggering inexplicable yearning
like the infinite arch of the blue, blue sky
the effortless stretch of the restless ocean
the song of the wind dancing between the leaves,
whistling whistling across country,
the slow sink of the sun, the rise of the plump fullfaced moon
the exuberant splatter of stars against the purple-black sky
the wonder and thisness of the world
stirring emotions hard to name, an unspoken promise
unreachable perfection wrapped in eternity
the great beyond calling, calling, calling
further up and further in.
Inspiration - an Acrostic
Inhale the shy sparks of imagination
Nourishment for mind and soul
Simmering, swirling, unspooling
Percolating in quiet places and the routine
Incubating in dreams, in the shower, on walks
Reverberating with rhyme and rhythm and rhetoric
Activating, unannounced, in media res, bums on seats
Torrents of creation causing creek banks to overflow
Incited by the everyday, the minutiae of living
Outrageous too, sparked by the weird, the wonderful
New emerging like phoenix from the cinders of the old.
Jeanette O'Hagan has spun tales in the world of Nardva from the age of eight. She enjoys writing fantasy, sci-fi, poetry. Her Nardvan stories span continents, millennia and cultures. Some involve shapeshifters and magic. Others include space stations and cyborgs.
She has published over forty stories and poems, including the Under the Mountain Series (5 books), Akrad's Children and Rasel's Song, the first two books in the Akrad’s Legacy series and more recently, Rise of the Consortium. Her story in Stepping Sideways, 'In a League of Her Own' won the 2024 Aurealis Award for YA Short Stories & 'Anomalies at Prospero Base' (in Rise of the Consortium) was shortlisted in the 2025 Aurealis Awards.
Jeanette has practised medicine, studied communication, history, theology and writing. She loves reading, painting, travel, and pondering the meaning of life. She lives in Brisbane.
the effortless stretch of the restless ocean
the song of the wind dancing between the leaves,
whistling whistling across country,
the slow sink of the sun, the rise of the plump fullfaced moon
the exuberant splatter of stars against the purple-black sky
the wonder and thisness of the world
stirring emotions hard to name, an unspoken promise
unreachable perfection wrapped in eternity
the great beyond calling, calling, calling
further up and further in.
28 January © Jeanette O’Hagan
Inspiration - an Acrostic
Inhale the shy sparks of imagination
Nourishment for mind and soul
Simmering, swirling, unspooling
Percolating in quiet places and the routine
Incubating in dreams, in the shower, on walks
Reverberating with rhyme and rhythm and rhetoric
Activating, unannounced, in media res, bums on seats
Torrents of creation causing creek banks to overflow
Incited by the everyday, the minutiae of living
Outrageous too, sparked by the weird, the wonderful
New emerging like phoenix from the cinders of the old.
2 Jan 2026 © Jeanette O’Hagan
She has published over forty stories and poems, including the Under the Mountain Series (5 books), Akrad's Children and Rasel's Song, the first two books in the Akrad’s Legacy series and more recently, Rise of the Consortium. Her story in Stepping Sideways, 'In a League of Her Own' won the 2024 Aurealis Award for YA Short Stories & 'Anomalies at Prospero Base' (in Rise of the Consortium) was shortlisted in the 2025 Aurealis Awards.
Jeanette has practised medicine, studied communication, history, theology and writing. She loves reading, painting, travel, and pondering the meaning of life. She lives in Brisbane.
*Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
