In this episode, we dived deeper into the season of fall, which represents a vital stage in the Creativity Quest, in the form of Release (ref. ep 20!) and its significance in both the natural and creative world. The fascinating correlation lies in the necessity of letting go, both in nature’s fall, as plants shed their leaves, and in the writing process, as we release unnecessary clutter to allow new ideas to flow. Like trees letting go of their leaves to survive harsh winters, we need to learn to release our attachment to the unnecessary and make room for what’s crucial.

A primary emotion tied to the ‘letting go’ process is grief, which is why this process can be challenging. It’s especially difficult when this grief is tied to our creative outputs or our personal spaces. But remember, decluttering isn’t just physical. It’s an internal process of dealing with grief, parting ways with the old, and making space for the new.

We talk about our different approaches and experiences with the lessons of “Release” during the Creative Cycle. Whether it’s a stage in your writing or a physical space, learning to let go is a universal principle that can unclutter your life and make room for new growth. Stay tuned for more insights into the fascinating journey of the creative process!

Resources

• Dawn in the Orchard 
• Women’s Writing Retreats
• The Task Mistress

Ep. 21: The Season of Releasing in the Creative Cycle

Dave Hogan, Gina’s Pop
0:02
Welcome to Around the Writer’s Table, a podcast focusing on the crossroads of creativity, craft, and conscious living for writers of all ages and backgrounds. Your hosts are Gina, Melody, and KimBoo, three close friends and women of a certain age, who bring to the table their eclectic backgrounds and unique perspectives on the trials, tribulations, and the joys of writing. So pull up a chair and get comfortable here around the writer’s table.

Gina Hogan Edwards
0:43
Hello, listeners, this is Gina Hogan Edwards. Welcome to another episode of Around the Writer’s Table. I am here with my co-hosts KimBoo and Melody. And we’re going to dive into a discussion about Releasing, which is a stage of the creative process and how it relates to the season of Fall. So let’s introduce ourselves first. Like I said, I’m Gina. I’m a creativity coach and an editor, and I work to uplift women’s voices and help them get words on the page. KimBoo. 

KimBoo York
1:21
Hey, y’all, it’s KimBoo back again. I am a romance novelist and former project manager. I help writers and solopreneurs find time, mojo, and motivation to create. That’s me. How about you, Melody?

Melody, A Scout
1:35
Welcome back. I’m Melody, A Scout, and I help my clients find their sense of home by restoring balance and harmony to their lives, balance and harmony through plant spirit medicine and my book Soul of the Seasons.

Gina
1:50
Hi, ladies, it’s great to be with you again. We’ve been talking in the last couple of episodes about the creative process, particularly related to a creative cycle that I have noticed in myself and the clients that I work with. In Episode 18, we did an overview of the 10 stages of the cycle. And then in Episode 19, we talked about the, I’m gonna say first stage, but these don’t happen necessarily in any particular sequential order. But the first stage that we discussed was Inner Disquiet, which is when we have a longing, a desire, which may be a conscious or unconscious longing to create, and yet we are not creating. And then we talked in our last episode, Episode 20, about Releasing: releasing people, places things, all of the things that are holding us back in the creative process. 

And so what we’re going to do today is talk a little bit more about that, and then Melody is going to tell us some things about how that relates to the seasons. And we talked about, in our last episode, how Releasing can be anything from letting go of the clutter–and so maybe having a need to organize our office–to releasing some distractions, setting boundaries with the people in our lives. So it can look like a lot of different things. But it’s when a lot of the creative juices start surfacing, and we may still have a lot of things we need to learn about the craft, but it can be sort of a heady stage. So, Melody, can you kind of segue us into how that relates to the season of Fall?

Melody
3:42
Sure. So back in episodes 10 and 11, we talked about the season of Fall as outlined in my book Soul of the Seasons, and as it related to the writing process. Core to the season of Fall is the process of letting go. Fall is all about letting go. If you look out into the natural world during Fall, things fall to the earth, the leaves on the trees fall to the earth, plants go dormant, they die back. It is a time of letting go. All but the most essential things necessary to get through. 

