From Fallow to Fertile, Writing With the Seasons

Spring doesn’t just bring flowers to my garden—it brings my stories to my mind. Stories that have lain dormant for a long time, perhaps for just the winter, or perhaps for more than just a season or two. But this spring, thank goodness, the quickening of life also quickened the creativity in my subconscious.

Sometimes, as writers, we can suffer from stretches of time when our stories don’t talk to us. I’ve experienced a spell of this happening to me for quite a stretch of time. It felt like walking through molasses, where I could see the story I wanted to tell in the distance, the characters, familiar and comforting, waving at me from a distant shore. But I had to get to them. I had to wade through this thick, gooey substance, like a sea of slime, to try and reach them. 

It was exhausting. It was frightening. I had to keep stopping to catch my breath, because nothing would come to me. I wondered if I would ever write again. It was a long, long winter, stark and barren. But slowly, ever so slowly, I made progress forward. I worked toward the story in the distance. 

Then, as spring emerged from the ground, green and verdant, the story returned, waiting for me like a seed of an idea under the earth sprouting into the sun of my creative consciousness. And relief swept over me like a cool wind.

If you’ve felt like your writing hibernated over the winter, you’re not alone. Seasonal creativity is a real thing. Our creative juices ebb and flow, just like the cycle of the seasons do. Notice when your own creative seasons are. You may not be like me, where you lie fallow in the winter and burst out with creativity again in the spring. You may find that your writing burns in the autumn with the colors of the fall leaves only to wither in the summer heat.

It’s important to honor your own writing rhythm. Be aware of what your psyche does and how your creativity works. If you know your fallow time is in the winter, don’t panic when you don’t write as much during that time. Use it to edit. Or to plan. Or to work on another aspect of your author business. Knowing in advance that this will be a creative down time will prepare you for the other work you need done without the strife that trying to get the creative juices going, and failing to do so, can cause.

Even if you’ve written nothing for months, spring gives you permission to begin again. Give your writing space a spring refresh. Tidy up your desk. Light a candle with a scent that pleases you. Open a window. Bring in a plant and put it in your writing space to green up where you spend your time. 

Take small steps to get back into your writing routine. Revisit that old story and revise a page at a time. Write a paragraph a day. Set a reasonable daily word count, 500 words. If that seems like too much, cut it down to 250 words a day. You can do that. Or try a one writing sprint for 25 minutes with a spring themed writing prompt to get your Muse speaking to you.

Know, that no matter how long it’s been, it is never too late to return to the page. Wherever you are in your creative cycle, know that you’re not behind—you’re just in rhythm with your own nature. Let the sunlight, the blossoms, the birdsong be your invitation: come back to the page, gently. The words will come back. Creativity isn’t gone—it’s just waiting for the right season.

Need a prompt to get you started? Check out this downloadable spring-writing/journaling prompt page to get you going with your spring writing.