The Winter Writing Doldrums

Posted by David Duhr in ABCs of Writing      21 comments

Jan
27

I’ve been in the writing doldrums lately. Since before the holidays, I’ve had one, maybe two good writing sessions. My book is stalled.

It’s not that I’m worried about it. I care enough about this project that I know I won’t abandon it.

But I do wonder: Is it a seasonal thing? Am I a warm-weather writer? Maybe when I feel cooped up by the cold, with cabin fever closing in, my creativity freezes.

We talk often about our favorite times of day for writing. “I write in the morning,” we’ll say, “when my mind is a blank slate, before the day’s garbage starts to pile up”; or, “Only at night, after I’ve waded through the day’s garbage, can I turn on my creativity and write.”

But in the same way that time of day does, maybe time of year can influence our writing patterns and habits and productivity?

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I have a romanticized image of spending an entire winter alone in a cabin in the middle of a woodsy nowhere with nothing but books, notebooks, and pens and pencils. In my fantasies, I come out the other side with something deep and meditative and worthwhile. And complete.

The reality is, I would probably come out the other side a batshit insane person.

But one might think that a typical writer would write more often in the winter. It’s not like we’re taking long February walks or going to baseball games or Shakespeare in the Park. Less time outside means more time inside. And more time inside means more time to write.

Except not really, for me. I prefer to write outside. Over this past summer and into the fall, when I was writing nearly every day, my routine was, first thing in the morning: Take coffee, notebook and pencil to the park, sit on a bench, and write until my hand hurt.

And the words flowed, nearly every session. It wasn’t just a sunshine thing, either — I remember some days writing through a light to moderate rain, scrunched over to shield the notebook with my body.

I can’t write outside now, so I rarely write at all. And the times I’ve tried to write inside, it hasn’t gone swimmingly.

It’s as if I’m hibernating. Or suffering from some sort of seasonal affective disorder that affects only my writing.

Your turn: Do you write less, or more, or about the same in the wintertime? Does your writing routine change? Does the weather ever seem to affect your creativity, your inspiration? 

Let us know in the comments below.

And P.S., our notifications still aren’t working, so if you want to know if someone has responded to your comment, you’ll have to come back and check.

The same goes for last week’s discussion, “Do Book Reviews Influence You?”

We’re working on it.

WriteByNight co-founder David Duhr is copy editor and fiction editor at the Texas Observer and has written about books for the Dallas Morning News, Electric Literature, Publishing Perspectives, and others.

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