Seasons
One of the first things you learn when you start gardening is to pay attention to the seasons. There is a time to plant and a time to cultivate, a time to trim and a time to nurture. If you get the timing wrong, bad things happen.
Recently, our butterfly garden had the roughest season in its history. We were hit by a few days (and nights) of sub-freezing weather. I did what I could to save the plants, but its current state is best described as dismal.
We planted it during the COVID lockdown and have been tending it ever since. Easily our most successful garden, it produced beautiful blooms and attracted both butterflies and hummingbirds.
Now it’s mostly dead.
I say mostly because, as I examined the destruction, I found some green. At least some of these plants can live and flourish again. Crawling through the mass of brittle sticks, a realization hit me: I haven’t been recognizing the seasons in my writing.
My writing life the past couple of years has been a roller coaster of fantastic productivity and frustrating stasis. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, I’ve found myself struggling to develop the ideas that power my fiction.
Looking back over that time through the lens of a gardener is interesting. Is it possible that creativity has seasons just like a garden? Perhaps trying to force an idea at the wrong time is no less doomed than planting a seedling during a frost.
I basically have three approaches to being stuck: power through it, go do something physical, or jump to another project.
Those have always worked well enough, but the concept of seasons opens up a new way of looking at things.
Gardening requires waiting for growth. Perhaps nurturing ideas is the same. Maybe when the words aren’t coming, it’s because the ideas behind them need more time to grow. Instead of focusing on writing, I should be fleshing out concepts or exploring alternatives. Along the same lines, if a book is starting to drag, maybe that’s a time to start trimming.
I’m not yet sure how this viewpoint will change my approach to handling tough spots, but It’s appealing to have an understandable metaphor.
The next time a page isn’t flowing, I’m going to step back and examine the ideas behind it. Do they need more time to grow? Have they become overgrown with other ideas? Is there some key ingredient missing, like a garden that’s not getting enough water or sunlight?
I don’t know what will happen, but I’m looking forward to the experiment!
How about you? Do your ideas have seasons?
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