When you Write, Face the Window Not the Wall
“Make sure you remember to keep looking out the window as you write.”
I closed a client conversation with this bit of advice just the other day.
It was important to say not because she was going to write a blog post about the climate or even about our relationship with nature, but because she wasn’t.
Even when we don’t think we’re writing about our connection with the earth and the more-than-human world, we are still in conversation with the everything that surrounds us. And, at some level, that polyphony (to borrow a term I learned from Sophie Strand) is part of the words we put on the page.
What it means to write with the world outside your windowpane
I’m a writing coach and a story healer. To me, that means that process of writing (and all the not-writing that is part of that process) is as important, if not more important than the final output.
Writing in recognition of what is going on in the skies above and the soil below is part of that creative process. Place shapes the energy of the piece itself.
You don’t actually have to mention what is happening outside the window, of course. Blog posts that therapists and coaches write, for example, are generally crafted to identify and name solutions for certain problems. Mentioning the current temperature when you’re writing about imposter syndrome or becoming an empowered leader would be hard to do, post after post.
But, as with so much of writing, what is not on the page is often as essential as what is. It’s essential to take your own temperature as you write, recognizing that your internal climate is always influenced by what’s happening outside - even if you’re in a well-sealed, meticulously HVAC-ed space.
It’s deliciously rainy and cool here, at the moment
I mention the weather in most of my newsletters (sign up below!), as you’ve probably noticed.
In part, that’s because my own work with mythology grounds me in the understanding that the stories that endure are ultimately about our relationship with the landscape. Plus, I love the land on which I live, and acknowledging her feels like the least I can do for all that she does for me.
In this moment when the headlines are all about extreme weather in every form, I think it is more important than ever to let a global readership know what version of the earth holds us right now.
If it’s possible for you to write and publish when wildfire threatens or when a hurricane is bearing down, you’d tell unique, urgent stories born of fire or water. If you haven’t been outside in days because the temperature is trapped in triple digits or stuck below zero, you’re going to tell a dramatically different tale than if you are sitting on a breezy front porch on a gold-blue day.
A few days ago, when I started to imagine this note, it was one of those perfect sunny August afternoons when the first hint of “back to school” started to whisper its way through the Hudson Valley. Yesterday, when I got the bulk of words on paper it was cloudy and in the mid-sixties. Now, as I do final edits, the rain is falling and it feels a whole lot like fall.
With the exception of the smoke from the Canadian wildfires, summer weather in the Hudson Valley has been relatively unremarkable. That’s a rare and precious luxury in the middle of 2023, I know.
A stretch of fine-enough weather doesn’t mean I’ve been ultra-productive or super happy. It does mean that I have felt held, connected, and grateful. And when I bring that energy to the page, it ripples outward to our vast, changing world.
Wherever you are in the world, whether you’re experiencing terrible extremes right now or weather that seems just fine, I invite you to allow what’s outside to come inside your creative process. It may feel too bleak or too much, but it’s already influencing you, even if you'd prefer otherwise.
Reckoning with your relationship with the natural world, including all your fears and all your love, will only help you speak with more authenticity, clarity, and heart.
As writers, we may feel like words are too flimsy to matter in the face of such material, global crisis. By facing the window rather than the wall and inviting the elements to inform whatever it is you have to say today, you’re continuing the vital work of acknowledging and advocating for this beautiful, fragile, enduring, singular planet of ours.
If you’d like to talk about your current project, whether it’s the book you long to write or the writing you’d like to do to promote your business, let’s book a time to talk.