And this is essential during the writing process because we cannot keep–as near and dear all hard-won eight years of words that I did for writing my book Soul of the Seasons, well over 100,000 words–I could not keep all of those words in my book. It needed to be streamlined. It needed to be honed and sharpened. And during that process, I found it really helpful to rely on the guidance of my writing coach, who was Gina and my editor, to help keep me focused. And that, to me, helped out with another phase that we’re talking about clutter-clearing, because that helped my mind stay clear and focused on the process ahead. 

If we do not let go, say, in nature, it’s actually dangerous not to let go when the season ahead is coming. The trees, if they kept all their leaves, they would have to put all their energy into feeding those leaves, which means all their life force is up in the tree. And if a hard freeze would come, it could split the tree and kill it. And so it is not only normally not possible, it is not healthy. We saw this, I saw this in my landscape business this year, because we had several days of very hard frost this past winter.

KimBoo
6:03
Right, which we should point out to our listeners who may not be located here in town, we’re in North Florida and a hard freeze lasting for several days, it’s really unusual, that is not something we get on the regular.

Melody
6:16
Yes, and the reason I’m so busy right now is because it killed a lot of plants and full grown trees, even trees that normally could tolerate some cold. That’s because it wasn’t prepared for that. It had been warm up to that point. We had been in the 80s all the way through. 

So when we know the seasons are coming, both in our inner life and our creative life, we can prepare for them by looking ahead to like, “Okay, what do I need to let go? How do we need to prepare myself to go into this next season?” And not only, you know, the creative, exciting fun part in the first draft, we talked about that last episode. But each phase. There is a Fall, there’s a Releasing in each phase to move on to the next. You won’t be forever letting go. You won’t be forever revising. Stuff will come back again. That’s why it’s called a season or a cycle. It is a continual motion, of releasing, creating, letting go. And that’s why, Gina, when she first started talking to me about the creative cycle, it made so much sense to me. 

Another part of why it may be difficult for people to face the releasing phase of their writing process or even in their personal lives, is the emotions associated with letting go, and the core emotion is grief. It is a loss of something that we valued. And I can find this when I work with clients, if they have a clutter-clearing problem in their home, I can almost guarantee you they have some problems releasing grief. And if we have a problem receiving critique, which is basically information about letting go and releasing, we may have a problem with grief. 

There are people, there are writing coaches, there are people who will come in and clutter-clear your house and set up organized ways to keep things in a more organized manner. I highly recommend both of those. 

So I’m really interested in how each of you deal with some of the clutter-clearing. And I know specifically, KimBoo, you have something called a ‘brain dump’ that I just love and want to hear more about that, because I have found it to be so useful.

KimBoo
9:12
Well, I do want to circle back around first, before I go into detail on that, what you’re talking about there: you can hire people to come in and help you declutter, whether that’s a creativity coach like Gina who can come in and help you work through the process, or if it’s actually a cleaner who comes into your house and helps you organize. One of the important things to really understand is that that’s an internal process. It doesn’t matter what anybody tells you or organizes for you. If you’re not ready to let go, if you haven’t dealt with that, you know, assumption of grief, whether there’s real grief there or not, or are doing that. I am a productivity coach. That’s one of my businesses that Melody’s talking about, and I can realize really quickly whether I am helping somebody in a way that will last long-term or if they’re looking for a quick fix.

A lot of people come in and hope the productivity coach will just organize their calendar and from then on, they don’t have to think about it anymore. And that’s not true because as soon as I leave the room, their calendar, their house, their business, whatever is going to get cluttered again. One of the— Yeah, because it’s just they haven’t really solved the problem of letting go what they need to let go of. 

And so the brain dump, it’s a tried-and-true process for a lot of different things. Creativity, I know Gina, you’ve used creative brain dumps in your coaching, and I use it in the productivity area to help declutter your brain. I don’t have any studies available, maybe I’ll include some in the show notes, but it has been shown that if you actually literally write down everything that’s bothering you, that’s hung up in your brain, that’s something that keeps coming back and poking at you, writing it down, helps your brain organize, see the patterns, figure out what can be thrown out, what is just not important anymore, or something that can be delegated, you could have someone else take care of it. That helps you think more clearly. That is the value of a brain dump. Whether it’s a brain dump about a specific story, or whether it’s just a brain dump about your life as a whole, in general, everything, which is more what I deal with, it can really declutter what’s the dam in your brain that’s holding all the driftwood back and all the branches back, and letting you see some clear water flowing through and seeing what’s there, and what’s really important and what you really need to put your energies toward. 

