On Writing Growth and Writing Harvest

An argument for dividing your writing year into seasons

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Currently Reading: Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero
Currently Watching: My husband is watching The Last of Us. Meanwhile, I’m like, “Seinfeld straight through sounds good.”
Currently Writing: How to Keep a Husband for Ten Days is in its final days of preorders! I’ve got some exciting news about Kindle Countdown Deals for it and My Big Fake Wedding in February, so if you haven’t preordered yet and want an even deeper deal, hold tight. I’ll be emailing you about all this coming up.

Do you have a rhythm to your writing life? Does it happen in a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual cycle? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!

*to the tune of Hoobastank’s “The Reason”* I’m not a morning wriiiiter…

Seriously, though. Despite my best attempts, I just cannot novel in the mornings.

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I once spent two months getting up an hour and a half before I had to, blearily eating my stupid breakfast and doing my stupid little morning pages before staring at a stupid blinking cursor with mounting dread… Only to get maybe 250 words written in the last fifteen stupid minutes before I had to get ready for work.

And just like I’m not a morning writer, I’m not much of a summer person.

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At least, not much of a summer grownup. Like some Iliza Shlesinger caricature of white womanhood, I feel reinvigorated in the autumn, with every falling leaf.

Because my energy levels are lower overall in the summer, some time around 2021, I started wondering if I shouldn’t use that to my writing advantage. Instead of holding my feet to the fire and generating new words just as intensely in the humid dog days as I do under a cozy winter blanket, I wondered if I shouldn’t give myself a writing sabbatical—or writing growth period—each year.

I gave it a shot, and, as it turns out, I loved the experience! Whereas I had felt stuck in telling the same story in different iterations for a few years, taking time away from the active process of generating words helped me find new source material and new energy with which to tackle them in the fall.

How Does Splitting Up Your Writing Year Work?

When I’m not writing to deadline, I split my writing year so that I’m in growth mode from right after the spring equinox to the last day of July and so that I’m in harvest mode from August 1 until just before the spring equinox. (We’ll get into what growth and harvest modes are below, but for now, understand that growth is when you’re sowing new ideas and harvest is when you’re reaping them—cranking out words in defiance of the blank page.)

This system works for me, and I love that it falls along actual agricultural guidelines for the northern hemisphere, but hey, find what works for you. You might:

• want a tighter pivot between your fallow and fertile periods;

• or, while I find myself more generatively productive in the fall and winter months, you might be energized by the growing light of spring and summer;

• or maybe you live in the southern hemisphere, so you agree with me on your energy levels across the seasons but have to flip the script to for when it’s hot and when it’s cold where you live.

Now, notice that I mentioned “when I’m not writing to deadline.” It should be clear that, to quote Captain Barbossa, the idea of following “seasons” in your writing life is more like *Geoffrey Rush voice* guidelines than actual rules. If you get a book deal or your pitch to a magazine is accepted, obviously you should work against that time-based deadline! This seasonal concept is simply a framework upon which writers, especially those who want more structure to their creative lives but don’t know where to start, can build.

Full disclosure: I was going to call this post "Growing & Sowing," then realized all the off-color jokes that might lead to. 🍆 Photo by Dan Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash

What Is a Period of Writing Growth?

A period of writing growth is any time you give yourself to step away from your work(s) in progress and breeeeeathe; time to feed your creative energy and your creative self.

You may have done this before without intending to, due to any number of internal and/or external pressures (e.g., imposter syndrome, work being a pain). If you have, don’t feel bad about it. We’re about to do the same thing, but with more intention and with a set time limit. The old saw goes that you can’t drink from an empty cup, and that “free refill” is mostly what this period of growth is for.

This period of time is like a “free learning” period, or study hall, in high school in that you can work on whatever you want during it. If it works for you, like it does for me, to pogo around from one topic of interest to another during this time, then hell yeah, brother! Go do it!

If you would like to center your focus on one or maybe two topics or areas of work maximum, that’s fine too. Mark your calendar for mid-March to late July and hop to it.

What Can You Do During a Period of Writing Growth?

Here are several things I enjoy doing during my growth period.

