Here’s How to Stay Creative in Winter
Welcome to the dark half of the year…
The clocks have gone back, the sun is down before five, and every other email in your inbox has started talking about January. New year, new you, new habits, new ten-step plan. Can we offer a different idea?
Halloween has long been the point where the dark half of the year begins. The old calendar didn’t ask anyone to keep their summer energy going through winter. It asked them to bring things in, gather round and get on with quieter work. Nobody expected a harvest in December.
So here is a case for doing the same: locking in, slowing down, planting a few seeds and leaving them to it until spring. You are allowed. It might even be the most creative thing you do all year.
Embrace the seasonal shift.
Halloween’s roots go back to Samhain, an old festival that marked the end of the harvest and the turn into the darker months. People took stock, brought in what they had grown and settled in for the long stretch ahead. It was a handover from one kind of work to another, rather than the end of anything.
Just like nature, creative work has seasons too.
Summer is for output: launches, shoots, events, saying yes to everything. The dark half is for the other stuff. Thinking, tinkering, reading, drafting, sorting out the cupboard where all your half-finished ideas live. Neither season is better. We tend to celebrate only one of them.
Skip the January reset.
New-year, new-me momentum rarely holds. Arriving alongside shiny journals and relentless resolution campaigns, that sudden burst of resolve often fades before February ends. If you ask us, pushing for a total life overhaul in the bleakest, chilliest depths of winter feels rather counterintuitive.
There’s a gentler alternative to all of the constant grinding.
Rather than viewing winter as a necessary exile before the ‘real’ year begins, embrace it as a time for a different kind of rhythm. You don’t need a complete reset; you need to adjust your pace. Allow yourself to relax during the holidays, embracing the quieter moments without the pressure to ramp up for the new year.
Plant your seeds and wait
Gardeners do this every autumn. Many spring bulbs go into the ground now and flower in spring partly because of the cold they sit through in between. Nothing visible happens for months, but plenty is going on underground.
Pick three small ideas you would like to see growing by spring, and give each a tiny first step:
- A project you keep meaning to start. Write the first paragraph, make the first sketch, set up the repo. Then leave it alone.
- A skill you want to build. One hour a week, with no output required.
- An idea you are not ready to share. Put it in a folder. Don’t polish it, and don’t post about it.
The point is not progress. It is planting.
Hibernating is not the same as disappearing
There is a catch if you work alone. Slowing down is lovely right up until you realise you haven’t spoken to another person all week, and then it is just quiet.
The old festivals understood this too. They involved fires, food and a lot of people in the same place. The dark months are when we most need somewhere to go, even if all you do when you get there is get on with your own work next to someone doing theirs.
That is a big part of what our spaces are for. Gather Round has two creative coworking spaces in Bristol and one in Bath, a programme of free monthly member events (Family Breakfasts and After Hours drinks among them) and a members’ Christmas party at the end of it all. You can lock in properly, knowing there is a kettle on and somebody to say hello to.
Happy wintering
That is all it is, really. Bring the harvest in. Plant a few seeds and keep some good company nearby. Future you will thank you for it.
And if you would like somewhere to spend the dark months that isn’t your kitchen table, come and see what a creative community feels like.
This post was written by Kristele at Trinity Church.
