Iona Winter

It’s been a snowy, frosty, nippy old week here in Te Wai Pounamu. So cold, yet so beautiful. I’ve been moved to tears by the stark white snow against native evergreens (who stand tall regardless), or the blood orange sun rising over icy waters, and the crackle of frost underfoot. Each morning my fingers take up position (held aloft) over the car vents while driving into work, AND along the way I can’t help admiring Papatūānuku (Mother Earth) in her divinity. I want to keep stopping the car to take photos, because it makes me so damn happy!

BUT part of me wants to hibernate, now it’s mid-winter. I feel it coming at me, calling me into it’s embrace. Sometimes I wish I was a bear. It’s become harder to emerge from the soft seclusion of my bed, so I eek out the minutes before the alarm goes off…dreaming of warm cave-like dwellings.

I’ve finally heard that I’ve officially passed my Masters in Creative Writing. Sadly there’s been no popping of champagne corks or whoop whopping around the establishment. The thesis and exegesis is a baby long ago birthed. NINE MONTHS since hand in, and the silence has created a deafness in me. The process (of waiting and hearing nothing) has put me off doing any further academic study. AND I’ve tucked away my fantasy, of wearing one of those floppy velvet Doctorate hats.

It interests me (rather than swearing about it) that I have been given just two weeks, to receive the feedback (after someone else has seen it first…so that’ll reduce it to a week), make any changes, get the jolly thing properly printed and bound, courier her up to ‘The Big Smoke’ ALL so I can receive my degree on time – rather than waiting another six months. Can I even be bothered? Probably not today.

Does the feedback (I’ll eventually receive) help? Given that ‘The Novel’ has been rewritten (in part) several times over, I’m unsure. I’ve received a truckload of process-feedback along the way which has pushed ‘The Novel’ into a new shape and form, so I doubt I’ll even recognise the one they’ve marked! DID I need to do my Masters then? Hmm, that’s a really good question.

Soon (very soon) I’ll need to retreat (once again) into the cave called REWRITING and relinquish my connection to the world of social media (aka MAJOR distraction). Hells teeth, really! Yep, come night time and weekends I’ll be off the radar…hunkered down in wooly jumpers, slippers and mittens tap tapping away on the keys…a noise which could perhaps drive some people bonkers. But I don’t even hear it for the words rattling around in my head, down my shoulders, out of my fingers and onto the page. The Page. The already busy page…sigh…such is the world of rewriting.

Dear readers, please don’t be alarmed if this page is silent for a while. I shall return. Or perhaps I might even sneak a look in and scribble a few things down, should I feel the need for a distraction…either that or chocolate 😉