On Summer and Creativity
by Malena Lott
Each season has its strengths, gifts supplied not only to nature and mankind, but to our outlook on the world around us. Personally, I’m a spring/fall fangirl, but I relish the dark winter nights, curled up by a fire; and summer, with its longer days and sweaty evenings on the deck, watching fireflies flit in the creek as I marvel at the chorus of night sounds growing louder as the sun goes down and my beer bottle empties.
Summer is about imagination and play. It’s the season of vacations and laughter, sunburns and splashing. Summer feeds the creative soul like a ripe watermelon to thirsty children. Morning pages come faster this time of year, so much so I can barely get it all down fast enough. My mind says, “more, more” when I think I have no more time to give, but of course there’s more time because summer days seem endless so I return to the screen again when the shade blankets the table just so or I sit cross legged after dinner with a notebook in hand to scribble the ideas that won’t let me be.
Creative writing isn’t so much about process or productivity as it is about permission to begin and to return to the page. Something “more important” always beckons – a hungry family, dirty laundry, “real” work that pays the bills. But to the creative writer, nothing feel more real than putting words on the page, first releasing them and then revisiting them and forming them into something bigger than they once were, building sentence to paragraph to scene to chapter to story to end.
You gave life to something that began as a blinking cursor. You shared a person’s hurt and healed them. You left something indelible on the hearts and minds of the reader that will last beyond the season. You are a writer.
Create.
Malena Lott s the author of three novels, The Stork Reality, Dating da Vinci and Fixer Upper; two novellas, Life’s a Beach and The Last Resort, several published short stories, including July’s “The Pool Boy,” and also writes young adult under the pen name Lena Brown. Readers can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram under“malenalott” and she blogs about mojo and zen at malenalott.com.
