Spring Planting for Writers
By Barbara O'Neal | March 27, 2019 |
In our western culture, it is traditional to make resolutions and changes at the New Year. Understandable, since it’s a fresh new calendar, everything is new, and it feels good to make a list of things to change.
In earth-based religions and cultures, it’s much more usual to wait for spring. The pagan calendar says we should be resting more, sleeping more during the dark days of winter, just like all the bears and the bulbs and the trees. Through the winter, we should be healing and finding ease.
Because when spring comes, we want to be ready. To awaken, to plant seeds, to give ourselves a good shake and lift our faces to the rain and new sunshine, to eat and nourish our brains and souls and creativity.
Spring officially arrived last week in the Northern Hemisphere, offering us all a chance to set our intensions and hopes for the coming year.
What do you want to plant this spring? What would you like to grow in your writing and/or career? This doesn’t have to all be about page production or marketing goals, though certainly those are probably on nearly all writers’ lists.
Some other ideas might be:
Attend a new conference
Find a critique partner
Go out to a lecture/play/concert once a month to fill the well
Take a class
Try new methods of writing (locations, word processing programs, hand writing)
Start a daily log of your progress (as Liz Mikaski talked about yesterday)
Write a journal
Find someone to write letters with
Try a new venue for your writing (coffee shop? library? living room? back yard?)
Try a new genre or form
Read old books about writing, not just the new ones
Read a new book about writing
Go somewhere in your town that you’ve never been and write about it
Keep a log of interesting people you see
Read a poem a day all year
Write imaginary letters to people you’ll never meet or people you can’t talk to
Write letters to real people and mail them
Read letters written by writers (sometimes they’re so mundane! Sometimes they’re breathtaking)
Clean your writing space thoroughly
Create some new writing rituals:
Buy a tea you never drink except when you’re writing.
Find some new music.
Buy a cheap silicone cover for your keyboard to match the tone of your book.
Make a collage of your desires for the year.
Make some practical, achievable daily goals toward those desires
Discard things that are no longer useful. Clear some space.
And don’t forget to plant some new joy for writing this spring! Let’s see what we can accomplish.
What are you going to plant in your writing life this spring?
photo credit johannes-plenio-564230-unsplash
Barbara O’Neal is the author of more than a dozen award-winning, bestselling novels, including the runaway bestseller, When We Believed in Mermaids, which has been published in more than 20 countries and spent many months on the Amazon Charts, as well as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller lists. Barbara lives on the beach in rugged Oregon with her husband, a British endurance athlete who vows he’ll never lose his accent and their zoo of cats and dogs. You can find more information on her newsletter and where to find her on social media at barbaraoneal.com.
This is an awesome list! I have decided to adopt “read a poem every day.” I love poetry and I never read it. On my own, I am going to be starting a new book in a new genre soon (maybe in April?) Linking that to the new growth of Spring seems really apropos. I’ve been trying new methods of publishing and trying to connect with new writers/readers for the last several months. I’m toying with returning to blogging a bit and what the posts would entail. I hadn’t really recognized that all the new could be a Spring season in my writing, but I really like the idea. Thanks for an uplifting post this morning. :D
A poem a day is a great seed to plant!
That’s a lovely list, Barb. Pieces of a new story are popping up in my imagination like your crocuses in the picture, so I’m excited to gather them into a bouquet.
Good Morning, Barbara. I think I should clean my desk, but what will probably happen when I sit down is that the urge to write will be so strong, the desk will have to wait. Spring is happening in my garden and after I tend it and sweep away leaves, I am eager to get into my corner of the world and write. Thanks.
Here we’re slipping into autumn. The urge is to stagger about dramatically, proclaiming that my life is fallen into the sere while looking for white hairs, but probably I should just be thankful the energy-sapping heat of summer is over and keep on making little bits of progress on the WIP – like the maple leaves, one by one, gently settling into a carpet on the grass.
Plus maybe I should spend some more time in the garden, getting that good air in my lungs and boosting endorphins by wrestling agapanthus.
I’m thinking of trying a new genre! Great suggestions, Barbara!
I love this list, Barbara! Thank you. I do sometimes write in different parts of the house or in outside venues when I’m feeling stale. Your idea of making a collage is calling to me now. ;-)
Thank for sharing this information.
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