10 Seasons of the Writer’s Life
Here’s something I’ve learned about the writer’s life: it involves making a lot of choices.
These are often choices we’d rather not make, like deciding which Netflix series to stop watching, or declining happy hour with friends, so we can have more time to write. At one point or another, we’ll need to negotiate with ourselves, or with our partners, about time and schedules and support that’ll help us finish something. But as challenging as it can be to navigate writing in the midst of everything else, I’ve come up with one way to help make things easier: seasons.
Seasons of the Writer’s Life
By turning your attention to the seasons—the earth, your body, and your creativity—peace can be found, and words can be written. By honoring that each day is different, we give ourselves the space needed to tune in, make adjustments, and progress at a pace that feels right. After all, energy peaks and falls. Life changes in an instant, or routines hold steady for months. Leaves turn to gold, a cold snap chills us to the bone, seeds are planted, vegetables are harvested. Seasons change, and so should we. So should our writing lives, our rhythms.
01 | The Season of Beginnings
Before we have anything finished, the idea is just this small little seed that’s planted in our mind. It’s a season often associated with springtime, and can be the period when you work on messy first drafts, embrace any time you can find to write, and not worry so much about the details quiet yet—just write without feeling burdened, without the inner critic slowing you down. Although, I will say, one of the challenges is keeping that inner critic at bay because what a perfect time to show up, right? Just when you have a new idea that’s vulnerable and not fully formed enough to stand on its own. So while you’re writing away, just know that if you start to doubt yourself really early on, it’s entirely normal.
02 | The Season of Self-Doubt
We’re all familiar with this season and probably know it more intimately than we would like. The Season of Self-Doubt can show up anytime, for any length of time. As I just mentioned, it can show up in the season of beginnings, when you’re just getting started. It can show up in the weeks leading up to publication. It can get you down when rejections come in and your confidence is temporarily lower. It’s a pretty certain companion to the writer’s life. But one way I like to reframe it is as an opportunity to go deeper and do some emotional digging, and actually get to the root cause of our limiting beliefs.
A simple exercise I recommend here is to name your fears. This can either be out loud or in your notebook. Whenever I do this—and especially when I say it out loud—it makes the fears seem less scary. It actually helps remove them from my body and my monkey mind and lets me see them for what they really are, which is a first step towards getting yourself out of this season.
03 | The Season of Going Back in Time
This season is a little bit different because it’s one you enter really consciously. It’s an exercise, really, a chance to revisit some early memories and articulate your origin story. It’s easy to get caught up in whatever we’re working on, or life in general, and we often don’t stop to remember how we started, the circumstances, memories both good and bad that have shaped our creative lives over the years. We’ve talked a bit about self-doubt so far and The Season of Going Back In Time is actually one of the ways we can help quiet the inner critic because in those moments of doubt, we can remember where we started. We can know with truth and certainty that we are a writer, and know that whatever we’re facing in the moment, we’ll get through it, because we can look back at the timeline, and the history of us making progress again and again over the years.
04 | The Season of Discontent
This is a season I’ve spent a lot of time in. And early on, before I had this framework of seasonal creative living to help me, I didn’t know what to do in these periods. Ultimately, I was really, really hard on myself when I should have been gentle and understanding. The Season of Discontent is anytime you find yourself in a set of frustrating circumstances that seems to be preventing you from writing.
For so many of us, our day job is the biggest culprit here. We can easily move from seeing it as a patron, and partner in our creativity to the one obstacle that’s keeping us from the page. To get yourself out of this season, I’m in full support of a three-step framework I call the Writing Cycle of Hope. It involves doing three things: making peace with your circumstances, making priorities (which will involve making choices and likely doing less), and finally, making progress. This is a system I’ve seen replicated in my own life and I always turn to it whenever I’m feeling frustrated about what seems to be an inability to write.
05 | The Season of Listening to Your Body
In the same way we have a relationship with our creativity, I also believe we’re in a relationship with our body. It’s always speaking to us, giving us clues, helping is tune in to what’s going on with us emotionally. And in the writer’s life, our bodies can’t be ignored. “The body comes first” is a motto I’ve had for at least a few years now, but I came to it rather reluctantly. Because here’s the truth: When we have a lot going on—and we always have something else taking our attention away from the page, right?—sometimes you’re in one of those moments where you could either choose to go to the gym for an hour, or write for an hour. The younger version of me would say write, but these days, I say go to the gym—or do whatever it is that makes your body feel good. These days, for me, that’s usually pilates, a long walk, and yoga nidra meditation. I find that when we put our bodies first, creativity comes more easily. It actually makes space for creativity to flow more freely when we’ve also made space in our bodies. Sometimes we’re really in a groove with this, which is always great, and other times we need to spend some time re-focusing our attention on what we need physically, so it’s a season that can come and go over the years, depending on what’s going on.
