I love both your desk and Ursula's. Such cozy places to write. I haven't had a dedicated desk in years. Our house is tiny and my husband gets the office since he earns the money. My teenaged daughters have desks where they can do their schoolwork. Everyone else, including me, has to make do with other spaces. Instead of a desk, my homeschool and creative space both tend to center on me sitting on my bed. I've got a messy table next to me, my beautiful bedspread made of recycled saris, my happy curtains, my beach rocks and shells lined up on the windowsill. Piles of books on the table, shelf, floor. It's a chaotic jumble and perhaps not always conducive to focus. But it's what I've got. But you know even when I was in college and *had* a desk half the time I was working on my bed anyway.
I love the sun vs moon as images for different types of creative lives. I'm most definitely a moon-type. I have bursts of creativity that last weeks or months and then fallow seasons where writing seems to disappear. Then something happens and it blooms again. I've learned to go with the flow and not to despair when I'm in a fallow time. The fields might look empty, but I assume things are happening deep in the soil and the growth aboveground will happen at the right time.
It reminds me, now that I think of it, of Melissa Wiley's Tidal Homeschooling. We've never quite been tidal homeschoolers in the same mold as her family, but early on in our journey It gave me comfort to recognize that a day wasn't necessarily the best measure of our accomplishment. Especially in a household of neurodivergent learners, things tend to happen in their own times and seasons.
Recently I've been in a writing slump. I'd hoped for time and focus and instead everything seems calculated against it. The words aren't coming and other things are taking my focus. The last thing I wrote was a description of the cardinal's nest in our rosebush in a letter I plan to send to my sister at some point. Doctor and therapy visits crowd our days and even our vacation time at the lake seemed to fill itself up and there was precious little time for reading, drawing, and writing. Or maybe the problem isn't the time at all but my own brain. Maybe it's just the wrong season.
I never know what will catapult me into a productive season. They just seem to happen. Nothing quite as regular and predictable as the moon's lovely 28 day cycle. It's more like the seasons of the year which come and go in their own time, sometimes early, sometimes late.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response, Melanie! I feel like this sort of reflection has got to be *counted* as writing. Your words are a gift. I wonder if you know that work of Emily Stoddard? She is a poet who writes a lot about process through the lens of neurodivergence. The way that she is befriending her process is so inspiring for me. https://emilystoddard.substack.com/
I just copied the title of an interview with Rowan Williams into my journal: Read. Sleep. Pray. Repeat.
This feels profoundly connected to your thoughts about the seasonality of creative work. We're playing the long game here--as homeschoolers, as women and mothers, as writers.
I wrote a poem this spring that also feels connected.
Thank you so much for the poem and kind words, both gifts to treasure.
I'm still working out exactly what to make of the ephemeral kind of writing in comment boxes and on social media posts. It's real writing for sure and in some sense I do count it. And yet it's here and then gone. I suppose it's not so very different from letters, though those can be and have been saved, but largely they don't last and aren't always saved. Maybe I should archive some of them and save them as seeds?
Hmm. I copied and pasted my comment into a new document and behold, it did bring forth more that wanted to be added:
Moonwriter
The moon was rich and gold last night
hanging in her nebulous veil behind the locust's leafy branches
and hovering over the church parking lot,
a ghostly monstrance
waxing gibbous: I've watched her swell night after night
and yet I myself am emptier and emptier
in this fallow season, late spring on the cusp of summer
the very eve of equinox.
All the world is green and warming
swarming insects, flowering
roses and dogwoods, fluttering
wings nesting amid wild briers
and among holly prickles.
But my sack of words hangs empty;
my well is dry like a creekbed in August
green and scummy and reeking.
And yet -- here, now the moon calls forth
new words, a new season.
Just as I begin to lament I find that lamentation's tears
have watered the ground and here sprout
unlooked for shoots, small green seedleaf pairs.
Pair after pair after pair rising in unsteady rows that remember
vaguely where my fingers poked small seeds into dark soil.
There may be flowers yet-- if the rabbits don't ravage them.
I am very much a sun writer even though I too love the moon- it's even my last name!
My arranging this year has taken the time of creating temporal space for writing. Every evening, I put my smaller kids to bed and set my daughter up for her 15 minutes of extra-special big-kid post-bedtime independent reading. Then I make a pot of tea, stand at the kitchen counter, and write while the tea steeps. Sometimes my daughter is done after 15 minutes, sometimes it stretches into 30 minutes, or 40, and I just let her go on, because I'm writing. After years of frustration with trying to fit writing into the cracks of my day, I've written more in these tiny, consistent time increments than ever before. It's exhilarating. The writing leads to more writing, and I no longer feel nagging guilt during the day when I feel like I should be writing, because the writing now has a home in my day.
At the new year, inspired by a post of yours, I printed out a simple three-month calendar. Every night I manage my writing ritual, I give myself a star on the calendar. No pressure to maintain a streak, just a simple acknowledgement of a good habit kept. It's magical.
