Fallow periods

Let the fields lie

I haven’t been writing much lately. Well, that’s a lie. I write all the time, but I haven’t spent any time drafting a new novel in the past couple of months. That’s mainly because life is busy, and I’m enjoying investing time in my new job as a writing coach at The Novelry, but I still sometimes feel a familiar panic coming over me: I need to write a new book. This thought arrives on a thick wave of dread, like the realization that you have left the wet laundry in the washing machine for three days. It’s easy to panic that you’ll never write another book again. We all share this fear, that our ability to think of new ideas will suddenly desert us, but forcing myself to write during a fallow period has never been productive for me. Instead, I’ve learned to embrace it.

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A new Taylor Swift album came out last week. If you’re sick of hearing about it, don’t worry, this won’t be a manifesto on Taylor or her music. I mention it just because it was an event I was really looking forward to. When my sister and I went to see the Eras Tour last summer, I became a legit Swiftie, so a new album should have put me in a state of ecstasy for days. Instead, I got distracted on my first listen. To-dos kept popping into my head, even though I didn’t need to attend to anything. I had to actively tell my brain to knock it off and allow myself to enjoy the music. It took a lot of reminding. The pressure to go go go is always there. Sometimes, you need to stop.

I find I have to be intentional about fallow periods. I get so accustomed to hustling all the time that I need to directly reassure myself that it’s okay to just read and listen and think for a while. A conscious choice to leave the fields of our minds uncultivated allows new and unexpected thoughts to take root. We are not being lazy. Farmers do this to improve the quality of the soil, which becomes enriched and more fertile after a season of wildness. Is it really that wild to skip drafting for a while? Not really.