CALLING ALL WRITERS ... DO YOU SUFFER FROM W.S.A.D?

Victoria Cornwall
We have all heard about Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a depression which comes and goes with the seasons and may be linked to the amount of exposure to sunlight.  It can be debilitating and make the autumn and winter seasons very difficult for sufferers of this very real disorder.

     The condition got me thinking and asking myself if the seasons can affect other parts of our lives? As a writer, I know the seasons affect my ability to be creative and write. Not because it changes my mood and causes depression, but for far more shallow reasons. I am more creative in the winter when the clocks go back and the daylight hours end early. I find it easier to snuggle up with my laptop and write because, quite frankly, the wind, rain and limited daylight outside don't encourage me to do anything else. This is very different when spring arrives (with its blossoming blooms) and summer (with its long, warm days which are perfect for socialising). Needless to say I want to be outside instead of inside writing. Yes I think I suffer from Writers Seasonal Affective Disorder (WSAD), which, incidentally, is a condition I just made up!

Victoria exploring a Cornish rock-pool instead of writing

    So I asked my writing colleagues the same question, Are you more creative in any particular season and why? This is what they told me.

Kathleen McGurl
     Oh wow. I have never been asked this question before, and have never given it any thought. Ok, right, here goes. Putting my thinking hat on.
My instinct is to say I write more in the late autumn and winter. Those dark, rainy days when there's nothing much else to do but sit inside and write. But then, I remind myself, I always have more energy in the spring, when the days get longer, the trees are in bud, the birds are singing and the words are flowing... Wait, though, isn't it also fair to say that some of my best writing has been done during the summer months, even while travelling?
     So actually, I write all year round, fitting writing around everything else. Until recently I had a full time job so had to make do with writing in the evenings and at weekends - no scope to prefer writing in one season over another.  Just needed to get on with it, in whatever time there was available!

Kath being creative in the winter

Rae Cowie
      When Victoria suggested we share how the seasons affect our creativity and writing, I was thrilled! As someone who lives in darkest NE Scotland and suffers from mild SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), the rhythm of the seasons definitely helps structure my writing year.

     In spring and summer my creativity is sparked by travel, encountering new people, places, buildings, stories etc. A time when I squirrel away ideas to be unearthed in the depths of autumn and winter when I’m tucked up in my writing den. That’s not to say I don’t feel creative during darker days, I do. In lots of ways it’s easier to settle my bottom into my writing chair when there’s no lure of a sunny day tempting me outside. Autumn and winter are the times I get the actual writing done – word count up, achieving those writing goals. So I need all seasons, the fun and excitement of being out and about during spring and summer, followed by the discipline and hard graft in winter, working with the seeds I’ve gathered that will hopefully blossom again in spring.

Squirrelling away ideas

Jennifer Bohnet
     To be honest I struggle with being creative in every season.Winter's dark and grey days can bring a small 'black dog' that hangs around me for days, where doing anything let alone write is difficult. When the daffodils and primroses of Spring appear I definitely perk up only to fade away again when the heat of Summer arrives. This summer has addled my brain completely! I am so looking forward to Autumn 2019 - not that I'll be anymore creative as the nights draw in and we light the log burner. But writing gives me an income so whatever the season I have to get over myself and write, promote and do all the accompanying administration. My grandmother had a saying that I mutter to myself whenever the weather is affecting things:

'We'll weather the weather, whatever the weather, whether we like it or not'.

Jo Allen
     To every thing there is a season, says the Bible, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

     But is there a season for writing? I’m going to answer that with a qualified no. I write whenever there’s a story needing to be told and that can be summer, autumn, winter or spring. It can be work time or holiday time. It can be day or night. But for me there is a fixed time to write and that’s November. I’m target-driven. I tick things off of lists and fill in apps for my step count and the like. Every November I sign up for a programme called National Novel writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and I sit down and produce the first draft of a novel. Other than that, no. No season at all!

Linda Mitchelmore

     As a short story writer with over 300 stories published worldwide under my belt I’m well used to writing in every season, and out of season. So, it’s almost always been, during my writing career, snow in summer, and bikinis in November ... well, in my mind, that is. I’d say my writing is weather-dependent and I write better when the sun isn’t shining, because when it is I just want to be out there in it. My house is small and my writing station is in the hall with a patio door behind me and a big window - facing south - to my left so sometimes heat dictates whether or not I write.

     I know people who use props to get in the mood .... wearing a summer frock and sandals to write in winter when writing a summer story, for example, but I don’t think I’d ever go that far! Writing all the above has made me realise how few Spring and Autumn stories there are .... Easter, of course, and some bonfire ones but neither of those seasons seem to sustain a novel to me.

     If I’ve got a deadline to meet then I just knuckle down to it – The Little B&B at Cove End was written mostly in winter, and Christmas at Strand House was written early morning and late evening in the summer to avoid too much heat at my writing station. There’s dedication for you!

Victoria

     So it appears that some writers are affected by the seasons and others are not. What about you?

Are you more creative in any particular season and why?

SEEING THE LIGHT

As days begin to shorten, we share ways we enjoy seeing the light. We'd love to hear your thoughts too...

