M. Suzanne Terry

I finished Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit this weekend. I took seventeen pages of notes, mostly on ideas and scenes for my current and budding works in progress. It’s one of the best books on creativity I’ve read in a long time.

One of the many nuggets of advice that stick out to me was Tharp’s admonition to “protect your inexperience.” She encourages artists – whether they be dancers, musicians, actors, writers, etc. – to rotate the categories of their art. This protects them from stagnation by challenging them to learn something new or practice a slightly different skill set.

This makes a lot of sense. I am more productive when I switch gears on a regular basis. To that end, I have reviewed my writing journals, and I discovered that my most productive months were those in which my daily schedule or the season changed and I allowed my writing schedule to change with it. I want to become more intentional about doing so.

My writing tasks generally divide themselves into four main categories: transition, beauty, intensity, and rest.

Transition

My transitions months are January, May, and October. During January, after a long break from work and looking forward to a new semester, I am energized and hopeful about the upcoming year. During May, I spend the first half of the month finalizing grades and closing down residence halls and the second half of the month starting summer conferences or taking a break. During October, I participate in 31 Days to help myself transition to the discipline of writing every day that I will need to churn out 50,000 words on a new project in November.

Transition months involve a lot of analysis and organization. These months lend themselves best to planning and outlining. I also tend to churn out a lot of essays and dive into projects during these months.

Beauty

In February, June, and December, I am obsessed with beauty. February usually brings our first snow, which I love. June is the month where summer tries to woo me – tries to convince me that this year, things will be different and that we will get along. December is magic; it’s Advent and anticipation and tradition.

 I tend to write more descriptively, and I tend to write more poetry during these months. It’s no accident that these months come right after my transitional project/planning months. Once the planning is done or the project underway, I start looking for beauty in the results.

Intensity

April, July, and November are intense. November is NaNoWriMo, the time every year when I try to churn out 50,000 words on a new project. April and July are also intense writing months when I write every day on one or several current projects.

I average about 3,000 words a day when I’m in intense mode. This rate is not sustainable for me all year, but for a few months out of it, that is most of what I do. I am the most scarce on social media during these months (unless I’m procrastinating, and then you get a lot of cat pictures and quizzes about what kind of tree I must be), and most of the blog posts you see during these months are ones I’ve written ahead of time and scheduled.

Rest

March, August, and September are creative rest. March is the middle of the spring semester when my students (and okay – also their professor) get the -itis – summer is in sight, and their attention span shows it. August and September are the beginning of the school year. I am not only starting a new semester with my classes, but I am also welcoming hundreds of new freshmen to UNT.  These are the months when my work life doesn’t leave a lot of time for the work of writing.

Rest is not a shutdown – there is actually a lot going on when we rest. We are restoring and rejuvenating to recoup from the past and prepare for the future. I do a lot of what Twyla Tharp calls “scratching” during this time. I take notes on things that inspire me, I listen to more music, and I read more books on creating (writing, cookbooks, how-to in general). My Pinterest boards blow up during this time. I do these things at other times as well, of course, but they seem to be my focus during the months when I’m resting.

Recognizing rhythms is freeing. As much as I know in my head that the “write every day” advice doesn’t work for me, I still often feel anxious during months when I’m not working on an unfinished manuscript. Recognizing that I get more done when I write according to what works for me relieves a lot of that anxiety.