Here in Colorado, the Rocky Mountains are still covered in what feels like endless snow, but underneath all that snow the spring flowers are actually stirring…we just can’t see them yet.
This “stirring” is a potent metaphor for our own creativity: Sometimes we cannot see the fruits of our labor yet, but underneath the surface new life is growing still. And just like spring, one day we will look around and ask: Where did all these flowers come from all of a sudden?
But the artist knows that it never happens all of a sudden.
I love this quote by Cynthia Occelli: “For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”
So hang on! The rupture of your best work may be working its way to the surface right now!
That also means that now is the perfect time to start planting your creative seeds for the spring/summer: What creative flowers do you want to bloom this year? Do you want to send out more submissions? Enter a contest? Finish a manuscript? Maybe you want to get into a daily writing routine? Try a new form (like flash fiction!)? Get your website going? Network with other writers or go on a writing retreat with us?
Whatever your goals are, now is the time to put those seeds in the ground and let them stir–invisible but moving–towards fruition.
Happy planting!
Love, Nancy
Find out more about Flash Fiction Summer Camp in Grand Lake August 2019
Find out more about Writing Wild in Costa Rica March 2020
Open Your Art Flash Fiction Retreats 