This is part 2 of a 4-part series of the Seasons of a Creative Life. If you missed part 1, read it here.
Following the period of initial inspiration, the Springtime of your creative cycles, comes Summer.
Summer is a time of tending our new shoots and watching them grow, watering, feeding, and weeding.
This is the period of working on our creative projects with devotion, logging the hours it takes to bring something from seed to fruit. This is where you put in regular “studio time” so those precious, bright ideas can become actual finished pieces.
Summer: A Time of Sustained Growth
The summer of our creative life is the middle of writing the novel, making the painting, choreographing the dance piece, or building the house. You are riding the current of the initial ideas and sustaining the growth to bring your project or dream to completion.
This is the phase in my IMAGINE Dreamtending process that I call GROW. This is when you grow your dream from its first shoots into a full, healthy plant.
At this cycle, you need structure, a map or plan, a way to break your big goal down into do-able steps. You need support, feedback and regular doses of inspiration, so you can keep going.
Summer: A Time of Sharing
Summer is also an expansive, outward-focused time in the natural world. We tend to be more playful and more social in this season. In the summer of your creative life, this is a time to put on shows, give readings or performances, send your work out in the world or find ways to share it with others, even if it is just a few others. You might want to collaborate on a project at this time.
Our creative lives need this sharing of our ideas and creations in order to feel meaningful and complete, in order to keep generating energy and enthusiasm to create. If you are lacking in creative community or places to share your work, you are missing a key, essential element in a creative life. (See my book 6 Essential Ingredients of a Thriving Creative Life.)
If that is the case for you, take a class, join or start a group, rent studio space in a collective, host a creative salon in your living room, find like-minded people who are up to similar things that you can be in creative conversation with.
In my next post, we’ll visit the creative season of Autumn and learn how valuable and essential that season is.