To me, creating these writing rituals is like stumbling into a portal--the girl reads, the kettle boils, and you write. 1-2-3! Yes, writing leads to more writing. Sometimes, I leave myself breadcrumbs when I know there is more, but I can't write at the moment. A simple post-it note with a list to return to.
The guilt lessening? Such a gift. It's so heartening to hear lines like, the writing now has a home.
And I can't believe you are using a seasonal calendar + star stickers!! Pro tip: sometimes I save up my stars so that I can put down a whole lot in one go! I love the tiny drama!
I have a very photogenic desk! If you could widen the shot, you'd see the pantry overflow and the ple of shoes. Definitely a lived in space. Proof of life!
There's so much good food for thought here, Kortney--many ideas in the links you shared spoke to me. I feel like what most writers (and humans, really) crave is an ever-more accurate, empathetic understanding of ourselves. Cultivating a genuine nonjudgmental inner voice--a friend to the Mind & to the Soul--allows the creative impulse to express itself in words and other art-making.
It's so fun to have a peek at your workspace--The Big Windows!!! 🙌
I make room for my strange monastic-poetic cravings by having a (relatively) quiet space in our house that feels nourishing. I have my yoga mat, chalkboard, bookshelves, a plant press, prayer beads, art supplies, too many notebooks and a big work surface that my husband built years ago, as a shared desk for our homeschool. I surround myself with plants and odd nature bits that that I've collected along the trail (heart-shaped stones, butterfly wings, abandoned birds nests, interesting fallen leaves, pine cones, etc.) My family thinks it's perfectly normal for me to come home from my walk excited about some fallen branch covered in lichen :) It's my tiny world/ sacred space/studio/clubhouse and I feel happy here.
Monastic-poetic space! Yes, I resonate with this! I love that you are using a desk made by your husband for family learning. I love the shared history that reverberates there. My desk belonged to a neighbor named Ruby who was 95 when she died. She was about 4 feet tall, had been a prophet in her church, and played a mean old timey piano. I like to think that all her varied gifts are somewhere in the grain of the desk.
I love both your desk and Ursula's. Such cozy places to write. I haven't had a dedicated desk in years. Our house is tiny and my husband gets the office since he earns the money. My teenaged daughters have desks where they can do their schoolwork. Everyone else, including me, has to make do with other spaces. Instead of a desk, my homeschool and creative space both tend to center on me sitting on my bed. I've got a messy table next to me, my beautiful bedspread made of recycled saris, my happy curtains, my beach rocks and shells lined up on the windowsill. Piles of books on the table, shelf, floor. It's a chaotic jumble and perhaps not always conducive to focus. But it's what I've got. But you know even when I was in college and *had* a desk half the time I was working on my bed anyway.
I love the sun vs moon as images for different types of creative lives. I'm most definitely a moon-type. I have bursts of creativity that last weeks or months and then fallow seasons where writing seems to disappear. Then something happens and it blooms again. I've learned to go with the flow and not to despair when I'm in a fallow time. The fields might look empty, but I assume things are happening deep in the soil and the growth aboveground will happen at the right time.
It reminds me, now that I think of it, of Melissa Wiley's Tidal Homeschooling. We've never quite been tidal homeschoolers in the same mold as her family, but early on in our journey It gave me comfort to recognize that a day wasn't necessarily the best measure of our accomplishment. Especially in a household of neurodivergent learners, things tend to happen in their own times and seasons.
Recently I've been in a writing slump. I'd hoped for time and focus and instead everything seems calculated against it. The words aren't coming and other things are taking my focus. The last thing I wrote was a description of the cardinal's nest in our rosebush in a letter I plan to send to my sister at some point. Doctor and therapy visits crowd our days and even our vacation time at the lake seemed to fill itself up and there was precious little time for reading, drawing, and writing. Or maybe the problem isn't the time at all but my own brain. Maybe it's just the wrong season.
I never know what will catapult me into a productive season. They just seem to happen. Nothing quite as regular and predictable as the moon's lovely 28 day cycle. It's more like the seasons of the year which come and go in their own time, sometimes early, sometimes late.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response, Melanie! I feel like this sort of reflection has got to be *counted* as writing. Your words are a gift. I wonder if you know that work of Emily Stoddard? She is a poet who writes a lot about process through the lens of neurodivergence. The way that she is befriending her process is so inspiring for me. https://emilystoddard.substack.com/
I just copied the title of an interview with Rowan Williams into my journal: Read. Sleep. Pray. Repeat.
This feels profoundly connected to your thoughts about the seasonality of creative work. We're playing the long game here--as homeschoolers, as women and mothers, as writers.
I wrote a poem this spring that also feels connected.
Forensics
Pull back the layers
one season at a time.
What’s all this dark for?
Except to make things
grow underground.
Peace keep you, friend. 💙
Thank you so much for the poem and kind words, both gifts to treasure.
I'm still working out exactly what to make of the ephemeral kind of writing in comment boxes and on social media posts. It's real writing for sure and in some sense I do count it. And yet it's here and then gone. I suppose it's not so very different from letters, though those can be and have been saved, but largely they don't last and aren't always saved. Maybe I should archive some of them and save them as seeds?
