Does the change of season affect your creativity?
A friend of mine recently lamented about her creative slump. “All summer I was headstrong into my novel first thing in the morning. But come September, my energy tanked.”
There are studies to support that seasonal changes influence our creative minds and hearts. One suggests that the warmth of summer may make people more relationally creative and experimental.
The winter, on the other hand, may inspire more introspection and abstract thinking.
Artists are sensitive to the rhythms and cycles of nature. We pick up on sensory cues of the season—sounds, textures, smells, light. Notice how much of seasonal change involves light—its intensity, color, slant, and warmth?
Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons. ~Jim Bishop
It is not only the change in light and weather that impacts us, but the associations we carry with each season. Maybe you feel blue during the December holidays, while others are nostalgic or joyful.
Certain months of the year can stir bad memories or sadness around a particular loss. That’s November for me.
As a writer, I find I’m most creative in the summer time when I’m more relaxed. But because I want to be out doing summer-like things, I’m less productive.
In winter, I’m a hibernator, so this leads to more productivity as I spend more time inside at my desk.
Fall invites reflection and new beginnings with the start of school and the Jewish New Year.
Like the seasons, our creativity ebbs and flows.
The ways in which this change impacts your mind, body, and heart will be unique to you.
As someone who is very sensitive to the seasonal changes, I have developed strategies to align my creative work with these fluctuations. For example, since I suffer from *Seasonal Affective Disorder, Winter is the time I seek opportunities to commune with other creatives in a warmer climate. I’ve been fortunate to attend writing workshops in Key West and St. Petersburg, Florida.
We all have seasons in our life: new jobs, becoming parents, empty-nesting. Seasons of sickness. Seasons of relentless caregiving. Losing a parent. These times affect our productivity and our motivation.
Sometimes we have to surrender to the season and lower the bar for ourselves.
Consider the writer/editor Kendra Levin‘s sage advice:
In the life of any given writing project, we will go through seasons: Periods of germination, creativity, reaping…and lying fallow. We cycle through these phases of letting an idea bubble beneath the surface, drafting it onto the page, molding that first effort….and taking a break from it, to get the clarity and perspective that sometimes only distance can provide. ~The Hero Is You
Our creative output does not take a linear path. And that’s okay.
Recognizing your own response to seasonal changes, can help you work more efficiently in any of your pursuits. Planning around your ebbs and flows can help build creative resilience.
The Spanish-American philosopher and poet George Santayana (1863-1952) wrote:
“To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.”
Santayana invites us to view change with curiosity. To let go of our infatuations.
Buddhism echoes this through the concept of impermanence. We cling to the past, to youth, to a lost lover, to a happier time. Such attachments lead to suffering. By releasing our hold on transient times, and accepting inevitable change, we become more appreciative of the present.
We can then embrace the beauty, gifts, and lessons of each season.
Is there a time of year when you feel more driven to embark on creative projects?
*Check out my tips for Beating Winter Blues
EVELYN KRIEGER 