seven seasons of sharing
your art, your words your heart // step inside my creative process
A song that has inspired me lately:
5.05am. FFF (finally flipping February). Glasses perched coquettishly on nose, fluffy bedhead hair, pillows propped to guard against impalement on metal headboard (seriously, why would anyone think metal + bed = comfort?), green tea warming my insides (coffee comes later, a good Malbec not long after that), hot water bottle(s) snugly rammed to the front and back of my pyjamas (#winning) and my cranky old laptop complete with worryingly warm battery balanced precariously on my knees. Welcome back, my friend, to this writerly life, to the glamour, and to Writing Around The Edges. It’s so good to see you again.
The idea of having you step inside my own creative process has been brewing, like my six-times-used teabag, for ages. While a proportion of my creative process is of course about the writing, the other stuff I do around the edges are what makes up the whole. The process I outline below looks long-winded but actually happens in the blink of an eye, or at most the passing of a few days. The magic to be found in alchemising all seven of these moving parts is game-changing.
In my neurological world, with its dramatic flip-flops from one extreme to the other, and often back again, within the space of a week, of twenty four hours, of a morning, of a split second, some semblance of order is essential.
Erratic neural pathways are both the bane of my adulting life and the gem of my creative one.
I’m grateful for my brain’s misfires and short circuits and the meandering daliances my thinking process takes. And it’s made all the better for having some gentle structure. Which brings us to these seven seasons of creative process, of sharing your art, your words, your heart.
Your own creative process will, most likely, follow a similar format to mine. You may replace some of the seven stages with other words, but the basic tenet will remain. Of course, you don’t have to share at all. But many of us feel drawn to, magnetised towards reaching others with our words, our craft, our images. If you do, be prepared for the bumpiest of rides. It takes a while, often, to find the breadcrumbs of your path. Be patient.
Encompassing all the below-mentioned glorious steps could help lead you to your most liminal worlds, most evocative landscapes and most atmospheric characters. To your happiest, most fulfilled creative self.
Big claims, yes, but *I also know you can do it*.
The alchemy of tightly juice-squeezed creative time, together with the wildest and most volatile of imaginations, may just be the difference between those who feel utterly compelled to share…
…and those who don’t.
Step inside my process
The below listed seven ‘seasons’ are more like untidy spirals, with you, the creator, delving in and choosing one to spend time with at random, or perhaps completing all seven neatly, in a circle, depending on your temperament. Picked up over many years in business, wafting around creative circles, working in people-centred employment, they each feature in all realms where things people have made are being shared.
I’ve held the concept of this post close for a while, knowing it would be special, but also painfully aware of my dillying and dallying, and ashamed to show its red face. But we’re here, aren’t we, for the messiness, the realness, the raw magic that comes when truth is spoken, with kindness as its motive. I hope so.
I could have taken my sweet time over this piece, curated it with care across the nooks of days and crannies of weeks that it has been tug-tugging on my heartstrings, rap-rapping on the door of my cerebellum. Alas, my creative process doesn’t quite work like that. Quick, frantic and urgent I alway feel compelled to both conceive and birth my writing within the space of an hour or two “or I shall simply die”. That is my nature, and that is okay.
I also realise as I type this title that I have been sharing here on Substack for seven seasons. Starting summer 2022, now here we are, with winter turning its brave face towards spring 2024, wiser and richer and more fulfilled, creatively, for having written the things and deleted the things and shared the things. Maybe you feel that, too.
And so, to the list. My own seven seasons that support me to share my work and my words. There tends to be one active step, followed by a more passive one, but feel free to ‘one-two-skip a few’, as I often do. To scrawl out one step and replace with another. To circle back and put your feet up awhile, sitting comfortably next to your favourite season like a familiar companion. It’s yours, just as it is mine. A gift.
Here goes:
move
beachcombing, woody dog walks, lifting weights, pounding the pavements on a run, rolling out my yoga mat. Never fails. Also makes you breathe better, which, let’s face it, is only ever a good thing.
read
this year, it’s all fiction. Storytelling, blissful escapism, romantic longing, dramatic seascapes. Take yourself somewhere with someone else’s words. Soak them up like an arty sponge. Jot down your favourite of their words, perhaps, in a beautiful notebook, and create your own vocabulary journal. You may like to repurpose them, like a jigsaw, into your own writing later. (*hint: I’ve scattered some of my favourite words through this letter, and always do. Your readers love familiarity).
get hands-on and practical // make something
importantly, make something else, something that isn’t the thing you’re actually going to put out into the world. For me it’s currently using watercolour pencils, crafting sea-glass jewellery, or baking the most delicious banana bread with my children. (*hint: this is the step I’d been missing until the last few months. This was my missing link. A lot of wonderful things have fallen into place since I nestled this piece into place).
connect
find your online home. Feel that sense of comfortable slippers, a warm, fuzzy knowing that you are with your people. Maybe it’s right here, on Substack. Since deleting (entirely, other than saving a handle) my Instagram and Facebook business and personal accounts in January 2023 I have been steadily regaining my online balance and stretching my lanky writer’s legs as if finding my footing on snow-covered ice. It’s feeling…more settled, now. My wish is that you will feel the same.
write
the business end. Now you can begin to stitch your words like your favourite patchwork quilt, gathered of all colours. Of all your wounds and all your joys. Perfect moments, snapshots of observations, pleasures, pains and all that lies between. Not all you write will be shared, of course, but all you share does have to be written.
daydream
a delicious season in which to linger, possibly in a hammock, watching the clouds drift…
share
pull everything together, whether half a day or half a year has passed. Make sense of the scent of your words, their feel under your readers’ skin when applied liberally. Or wrap them close as a blanket, a cocoon for your fearless heart, then release them, untethered, when the moment takes you. They’re yours to scatter as you wish.
There you are. My seven seasons of sharing, and all that goes into pressing ‘publish’. I urge you to follow your creative nose and its impeccable timing. There are some things that are truly greater than us and those blissful, unexplainable creative hits of magic are just that. Be brave, dear one. Be boundless in your enthusiasm for your words, your projects, your craft. We will all be here when you’re ready, patiently waiting, cheering you on.
It’s process, not procrastination
For your notebook:
Q. Which of these ‘seven seasons’ do you spend most time in?
Stroll gently, my loves.
x Luisa
P.S I always love to hear from you in a comment (my feel is this topic is going to spark some fascinating conversation), with a ❤️, and a restack to Substack Notes. :)
Mostly spend my time in the writing season which only works if I make the most of the moving season and I think I should spend more time in the reading season to nurture the slow percolatory feeding of the writer.
Nice piece. Thank you for sharing
Everything about this post is wonderful, Luisa. Thank you so much for these gifts, this inspiration. Fabulous! 😘