I “Magpie” Journal. Fun fact: Magpies don’t actually hoard shiny trinkets. (I think you’re looking for raccoons. 🦝)

Writers do, though, whether in the form of an ideas drawer or something more ephemeral. Mine is an intentionally disorganized note on my phone, where I keep a hodgepodge of ideas that have intrigued me over this period: funny sentences I’ve either thought up or overheard, intriguing visuals, names or turns of phrases I love, links to cool articles. It’s incredible how much of this clippings file can inspire your outlining once you get to harvest time.

I consume other media (e.g., books, films, essays, visual art) with a focus on learning.

• Maybe you have an idea for a book you want to draft in the fall and winter months.

• Maybe you’d feel sturdier writing it if you had a conversational knowledge of its subject matter (e.g., Regency period social customs; the basics of jet propulsion).

• Maybe you want to read more broadly in your genre—or a genre you want to work in—and examine what about it you like/want to replicate and what about it you don’t like/want to turn on its head.

• Maybe you could enroll in a writing workshop and learn what you can do better.

• You might even build out, as I’m doing (albeit gradually), a lexicon of literary devices: what they are and how you like to implement them in your own writing.

I edit my completed WIPs. As the mention of a writing workshop in the list above suggests, this is a fantastic period in which to examine your completed drafts for cracks and dull areas, then seal and polish them. I find that taking a month to step away from a WIP after it’s completed, then diving back in during this period, works best for me.

I live! I think we’ve all heard how lived experience is critical to the writing process. I once had a professor who, well, wasn’t the greatest person in the world. They told my friend who was agonizing over being on an MFA program’s waitlist that they didn’t need this prestigious MFA; they needed to go work on a shrimp boat for a year instead. (Ugh.)

While this is extreme—and, frankly, unsolicited—advice, we don’t get our best cocktail party stories from sitting at a writing desk, and we don’t get material for our books without doing a bit of living. Even if you’re creating a world that exists outside of ours, this is true. Look, you don’t have to get in a bar fight. Just go out for ice cream. Take a walk without your phone. Go see a Star War.

What Is a Period of Writing Harvest?

If a period of writing growth is one in which you are learning about subject matter related to your creative interests and in which you are building your craft, then the SAT analogy question should follow that a period of writing harvest is its opposite. This is the time when all those lessons you sowed into your brain-soil (gross) are ready to be reaped.

The most obvious way to do this would be to use this period to draft one full-length manuscript or a lot of smaller projects. If you’re drafting a full-length work, I recommend using those first two weeks of August to draw up even a brief outline for the project,

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then break it up into metrics from there (e.g., “By September 5 I’ll have Chapter 1 written…” and so on).

From August 2021 to February 2022 I drafted all but five chapters of a novel in progress

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that I would have completed by March 19, 2022, if I hadn’t gotten my book deal and had to pivot back to editing My Big Fake Wedding and cranking out draft one of How to Keep a Husband for Ten Days. (Again: Flexible! Guidelines!)

Whether you use this period of harvest to draft a novel or to write five essays that you plan to send out in future, the seeds you sowed in your period of growth absolutely apply. Your Magpie Journal’s contents can become compelling plot points and/or imagery in your manuscript, as can the things you learned both about your subject matter and in a craft class/workshop… as can the lived experiences you had.

Going Beyond the Seasons of a Writing Year

If you’re hoping to get a book deal or to build your publishing credits, there’s one thing that shouldn’t go by the seasons: querying. You should make like Glengarry Glen Ross and ABP—always be pitching.

I typically craft my pitch emails on Fridays, when my creative juices are at an ebb and my administrative brain kicks on, and I plan to cover my best tips for pitching success on this Substack two weeks from now. (Tell your friends!)

Do you have a rhythm to your writing life? Does it happen in a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual cycle? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!

XOXO,
Jessica

P.S. Remember, I’ll be coming at you sooner than two Mondays from now with info about Kindle Countdown Deals! You can order How to Keep a Husband for Ten Days at any time, though, by clicking here.

1. If you are a morning writer, more power to you! Might I recommend Chelsea Hodson’s Morning Writing Club?

2. I know. I’m a monster.

3. This flies in the face of the advice of one of my favorite writers living today: Matt Bell. I can’t help it. This neurodivergent writer needs an outline even for the first draft.

4. My elevator pitch is “Sapphic witches in Golden Era Hollywood,” if anyone’s curious.