The Spring Effect

On snowy pages, and shoveling paths, and the uncertainty (but inevitability) of Spring

There’s this thing that happens in Spring.

One day, you look out the window and the sun is shining and leaves are filling in on the trees and there are even a few blooms out, yellow-faced daffodils and purple crocus. Something stirs in you and you think “oh, maybe there’s nothing terribly wrong with me after all. It was just winter.”

Within weeks, you’re strolling under cherry blossoms, and then the pear trees start blooming, and more and more tulips arrive. And through this gradual process that somehow, also, hits you all at once, winter shrinks away, and everything that once felt bare and ugly and sad and hopeless is once again brimming with life and vibrance and possibility.

What a magical thing, this yearly renewal. And how funny how every year we doubt it will happen. But wouldn’t it be so much less delightful is we truly believed Spring would come?

This is the way of the first draft for many of us.

It’s true that some people love to draft, little Michaelangelos who see a figure waiting to be freed from a rough chunk of marble. Each word is a chip of the block, carving out the blank page until the story takes shape.

I feel that way sometimes. I think everyone gets glimpses into that delightful flow where your mental image and vibes and feeling for the story somehow materialize into words and it feels like somehow, miraculously, you’ve turned an idea into a tangible thing.

But for many of us, writing often feels like winter. Our best efforts yield bare branches, and the further we get, the barer and sparser everything seems. The murky middle is a mud pit, “The End” a false spring day in February when we briefly celebrate before acknowledging what we know deep down to be true: that winter hasn’t hung up her hat, yet.