Rae - After enduring a rather, dismal wet summer here in north-east Scotland, the past two weeks have been wonderful, as the sun has made a welcome reappearance. The warmth has been pleasant but it’s the autumnal light that has the power to stop me in my tracks. Like most writers, my to-do-lists (plural!) grow faster than mushrooms and although I live in the countryside and am surrounded by beauty that changes on a daily basis, I rarely take time to stand and stare. However, at this time of year I yearn to do just that, reminding me of the W H Davis poem Leisure.

Autumn, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

During autumn, the golden hour, that last hour of evening sunlight, seems to hold a special softening quality that enhances the vividness of the landscape. Perhaps it’s knowing winter is just around the corner, that forces me to focus on light, before the skies become low and leaden again. One autumn evening, several years ago, I was driving from Edinburgh, through rural Perthshire, on the first leg of my three hour journey north, when Sting’s ‘Fields of Gold’ began playing on the radio. The ripe barley on either side of the motorway swayed as it glowed, and between the romantic sentiments of the song lyrics and the luminescence of the fading sunlight, I felt forced to take time out from my race home, to pull over and simply enjoy the moment. I’m thankful autumnal light possesses the strength to make me stop and stare.

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

by William Henry Davies

Gill - Recently Linda wrote a blog about summer and Christmas books, and I realised that one of my

The bonfire - a different kind of light

favourite times of year is actually spring. Then I thought, no, but I like winter, too. And autumn, when the colours are changing and the nights are drawing in, is just brilliant. It’s a time when there isless light outside, but the quality of it changes. It’s also the time of Hallowe’en and Bonfire Night, both of which use the light of flames which I love. I don’t know if it’s because my sister and I both have birthdays are in November, but autumn has always been a happy time for me - a ‘light’ time, even though the light is different.

 Jennie - We all need ‘Light’ in its many guises in our lives. For me this painting (artist unknown picture courtesy of pixabay) sums up the light in the South of France. One of the things I found difficult (there weren’t many I grant you!) about living down there was that the changing seasons didn’t really register. The clocks went back at the end of summer and the temperature dropped, but the sun still shone on a daily basis and there was rarely any autumnal foliage to remind one that winter was on its way. The year round light down there has enticed painters for centuries.

Whereas this photo is more reminiscent of this time of year where I live now in Brittany. 

Our skies are cloudier and darker as summer changes into autumn, falling leaves change colour, and the autumnal mists arrive. As September days pass and October arrives, we become accustomed to living with shorter days and longer nights.

This particular September has seen the 15th anniversary of  9/11 an event that shook the world and turned off the light for so many. Sadly since then there have been more atrocities turning the world these days into a scary place.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.” Martin Luther King Jr.

Linda - Most of us are full of good intentions – lose weight, drink less wine, see friends and family more, write every day. And then life gets in the way. We go to a dark place (that metaphorical tunnel) through, say, illness – our own or a loved one’s. Or marriages/relationships break down – again, our own or that of someone very close to us. We find that there are pieces to be picked up, and there are loved ones who need more of our time, or our money, or both. Our shoulders become damp from all the crying done on them, and we are – in the main – glad that we are there for them. So, the diet goes, replaced by soul-food doughnuts. We need that glass of wine at the end of a particularly sad/busy/worrying day. We’ve had to cancel lunch/dinner with family/friends yet again as it transpires we only have the twenty-four hours in every day that everyone else has. And the writing?

Well, there’s always tomorrow, isn’t there? As writers we can’t help logging little snippets in our memories – an image, a few words, a feeling – so we can drag them all out again one day and commit them to paper. And we must be very thankful that we are writers and that we have that facility. And do you know what? Tunnels – real and metaphorical – don’t go on for ever. There is always that little chink of light that beckons us eventually, gives us hope, beckons us on.

Jennifer - It's funny how light always comes in at the end, isn't it? It's at the end of the tunnel. It's the sun breaking through after a storm. It's the celestial light of the Last Judgement in a myriad church windows. Even the motto of my football team is 'Out of darkness comes light'. (Let's hope that last bit is true - it ain't looking good right now!)

As a writer I've never consciously articulated the way that the pattern of emerging into the light underlies almost every story I've ever written. It's partly because they're romance and so they must, by definition, have a happy ending. But even the non-romantic stories I write tend to have positive endings, even when they aren't altogether happy ones. Stories must reach a resolution and in my stories the resolution, whatever it is, has some kind of positive.

I take no pleasure into chasing my characters into darkness and pain. But I take great joy out of bringing them out again, and leaving them standing, at last, in the light.

Neil - As a landscape photographer, finding the right light is everything. It’s the reason I rise at unreasonable hours or trample the countryside when most are thinking of bed, as the ‘golden’ hour

for our work takes place around sunrise and sunset. During the day in summertime, the sun is too high and bright making it difficult to create the right shot. However, with the onset of autumn, as the sun drops lower in the sky, the light softens - a gift for photographers. At this time of year, landscape photographers often continue to take photographs throughout the day and many will claim autumn as their favourite season of the year.

Also, when choosing a location for a shoot, it’s important to balance light with shade, so that the overall piece has the correct sense of proportion. I imagine it must be similar for writers? As a photographer, light also dictates what settings I use, ...shutter speed, exposure and aperture. As the long, dark days of winter make it harder for me to indulge my passion for photography, I like to make the most of the autumnal light.  Hope you enjoy one of my recent shots…