A year and a half ago, we bought our first home. In the yard are a fig tree and an orange tree, which I thought were very cool bonuses. I’d never lived with fruit trees before, and I soon learned the pleasure of walking out into the yard and finding breakfast. Because someone had the wisdom 20 or more years ago to plant these trees, I get to enjoy their fruit now.

We have since bought a few more fruit trees. They are small and frail, in need of nurturing and patience as we wait for them to bear fruit. Of course because I’m a writer, I find a way to connect it all to the writing process. The new trees remind me of the ideas and partially finished books that look like they may never survive. And it’s true, they may not. As young ideas, just as with young trees, they are mostly just potential.

But by persevering, being patient, and nurturing what I have as best I can, eventually these works in progress may become complete in themselves. They fill out. They take shape. They find a purpose. And they may, if I’m lucky and I do everything right, bear fruit.