So I highly recommended it. It’s easy to do. You get a piece of paper, you take a pen, and you just sit there. The rules that I have for brain dump is no full sentences. Now I know that you can say, “No,” that’s a complete sentence, right? But try to not put a lot of… what words am I looking for… is like a…

Gina
Crafting behind it.

KimBoo
Thank you, try not to put a lot of crafting behind. It’s supposed to be off the cuff, free association, everything that’s coming up that’s just bothering you. Not complete sentences, try not to do that. And just write it all down, not in any order. Don’t worry about order. You can come back later and reorganize it. But doing it at a time when you’re stressed is actually really good idea. I know everybody’s like, “Sit down and clear your mind and take a deep breath. And then free association writing.” The difference with a brain dump is that we want your brain to be active because we want to know what’s bothering it. So if you’re stressed out, if you’re feeling anxiety, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, sit down and do a brain dump.

Melody
12:51
I can attest to the value of doing this because I did a brain dump about my apartment, all those little tasks that, you know, begging me every time… I will fix the handle, blah, blah, blah, all the things. And so I just wrote down for each room stuff that needed my attention. Just doing that, I didn’t even do any of the tasks right away, just doing that calmed my mind and opened my creativity. It did something to my brain that shifted. So I just didn’t feel so agitated about everything. And then over the coming weeks, a lot of those things just got done.

KimBoo
13:39
Yeah, that happens a lot when people do brain dumps, is that they put things down that they think it’ll just never stop bothering them, and then suddenly, it’s just, they suddenly, like I said, it’s like clearing out the branches from the dam so you can see the clear running water. So that’s not uncommon.

Gina
13:53
I think that we don’t give enough credit to calm mind, that we, you know, we’re so busy. We keep ourselves so busy, and giving ourselves the time to quiet ourselves, I think that, you know, we talked a little bit in the last episode about how we release over-busying ourselves so you have that calm mind. And I know that journaling and the brain dump are not the same thing, but I often will use my journal for my brain dump. And it is like you described, KimBoo, incomplete sentences, just rapid fire, what comes to mind that is on my mind that I either need to… maybe something I need to take care of, somebody I need to talk to somebody about. Maybe it’s just a feeling or a thought that’s hanging around that I want to let go of, or maybe it’s something that I’ve been longing to do that I’m not letting myself do. So just whatever comes up for me, just being able to do that brain dump in my journal, and it’s just a good place to keep all that so that I can refer back to it. And like Melody talked about, sometimes just getting it down on paper has this sort of, it’s almost a magical. I don’t know. We’ve used the word Releasing that happens when you get it out of your brain and onto the page. 

And what you said, KimBoo, earlier about it being an inner process is so true, because I have found that even if I go about tidying things up physically, if there is still something bothering me that I haven’t let go of, then it doesn’t take but about 24 hours before that desk gets muddied up again. And as Melody was describing, hiring maybe hiring a coach or an organizer to help you come in and organize your place, how many people do we know who may have done that, and then, within a couple of days a week, their place ends up being the disaster that it was beforehand, because they didn’t really let go of what they needed to let go of. And all of that is the entire process.

Melody
16:34
Absolutely. Because a good organizer, coach, clutter-clearing person knows about the process, and they help support the person through the letting go phase. If you’ve ever watched an episode of Hoarders, you will know that the number one reason that they are hoarding is some sort of unresolved grief that has happened, some loss in their life, and they’re hanging on to things that, they’re grasping at something of value, because it feels like something of great value was taken from them, and they were not able to process that. So that can play into our critiquing part of it too. 

