Writing in the Dark ~ Creativity doesn't sleep—it winters

I have spring on my mind. I only wish it were in the air. It’s the end of March in Southwestern Ontario, and instead of birdsong and blossoms, we’ve got snowflakes and slush. The temperature hovers just above freezing—as if the weather itself can’t commit. Yesterday? Snowsqualls. Today? Double-digits.

Here, we don't ease into spring—we lurch. One day you're sipping iced coffee on the porch, the next you're digging out your snow brush. It's like Mother Nature's in a group chat with all four seasons, and they’re taking turns at the mic with zero coordination.

But I’ve got spring on the mind for more than just weather whiplash.

daffodil blooming in spring

Many of us are familiar with the idea of wintering—a season of stillness, a time when nature retreats, slows, stores up. In the northern hemisphere, we’re supposed to do the same. Rest. Reflect. Restore.

Of course, that’s easier said than done—between family, deadlines, group chats gone wild, and dinner that won’t make itself. But in theory, wintering is sacred. And writing? Writing has its own wintering too.

Writing, like nature, has its own off-season. A period that looks suspiciously like inactivity from the outside—but under the surface? Things are stirring. Ideas are composting. Characters are muttering in the shadows. Plot points are bumping into each other like awkward strangers at a cocktail party, trying to figure out if they connect.

We like to think creativity is a lightning strike. One brilliant flash and suddenly—bam!—the story pours out. But more often, it’s a slow burn. A pot left to simmer. It’s wintering.

That quiet time—when you feel stuck, uninspired, or like every sentence sounds as though it was written by a caffeinated squirrel—that’s not failure. That’s root work. You are germinating. And when the thaw comes, when the words finally burst through the soil? It feels like a miracle. But you know better.

This season, I’ve returned to a story I know and love—only now, I’m looking at it from a different angle. A new perspective. One I hadn’t explored before. Maybe it’ll work. Maybe it won’t. But just like in the garden, sometimes the only way forward is to get your hands in the dirt. To transplant. To replant. To realize that as things grow, they shift, stretch, take up more space than you expected—or less—and that’s okay.

Rewriting is messy work—but it’s necessary. It’s how you eke out possibility. You don’t always know what will thrive in a new corner of the garden until you try. And writing is the same. We shape the thing, and the thing shapes us right back.

A year ago, I wasn’t writing at all. I couldn’t. After losing my mom and my younger brother, even forming a sentence felt impossible. That, too, was a kind of wintering. A necessary one. A time of grieving and protecting and pulling everything inward. I honoured it, even when it felt like I’d never write again.

But now, something’s shifting. My mind is buzzing again—with fragments, scenes, snippets of dialogue. Maybe they’ll make it to the page. Maybe not. That’s not the point. What matters is that the soil’s thawing. The roots are alive. I feel like me again.

I don’t know what the book will look like when it’s finished—any more than I know exactly what my garden will look like when spring tips into summer. But I’m writing. I’m tending. I’m trusting.

Because none of us ever really knows what’s coming. But we can choose to show up and dig in anyway.