Hmm. I copied and pasted my comment into a new document and behold, it did bring forth more that wanted to be added:
Moonwriter
The moon was rich and gold last night
hanging in her nebulous veil behind the locust's leafy branches
and hovering over the church parking lot,
a ghostly monstrance
waxing gibbous: I've watched her swell night after night
and yet I myself am emptier and emptier
in this fallow season, late spring on the cusp of summer
the very eve of equinox.
All the world is green and warming
swarming insects, flowering
roses and dogwoods, fluttering
wings nesting amid wild briers
and among holly prickles.
But my sack of words hangs empty;
my well is dry like a creekbed in August
green and scummy and reeking.
And yet -- here, now the moon calls forth
new words, a new season.
Just as I begin to lament I find that lamentation's tears
have watered the ground and here sprout
unlooked for shoots, small green seedleaf pairs.
Pair after pair after pair rising in unsteady rows that remember
vaguely where my fingers poked small seeds into dark soil.
There may be flowers yet-- if the rabbits don't ravage them.
So much to love here!
All the world...waxing gibbous...the very eve...seedleaf pairs...lamentation's tears.
So glad you followed this fertile path, Melanie. This popped into my feed and I thought of you. https://www.instagram.com/p/C8en1pnRPT0/
Oh yes. All life is the writing life. I love it. A very timely reminder.
"Maybe I should archive some of them and save them as seeds?" Brilliant! Just brilliant.
I am very much a sun writer even though I too love the moon- it's even my last name!
My arranging this year has taken the time of creating temporal space for writing. Every evening, I put my smaller kids to bed and set my daughter up for her 15 minutes of extra-special big-kid post-bedtime independent reading. Then I make a pot of tea, stand at the kitchen counter, and write while the tea steeps. Sometimes my daughter is done after 15 minutes, sometimes it stretches into 30 minutes, or 40, and I just let her go on, because I'm writing. After years of frustration with trying to fit writing into the cracks of my day, I've written more in these tiny, consistent time increments than ever before. It's exhilarating. The writing leads to more writing, and I no longer feel nagging guilt during the day when I feel like I should be writing, because the writing now has a home in my day.
At the new year, inspired by a post of yours, I printed out a simple three-month calendar. Every night I manage my writing ritual, I give myself a star on the calendar. No pressure to maintain a streak, just a simple acknowledgement of a good habit kept. It's magical.
It sounds like Octavia Butler is a sun writer too! https://numeralfive.substack.com/p/22-june
💙💙💙Alaina💙💙💙
To me, creating these writing rituals is like stumbling into a portal--the girl reads, the kettle boils, and you write. 1-2-3! Yes, writing leads to more writing. Sometimes, I leave myself breadcrumbs when I know there is more, but I can't write at the moment. A simple post-it note with a list to return to.
The guilt lessening? Such a gift. It's so heartening to hear lines like, the writing now has a home.
And I can't believe you are using a seasonal calendar + star stickers!! Pro tip: sometimes I save up my stars so that I can put down a whole lot in one go! I love the tiny drama!
The seasonal calendar has really had an impact! And I love the idea of saving up the star stickers!
It is such a sacred gift to see my own words filtered through the words of someone else. Look how they expand! Through you, they glow <3
Wanted to make sure you saw the new poem called "Moonwriter" that Melanie wrote in response to your thoughts....the seeds are growing!
Oh!!!
The light all comes from you, my friend 💙
That’s a great writing space you’ve created! Lovely windows. How wonderful to think of that gap and those hills between you and Ursula.
I have a very photogenic desk! If you could widen the shot, you'd see the pantry overflow and the ple of shoes. Definitely a lived in space. Proof of life!
There's so much good food for thought here, Kortney--many ideas in the links you shared spoke to me. I feel like what most writers (and humans, really) crave is an ever-more accurate, empathetic understanding of ourselves. Cultivating a genuine nonjudgmental inner voice--a friend to the Mind & to the Soul--allows the creative impulse to express itself in words and other art-making.
It's so fun to have a peek at your workspace--The Big Windows!!! 🙌
I make room for my strange monastic-poetic cravings by having a (relatively) quiet space in our house that feels nourishing. I have my yoga mat, chalkboard, bookshelves, a plant press, prayer beads, art supplies, too many notebooks and a big work surface that my husband built years ago, as a shared desk for our homeschool. I surround myself with plants and odd nature bits that that I've collected along the trail (heart-shaped stones, butterfly wings, abandoned birds nests, interesting fallen leaves, pine cones, etc.) My family thinks it's perfectly normal for me to come home from my walk excited about some fallen branch covered in lichen :) It's my tiny world/ sacred space/studio/clubhouse and I feel happy here.
Monastic-poetic space! Yes, I resonate with this! I love that you are using a desk made by your husband for family learning. I love the shared history that reverberates there. My desk belonged to a neighbor named Ruby who was 95 when she died. She was about 4 feet tall, had been a prophet in her church, and played a mean old timey piano. I like to think that all her varied gifts are somewhere in the grain of the desk.
Oh, I can picture her—good vibes!