06 | The Season of Raising Young Children
This season is a long one. It’s the most explosive right during that transition of having no kids to suddenly having a baby to care for, and it evolves from there, acting then from there is just evolves and really acts as an undercurrent to everything you do moving forward, including creative pursuits. Sometimes it can throw you into the Season of Discontent (that’s happened to me before). Sometimes it helps you refocus on the body, which we just talked about. Sometimes you need to just do nothing except take care of yourself and your baby. Almost always you need to get creative about how and when you write. As incredible as parenthood can be, as a creative, there can be some frustrating aspects as well, which is to be expected. But the real gift I’ve taken from this whole thing, and I’m about four years in now, is being able to see more clearly what’s worth pursuing and what’s not. Being forced to make choices is hard at first, but at the end of the day, it helps you put out better work because you know what’s most important during this season, and the rest can fall away.
07 | The Season of Liminal Space
Liminal space is a transition period. The definition I first heard on a podcast with Rob Bell is: the time between what was and what’s to come. There are lots of obvious examples like marriage, pregnancy, a big move, changing jobs—but liminal space also shows up in quieter ways, like when something last minute comes up, or there’s a family emergency, anytime we need to change course whether it’s a day or two, a week, longer. Liminal space can’t really be contained in parameters we can control, which is one of the hardest parts about being here. It’s a season that can be likened to a kind of winter, really, when our job is to just listen and sit with things, and sometimes not write as much. The upside, though, is you can ask questions, consume other people’s work to help fill your soul up, and hopefully, receive some answers to those questions that will ultimately help you move out of the season with a lot of grace, and a lot of self-compassion.
I was in a huge season of liminal space when I finished graduate school and started working full-time, back in my early twenties. But the problem was I had no idea what liminal space was, I had no concept of seasonal living, so I was really tough on myself. Instead of just giving myself some time to say hey, you’re going through a lot, things are changing, we need to find a new normal… I was just so mad at myself for what felt like an inability to write. Now I’m so much more aware of this season and what is requires from me, that it’s much easier to welcome and embrace.
08 | The Season of Visibility
The Season of Visibility is a very active, intense season in some ways. Now it can be in that same undercurrent way, something like a presence you’re maintaining on social media, or a blog, where in one respect you’re working to actively be visible to people on a regular basis and share your message. But it can also be more of a short-term experience, especially when we’re talking about launching anything. So a book is coming out, or you have a new blog or a podcast, or you’re hosting a workshop or a retreat, speaking at a conference. Anytime you’re putting yourself and your message out there, that falls into Visibility for me. And this is a wonderful, expansive season that we need to experience as writers. It’s often in visibility that we receive feedback and validation for our work, you know just enough to help us feel like we’re making a difference in someone’s life, or just feel recommitted to the work we’re doing. It’s fun and exciting and should absolutely 100% be embraced. But the season can also be very energy draining, so it’s essential you prepare yourself for it as much as possible. And the season is also fleeting. When it’s over, there can be a big crash and then suddenly you’re back at the beginning, facing the blank page. Lots of emotional swings here.
09 | The Season of Retreating
This leads nicely into the season of retreating, which, if you’ve been in visibility for a while, retreating can sometimes feel like the next right thing to do. Retreating comes in a few different forms. It can be taking a break from social media. Pressing pause on a blog you’ve been writing or a newsletter. Shoving a draft in the drawer and walking away for a while. It can be a literal retreat where you leave your home with the intention of writing and resting, either alone, or in more of a workshop setting. There are lots of ways to retreat, and it’s another necessary component of the writer’s life that can help us really tune in and recover our creative spirits in many ways.
10 | The Season of Finishing
Another glorious season, this one can make us feel like we’re unstoppable. We’re editing, we’re submitting work, we’re hitting publish, we’re turning in manuscripts we’ve worked on for years. But in order to get there, we need a plan. Whether it’s a spreadsheet to track your word counts, putting writing into your weekly calendar like a standing appointment. Or, something I’m a fan of especially when it comes to book writing, is implementing some project management strategies to keep you on track. But the way I like to do it is what I call “strategy with softer edges.” I love a plan, I love a spreadsheet, I love being organized and ticking off boxes. But I also like tuning in to see how I feel day to day. I like making adjustments. I like stopping when I’m tired. I don’t push myself to the brink of exhaustion.
For more support on your writing journey, pick up a copy of Wild Words: Rituals, Routines, and Rhythms for Braving the Writer’s Path wherever books are sold.
