The garden and trees continue to sleep, though it has been a surprisingly mild winter. At least temps continue to dip low enough at night to keep everyone asleep.
“Shh,” I think, whenever days are unseasonably warm. “Don’t wake yet; it can still get very cold in February.” I fear an ill-timed sap run for the trees.
This trepidation reminds me of a similar feeling. It reminds me of how I intentionally avoided hours-long creative writing stints back in July.
Like the trees, if I allow my creative sap to really run in the wrong season, it can be followed by an abrupt “freeze” of the creative flow. If I let myself slip into that deep creative space, inevitably, the daily tasks of growing season—farm management, plant care, garden tours—cut me off from that “in the zone” writing brain. Abruptly halting my creative flow can be physically painful (headaches, neck tension). At the very least, it makes me grumpy and forgetful!
It’s best for me to not work much on deep creative work during the summer months. I continue with my Client work of course, usually manuscript editing or popular genre-specific work (self-help, natural health, how-to, entrepreneurial inspiration). Those projects I can complete in two- and three-hour jaunts, especially during afternoon hours when it gets too hot to work outside. But I fully set aside the more creative, personal projects: my own memoir and fiction. I no longer fight this seasonal rhythm and am much happier for it.
Conversely, January is my time to tend manuscripts, not plants. One creative endeavor sleeps, the other awakens. So now, in the heart of winter, the table turns.
The literal table that will soon be covered in trays of spring seedlings is, right now, my chapter layout table. I arrange content snippets here. All the bits and bobs of material gathered in previous months are set out and logically arranged here. It feels very much like working on a puzzle.
The table hosts two different projects right now, in turns. Some days it holds material for a multi-author book on integrative oncology—my latest content- and line-editing project. Other days it holds scene fragments for a personal work of creative non-fiction.
When it comes to book-writing season, January is “July.” Stuff is really starting grow! With the oncology book, whole chapters are taking shape. The first readable drafts are complete. The book’s greater shape and arc are fully visible. These are the book’s first fruits. I can picture the final manuscript, which the author team plans to “harvest” in May—think of that as late autumn for my book-writing season.
My larger creative non-fiction project holds to a much longer timeline. I think of that book more like tending a young fruit tree. I don’t expect to see any substantial yield of fruit (finished chapters, whole sections, first readable manuscript draft) for another two years or so. Larger works are like that. They often take years to establish their roots and widen their crowns. Then there’s that year when they finally bloom, have a growth spurt. A couple more years go by, and only then do they really begin to yield.
This is long-haul creativity. In another three months, when the oncology book comes to completion, the non-fiction book will be nowhere near “done.” Instead it will, like a tree, head into dormancy. I’ll gather all the drafts in process, place them in clearly labeled file folders and tuck them in a cabinet where they’ll safely sleep during Book Writing Winter.
During the farm’s growing season, I’ll go back to my scaled-down writing practice of keeping a mini notebook and pen in the back pocket of my work jeans. If a short scene, a visual detail, a scrap of conversation comes to me in the midst of transplanting cabbage or weeding in the food forest, I’ll pause from my outward work just long enough to jot down the snippet. At the end of each day, I’ll tear the creative scraps out of the notebook and file them.
These jottings are my creative minerals and complex nutrient reserves. Just like a dormant tree, my dormant creative brain has roots that are still active. Those roots are finding these little gems that I can store until the next book-growing season. So the wheel continues to turn.
How about you? What projects are you working on this winter? Do you find you have a seasonal rhythm to your creative work? Share a few thoughts in the comments or send an email to anika (at) MontanaCoauthor (dot) com.