Seasons to live our stories, and seasons to write them.

A close-up of some tender moss and leaves.

You can listen to this newsletter instead of reading it. Click the long black rectangle above these words, and let me know if this is useful!

Hi’ya lovely.

Have you been finding writing hard lately? If so, you’re not alone. Many creative projects floated away in the high tide of pandemic stress in the last three years, or got diluted in endless scrolling.

This is what survival does. It pares us back to our essentials. It keeps us hypervigilant and therefore tired. It holds us there for as long as it can.

Lately I’ve been thinking about a letter that the musician Nick Cave wrote to a fan about what to do when lyrics aren’t coming. Nick said:

In my experience, lyrics are almost always seemingly just not coming. This is the tearful ground zero of song writing — at least for some of us (.…) But the thing you must hold on to through these difficult periods, as hard as it may be, is this — when something’s not coming, it’s coming.

So I’m wondering if, right now, you and I and all of us reading this, can rename “not writing” as “quiet gathering.”

In these last three years, we have been finding new seeds. We have been absorbing lessons and stories. We have been letting our material find us.

Maybe there are seasons to live our stories, and there are seasons to write them.

The question then is…

What is this season for you? Is it time to write? If so, how can you build in community and commitment to support you? Of course, we have some ideas, but this is about you.

It’s OK if you need to gather for longer. This time has taken a tremendous toll, especially for people facing economic scarcity, ableism, and other oppressions that our culture grinds out daily. You don’t need to change your truth.

Even in our seasons of not writing, we are allowed to have hope and pride in what we are doing. Moving from the story of one day to the next is an act of creativity. Survival is too.

“When it’s not coming, it’s coming.”
Or as Pablo Neruda wrote: “You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from arriving.”

In it with you,

P.S. Did you see at the top that I’m experimenting with recording newsletters? The recorded versions will live on our site. It’s a new thing; I’m all ears if you have any feedback.

P.P.S. You can read the whole Nick Cave letter here, it’s tremendous.