Create a Writing Practice with The Write Towards Spring Challenge
Those who participate in this challenge are aiming to write every day from NOW (11th January 2022) until the Spring Equinox (in the Northern Hemisphere) on the 20th March, 2022.
Phase One will take us to Imbolc, the 2nd of February, which is 22 days from now.
The intention of Write Towards Spring is to help us all continue or establish a near-daily writing practice, with softness and in sync with the season that we’re in: Winter. Thirty minutes a day of doing something to support your writing life; it could be learning, freewriting, plotting, reading, adding words to your draft, going on an artist's date. You could choose to create your own rules, deciding what you want to prioritize.
Just this morning, I was listening to the audiobook of Marlee Grace’ s Finding the Center, and she provided the words I needed:
While I have found huge transformation in having public and personal projects be done daily, I have also seen where this kind of commitment and my breaking of it have set me back. So let us begin with this: instead of calling the things we weave into our centering practice “ daily rituals,” let’s just call them ‘THINGS TOO RETURN TO’.
—Marlee Grace, Finding the Center (Chapter One)
These 22 days are about creating a thing you can return to. You may find you leave and return within the 22 days. Approaching this ‘challenge’ with the softness Marlee Grace describes will be what allows you to return. Shame is likely to make you an exile, but softness will welcome you home even when you leave for too too long.
Phase One: Write to the Very Beginning of Spring (Imbolc, 2nd February).
The first phase will take us until Imbolc, the 2nd February 2022. That's 22 days of writing in the dark of winter, recording what you do daily (for members of Calliope’s Writers (a community of mothers who write), this will be in a comment thread associated with the event, other writers are using an Instagram group, and you are welcome to check-in by contacting me. You can also just make a note for yourself.
I'm linking this to Imbolc to encourage us to stay in touch with the cyclical nature of the year, of our bodies, and of our creativity, as well as to break it down a bit for you.
Imbolc means 'in the belly’ (like a baby) and it is the very beginning of Spring. We are working TOWARDS the very beginning.
Yes, that's right, it's currently just January, a time of darkness and hibernation with only very subtle signs of life. Despite what Capitalism would like to tell us, this is not Spring! This is no time for full-throated productivity; this is a restful time of bare ground and rooting down, last year's leaves blanketing and integrating into the earth, foraging whilst preserving energy, or even hibernating.
But what a time to sit with your creativity! A time of introspection and wisdom whilst your days get imperceptibly brighter every day until you arrive at the beginning of Spring, awakening and quickening.