Gina, you do creativity and writer coaching, so I noticed that you were very helpful in guiding me and supporting me along the way. One of the things you did–I don’t know if you know it or not—but that helped me with the releasing process and keep focused was you asked me to give a projected date to finish a certain part of the writing process. Now part of that’s accountability, cuz I’m a little accountability freak. I might not be it to myself, but if somebody asks me to do something by a certain date, I’m gonna do it. If it’s possible. But that also helped free something up in me when we said, “Yes, this is gonna be done by June 1,” then that helped clear my brain. So, Gina, maybe you can talk about that or other ways that you help people with the Releasing process.

Gina
18:34
So, as writers, we have this fabulous opportunity to create things which are boundless. You know, we don’t have any, there’s no restriction. Especially for fiction writers, there’s no restriction on what we write. And yet, what I have discovered is that many of us need some boundaries. We need some framework. We need some sort of structure, and also a little bit of restriction, because I think when we do have that unboundedness, we go off in so many different directions. And so I think what happened when I gave you that deadline, was it gave you a little bit of restriction. It’s not like, I’ve got this thing to do, and it needs to be done. When’s it gonna be done? Without any boundaries you could have worked on that thing forever.

Melody
19:42
Absolutely. I could still be writing on it. I kid you not. 

Gina
19:47
Yes, and so that brings me to this idea. When you were talking, Melody, something that came up for me was that I do not want to overlook the idea—especially since Releasing often happens at the very beginning of a project—I don’t want to overlook the idea that sometimes we are unable to release the previous project. That we finished something, and we’re grieving that loss. Because now, we might have created a relationship with the characters that we’ve worked on for six months or two years or 10 years, and we don’t want to let go of those relationships. And so we grieve the loss of that process, which sometimes, if we don’t make space for that, does not allow us to move into the next project.

KimBoo
20:51
Oh, oh, let me tell you, let me tell you. So as you all know, I’ve written most of my life. I was big into fanfiction, but hadn’t been professionally published until about 2010. And I had a novel that I wrote, Dawn in the Orchard, and it was contemporary romance—I loved it—and I gave it to the publisher. We did the whole launching it out into the world, big book launch. And I was literally blindsided by how much grief I felt about that, because up until that point, I still had a measure of a grasp on everything that I wrote, whether it was fanfiction, or whether it was just something that, a story that I was working on, eternally, like you were saying, Melody, working on it forever. I felt like I could go back to that story, whatever it was. But once the book was finished, and once it was published, and it was out there in the big wide world, it was really finished. Done. Line drawn in the sand. Now, could I go back and do a second edition, of course. Nothing’s ever as permanent as we’d like. But it was the first time I really had to deal with that letting go of the story.

Gina
22:07
So when you get to that Releasing stage, you’ve got two things, KimBoo. There’s that releasing of the last project, letting go of that book you wrote, and interestingly enough, when I was blogging, one of the most popular blog posts that I wrote was about post-publication depression. 

KimBoo
Oh, really? Okay. 

Gina
Yes, and that was all about how hard it is sometimes for us to let go of that last project, and how we go through that grieving process. So there is the releasing of the project, the letting it go, the letting it be what it is, because it is finished. And then there is the grief that we must go through, and then the releasing of the grief so that we can move forward through the creative cycle.

KimBoo
22:58
It’s just all about the Releasing, isn’t it? 

Melody
23:01
It is. And I can attest to that as well. I mean, after investing eight, nine years of my life into writing the book, it was a huge… I don’t even know what to call it. It was bigger than I even imagined it would be. And it happened to coincide with the beginning of the pandemic. So I had that double-whammy of grief and letting go and loss and all together. 

Gina, there’s also, you just got finished doing a writer’s retreat. And I’m sorry, I didn’t have the space to be able to attend. I really wanted to. But it occurs to me, that is an awesome opportunity for Releasing as well, with structure, because you’re creating this beautiful environment where we can let go of our outside world and engage, immerse fully in the craft. So tell us more about that.

Gina
24:06
That is, the retreat environment is a beautiful space for letting go of all the outside distractions, and actually on the first day, so we all arrived on Tuesday, and that was our getting settled, getting checked in day, enjoying the beautiful view of the ocean from the deck of the house. And then we started our time together officially on Wednesday morning, where I asked the participants to think about all of the things that hold them back. And I had discovered this environmentally friendly, dissolvable paper. And they made a list of all of the things that they needed to let go of in order to fill the space of the retreat and to invite their muse and be in the writing process while we were at the retreat. And so we took these slips of paper down to the shoreline and released them to Mother Ocean.

