We never mean to stop writing
Following the undulations of our unique creative fertility
Have you, like me, succumbed to the myth of the consistent writer? These are the delightful creatures who know how to show up every day and write 1000 meticulous words. Or writers with habits and schedules that seem to hum like a well worn groove in a favorite record. They sparkle with consistency, and I marvel at them with wonder and curiosity.
I, as it turns out, am filled with the best of intentions to keep a similar schedule, but lack the gene or neurotransmitter that would allow me to have a similarly regular writing habit.
Instead, I write with the seasons.
I can’t always predict when I’ll enter a time of creative fertility. I’ve had heart-thumping seasons of wild and fierce writing, where I could scarcely stop myself from writing. Other times my journal lays fallow and the words just don’t come.
There’s an urge to make myself wrong about this way of writing. Or rather this way of not writing. Familiar thoughts bubble up that oscillate between self-criticism and apathy.
Why don’t you take your own medicine and just write for 5 minutes?
Who cares if you write or not, no one’s paying attention.
It’s okay to let go and stop trying so hard.
Why can’t I try a little harder?
Back and forth, swaying around in my rudderless mind. Do you experience these rudderless moments too? It’s just so easy to get lost up there in those thoughts, especially when we’re driving the kids to school, or doing work for clients while our own projects gather dust.
We never mean to stop writing. We don’t declare, “I am all done writing for the Winter, and will now drift aimlessly through life without showing up for my creative heart and soul.”
And yet, sometimes I wonder if there may be a perfection to this ebb and flow. Or as I’m now naming it, the natural undulation of a creative life.
Undulation: The action of moving in a wave-like manner; a gentle rising and falling in the manner of waves. (OED)
This is me, the writer who moves in a wave-like manner.
Sometimes I write, and other times I don’t. The waves of creativity kiss the sand and bring floods of inspiration, and then they flow back out to the sea.
Yes, that beautiful, inky black sea of mystery and inspiration. What if the lack of writing is simply a pause between creative swells? What if my heart and soul are simply taking time to be replenished and revitalized before the next outpouring of creative energy?
Perhaps these moments of not-writing are just the inhale that brings a flood of oxygen to our systems, before the next exhale of creative unfurling.
Let’s trust our own undulations, and ride these waves of our uniqueness and creative cycles. Perhaps it’s time to welcome and embrace ourselves for following a more whimsical path, one that is anything but a straight line.
Share these wild embodied writings with creative kindred spirits…
Leah Kent is a green witch and flower essence practitioner who drums before writing. Officially a book coach and author who helps wisdom keepers and visionaries write and publish transformational books about their work in the world.
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