The seasons of your writing life

What if winter is a time for replenishment?

Where I live, the overnight low temps shamelessly plunge below zero. Now, at midday, the windchill is -9. Negative. Nine. Snow buries my backyard and even the table on the deck. My back patio door is frozen shut.

The cold and snow didn’t keep me from skiing last week or running outside yesterday when the temp warmed up to about 20. After decades of living here, I’ve adapted to the weather. The best way through winter is to get out in it. That and lots of layers and hot coffee when you get back inside.

Like the natural world, the writing life has seasons. Sometimes, our writing life blooms bright, produces fruit, astonishing us with abundance.

And sometimes, it looks like my backyard garden: bare branches, pewter skies, frozen landscape.

If I wanted endless summer, I would move to a warmer location. But I embrace the wild swings of seasons, and the lessons they offer. I enjoy snow, finding in it a stark sort of beauty. Getting through winter, going for walks (or runs) in the snow, builds a sort of bad-ass attitude: I am strong and can endure whatever wrath nature unleashes.

I enjoy running through the nearby woods in winter, encountering deer who gaze placid and unafraid as I trot by. Beauty sometimes hides in plain sight if you’re willing to get out and look for it.

Winter also reminds me that sometimes it is okay for my productivity and pace to slow. It’s not wrong to live a seasonal life, where change continually surprises and sometimes delights. And sometimes frustrates and challenges.

The natural world, with its ebb and flow of seasons, reflects truth about our souls, and our writing. Sometimes we’re full of blooms and promise of spring. Other times, we enjoy bountiful harvest of fall. But other times, our souls (and our writing) endure seasons where things turn brown and dry, where what once bloomed is shed.

In your writing life, you will have wintery seasons—where you perhaps produce less. Where stillness and quiet usher in a different sort of beauty.

But the truth about winter is this: that blanket of snow waters the earth, silent and steady. Winter is not a season of death but of replenishment and preparation. Summer blooms would struggle had the earth not been watered, slow and deep, by winter’s white coverlet.

As a working writer, I cannot hibernate. I must continue to work. And yet, I can accept that my writing life will look different in different seasons.

Our writing seasons may or may not coincide with the calendar. This first quarter of the year often ushers in a season of growth in my writing. The distractions and busyness of the holidays are over, I’m not tempted to play outside quite as much as I am in the short midwestern summers. So when there’s snow on the ground, I’m busy sowing seeds with my writing.

Maybe your writing winter provides an opportunity to feed the soil of your soul, like the blanket of snow does in my garden. It may be a season where you read great books, or take a class on writing, replenishing your writing life to prepare for a season of beauty and productivity.

Because here’s the truth about seasons: they turn. Life, in particular your writing life, may feel bleak and cold right now, but spring will come.