KimBoo
25:13
Oh, Wow. Oh, I just got chills.

Melody

I love that.

Gina
25:15
And so we were releasing all of those distractions, releasing all of those things that held us back. So then we got to spend four more glorious days without those things on our shoulders, without those things holding us down.

KimBoo
25:31
Oh, Gina, that’s just awesome. Now, I’m with Melody now. I’m like, I’m so mad, I couldn’t go. But I think it’s a great…

Gina
25:38
There’s another one in November.

KimBoo
25:42
Yeah, definitely everybody needs to look that up because those retreats are amazing. But it does, like kind of wraps us all around. Doing a brain dump, writing it out, letting it go, doing a ritual as you did, writing it out on this environmentally friendly paper that could dissolve in water so that you could just give it back to Mother Ocean. Having little rituals like that might be a great way for some of our listeners to find a way to do that, and just let go of the things, whether it’s letting go of something in particular, or letting go with the grief itself. I think that’s beautiful. Gina, that’s just beautiful.

Melody
26:21
Absolutely. And, lucky for our listeners, on our website, we have worksheets, and with these exercises and tips for Releasing. Now, actually there for each episode. So if you go to AroundTheWritersTable.com, you will see all these worksheets, which are intended to form a workbook for the whole process. So go check that out. And also on the website, you’ll find links to each of our individual websites. I have a blog post that talks about the seasons and the creative process and all kinds of fun stuff. KimBoo talks about her Task Mistress, which is totally fun and highly effective and helpful. And Gina also has her website about her coaching and retreats and editing. 

So, Gina, do you want to talk a little bit about our next episode about Emulating and Mirroring, the next phase in the creative cycle?

Gina
27:32
Yes, so Emulating and Mirroring is the next stage. It’s the third one we will be discussing, although you may not experience these stages in sequential order. But we will be talking about how we look to our mentors in this stage, especially for writers that may be looking at the writers that we admire, living and dead. It’s a muscle-building, beginner’s mind, learning kind of stage. So we’ll go into all the aspects of Emulating and Mirroring in Episode 22. 

Melody
Nice.

KimBoo
28:06
I’m looking forward to that particularly, just because I sometimes get caught in that stage. So we’ll be talking about that. Yep. There’ll be some talking about that. But as Melody said, visit our website AroundTheWritersTable.com for the worksheets, the links to the resources that we’ve talked about here. There’s also a place for you to leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you. If you have any questions about any of our shows or topics you would like to have us talk about, we would appreciate that. 

Also, if you’re listening to us on any platforms such as Apple Podcasts or Stitcher or Google Podcasts, leave us a thumbs up or a star or heart. I don’t even keep track anymore. But try to give us some good reviews. It helps the reach for the podcast so that we can help more writers really, which is what we’re all about. So thank you all so much for joining us for this episode, and we will talk to you again soon.

Melody
29:06
Bye, everyone.

Gina
29:07
Bye, everybody.

Dave
29:11
Thanks for joining us around the writer’s table. Please feel free to suggest a topic or a guest by emailing info@aroundthewriterstable.com. Music provided with gracious permission by Langtry. A link to their music is on our homepage at AroundTheWritersTable.com. Everyone here around the writer’s table wishes you joy in your writing and everyday grace in your living. Take care, until next time.

Copyright / Terms & Conditions

Around the Writer's Table and its co-hosts, Gina Hogan Edwards, Melody, A Scout, and Kimboo York own the copyright to all content and transcripts of the Around the Writer's Table podcast, with all rights reserved, including right of publicity. ​​You ​are welcome to share an excerpt from the episode transcript (up to 500 words) in media articles​, such as ​​The New York Times, ​Miami Herald, etc.; in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., ​​Medium); and/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided you include proper attribution and link back to the podcast URL. No one is authorized to use the Around the Writer's Table logo, or any portion of the transcripts or other content in and of the podcast to promote themselves.