Winter to Spring
Pose is affected but smirk is pure. Photo by a beloved member of my writers group—memoirist, novelist, and ceramicist Anne Bingham.
Gentle CW: References to illness and recovery
If you read my musings on Solstice and the new year ahead, you may remember my posing the question…
How do I pause when I want to plan/predict/move? What might happen if I listened instead?
Many folks in our glorious Saturday session (thank you, all who attended, srsly, thank you!) are musing on similar themes for the transition from winter into spring:
How do I stay connected to my inner, playful writer-soul even as my other selves want to finish a project, submit a story, share my novel, and/or publish?
How do I release the desire for perfection? How do I get comfy with mistakes/mess?
How do I dive in, shedding both the restless self and the tendency to put things off (both justified, especially when the collective noise is strong and demands our attention)?
How can I just be already? Do I have to try so hard just to be, COME ON?!
These are all questions I’m weaving into the Spring Creative Commitment. My dream for this offering = supportive community who creates with both urgency and wonder, energy and ease.
The Saturday conversation surrounding these big questions was enlightening to say the least. Maybe that was why my brain was still buzzing come Sunday evening!
cut to me in the middle of the night fighting insomnia…
I’ve battled insomnia since some serious health issues I faced and moved through in 2021, a year when health crises were magnified by the collective scariness. Between diagnoses, or facing frightening procedures and/or surgery, I would often wake up in the wee hours of the morning, the way people used to wake up before electric light. But there was no peaceful darning or fermenting or chatting by candlelight for me. Oh no. I was a zombie scrolling through social media, trying to quiet the noise of my brain with other, bigger, brighter noise.
Not my backyard, but a similar sun-in-branches feel from a winter writers retreat near the Llano river.
Recently I read this somewhat annoying but also illuminating New Yorker article on insomnia, and I was reminded of something I’ve heard before: the key to moving through insomnia is not to stress about the insomnia itself—not to obsess about the fact that you’re wide awake when you should be asleep, but instead to simply be (so easily said, not so easily done). Last night I had a familiar bout of insomnia, but these days sleeplessness is a little less anxious and lot more inconvenient.
So…I got up and made tea, worked in my manuscript for a bit tweaking some moments in a pivotal scene, and—beautifully, gratefully—watched the sun rise. The sun rose through the trees in my backyard, and I just stared up at it, and in my restlessness there was a kind of burning clarity. I felt hope for the day to come. I felt a new kind of understanding, simply by staring and being.
We don’t always have a sunrise to observe.
We don’t always have that singular light to pierce the veil. We don’t always have wild beauty to wake us up. What we can gather are fellow writers who say things that wake us the f*ck up, right?
On Saturday I witnessed how a gathering of restless writer-souls can catch fire like a burning sunrise. Affirming each other’s restlessness, reminding each other why we tell stories in the first place, and offering new ideas for shaking up the creative process can all help us move forward with renewed energy.
I can’t wait to tap into this warmth and light come March.
Quick Reflective Writing: This spring I will watch…
Begin with the phrase This spring I will watch and let it lead you for 5-7 minutes.
Take a few minutes to simply sit and be post-writing.
Reflect on your list/poem/paragraph/scattered thoughts. What are you hoping to watch this spring? What are you hoping to listen to/observe? I’m assuming things like news and X didn’t make the list. If they did, well fine. But make note of whatever is emerging for you. Reflect for a few minutes and jot down some notes if you like.
Take a deep breath.
Bonus: Share a favorite line/list item from your writing with a trusted writer-friend.
Check out the Spring Creative Commitment, starting in March. Early bird pricing ends Friday, February 28.