The new year for me always feels like it starts in September rather than January. Even those years when I’ve been neither a student nor a teacher, there is something about fall that always feels like the beginning of something new, that space of new experiences, new possibilities—and let’s not forget the excitement of new notebooks.
I've been thinking, though, about how often our beginnings are rooted in what we have already done or in the cyclical nature of things.
Each September is new, but it also carries with it our memories of past Septembers. The fear-excitement of a new school year is both new and similar to the mix of joy and trepidation we've felt in previous years. The butterflies in my stomach that always deprived me of a good night's sleep before the first day of school—as both a student and a teacher—always felt totally unique, and yet if I really thought back, they were old friends that visited each year, an annual reminder that new things are both scary and exciting.
There's something reassuring about the way in which all our beginnings hold who we are and what we've been through. A voice or deep knowing within us that tells us we have survived other new beginnings and that knowledge can help us be more courageous as we step into this new beginning whether it’s a new school year, a new job, a new activity or experience, or a new story.
We are always beginning (again) with our creative work, too. There are our literal beginnings, the spark of a new idea and those first scratches on a blank page (or screen), but even in the messy middle of a creative project, we are continually beginning again, turning a page, starting a new scene, remaining open to new possibilities for the work.
Sometimes the story demands we go back to the beginning, which is what happened to me a couple of weeks ago. A new voice appeared for my novel, and so even though I was a quarter of the way into my second draft, I had to go back to the very beginning and start again because that new voice held more energy and felt more alive than anything I’d written in the previous two months.
As creators, we begin again each time we show up to create, and the work is not the same as it was yesterday or will be tomorrow. It’s like that quote from Heraclitus about how you never step into the same river twice. The creative process and our creative work are also continually in flux.
We are beginning over and over again, but we also carry with us everything we are and have learned from our process and previous creative work. That is part of the accumulation of our practice, a kind of creative muscle memory. We sit down with the blank page and think, I don't know how to do this, but we do.
And one of the main things we do know as creators is how to sit with the discomfort of not knowing. Showing up for your creative work means putting yourself constantly into a state of uncertainty, of beginning without knowing where you’re going or how it will turn out.
Beginnings ask us to be courageous. To be open to something new, to be open to possibility—and to the possibility of failure.
I've often heard and found it be true that each piece teaches us how it needs to be written. The exercises and routines and approaches that helped me write one story don't always work for the next.
And yet my particular process, my unique ways of working and coming back to what I know is most true about how I show up for and trust my creativity, creates a solid foundation from which I can embrace the uncertainty, risk and continual newness of this creative work—all of those beginnings.
So whatever this fall holds for you and your creative work, remember that you are always beginning and at the same time you are always in process. You are showing up each day, beginning again, but always with the knowledge that you have been here before and you will be here again and that you are capable—more than capable—of sitting with the discomfort of not knowing. That you can and will begin again.
