I like my oranges, my gossip, and tomatoes to be juicy. I want my life to feel interesting, exciting, and surprising, too—like the burst of bright flavor when biting into a fresh peach on a hot summer day. Most of all, as a writer, I want my time with pen in hand or fingers on the keyboard to feel juicy.

I crave that rich sensation when the words flow with abundant ease. I want the ideas to slip free from my mind onto the page as easily as slick black pits falling from a ripe slice of watermelon. Problem is, sometimes I feel as uninspired as a rind scraped clean.

Let the lessons of summer (and all of the seasons) inspire you

Bear with me as I extend the metaphor for a moment more—after all, there’s a whiff of autumn in the air and I’ll soon be missing the delicious just-picked sticky drippy delights of summertime. So here are a few suggestions for keeping those creative juices flowing … whether you’re a writer, a dreamer, or both!

• Let it ripen. Sometimes we bite into an idea or piece of poetry before it has had time to fully develop. Spend a little extra time brainstorming, journaling, or researching before forcing yourself to commit to a first draft—let alone pressuring yourself to produce a finished product. Forcing a poem or story to be ready before its time, or putting pressure on any experience to be something more than it is, takes all the fun and flavor out of an experience.
• Be nourished by what’s in season. One way to eat well is to enjoy foods that are in season. We may desire an emotional diet filled only with the summer sweetness with the promise of springtime. But the chill crispness of autumn and the bitter crackle of winter have their merits, too. Allow yourself to be where you are on the seasonal spectrum in your creative life, too. There’s a purpose to those resting times when nothing’s blooming. Be patient and trust that external conditions and internal moods will shift.
• The cherry on top. Discipline is important to getting things done. But if you’re overly driven by attaining word counts or publication credits, if you’re hyper-focused on results rather than the process—it may be time to add some frivolity. One definition of fun is pleasure without purpose. Spend some time doing something for the pure joy of it—even if it means taking some time away from a writing project or work goal.

© 2022 Tzivia Gover all rights reserved

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