Express Yourself
How to Survive a Creative Winter
Sometimes, being a writer means letting go of your goals
We hear it incessantly: We’re living in unprecedented times. Something we hear just as often but talk about a lot less is this: We’re all under constant pressure to use this unprecedented time. Everyone, it seems, has been taking up hobbies, baking banana bread, nurturing houseplants and sourdough starters, developing and fine-tuning complex skin care routines. Time is a gift, and who are we to waste it?
By all accounts, this past year should’ve been a boom time for creatives. While we were once expected to pick out outfits and commute and dine in restaurants and attend friends’ gigs and birthday parties, we’re now miraculously free. Nothing on the calendar except the occasional Zoom call. Untold hours of potential creation dropped into our laps.
On writerly corners of social media, I’ve read countless success stories from scribes who’ve seized the day that turned into weeks, months, a year. Anyone who’s anyone has grabbed their shutdown time by the horns, penning multiple screenplays, poetry collections, that novel they always dreamed of writing.
While I’m happy for these strangers, I can’t help but feel there are many more of us out there who’ve had the opposite…
