Seasonal writing

'You write seasonally' she said. No clue!

Seasonal writing she said. I had no clue what she meant but I was intriged enough to find out. When the late Waverly Fitzgerald reached out to me across the virtual world and asked if I would be interested in some seasonal writing work it took me a while to figure out what she meant. I thought she meant write about my experience of summer, autumn etc but she did not. Waverly informed me that I was already writing seasonally, a fact that had passed me by. Isn’t it fascinating what others see in our writing? Over time, I learnt exactly what Waverly meant and came to embrace it and I did begin writing for her and with her and it was life affirming. Waverly lived through each and every season in a deep and meaningful way and she was a trailblazer. I learnt more from that lady than all my teachers at school put together.

So, what did she mean when she said I wrote seasonally and is that even important? Waverly was a prolific writer but she also supported other writers and she was a master at seeing into the spaces between the words. She said she could see where writers had paused to have a wee think, love that! To her, writing seasonally is reflected in our choice or words and phrases. But it also present in the structure of our writing. Waverly gave me her tools that she used to analyse whether a writer was writing seasonally and I disappeared down a deep rabbit hole to read through some of my writing. I was astounded to realise that she was right, of course she was. I did have, for example, a winter vocabularly and I also wrote in longer paragraphs and in a more reflective way at that time of year.

By contrast, my summer writing was less committed and I had difficulty staying on topic. I was often a wee bit overwhelmed in the experiences I was writing about in the summer. This made perfect sense. I am a winter person who loves the deep thinking that season affords me. The summer is a challenging time for me and I do feel quickly overwhelmed if it is too hot. My writing in the summer often lacks depth as I flit around subject matter trying to find something, anything, to cling to. The result of this was two fold. I wrote for Waverly in the winter and loved everything I offered up but Waverly was on my case so persuaded me to write a blog every day for a year and that birthed Scottish island mum. It was a bold but brilliant move as my summer writing improved and I came to understand how I write seasonally and accept that is part of my lived narrative. Yes, it is important I feel. Writing seasonally is yet another way to connect with both the shifting seasons and our own continually developing minds. Our perennial quest is to try and understand ourselves. Waverly understood that.

All this happened over 10 years ago and since then my creativity has shifted into art and writing has been neglected. Life does that sometimes as it carves out a new path for us. I have never forgotten Waverly’s wisdom and when my daughter,

Slow Scottish Stories

, persauded me to start writing again I thought I would give it a go. I have found that I have settled into it quite well. Waverly would be smiling about now and noting that I began this new writing journey as my world prepared for summer……..

If you haven’t read Waverly’s book, Slow Time, I highly recommend it.