If you mark time by the phases moon, and I do, you may have heard that the best time to set a new intention is at the New Moon.

If you think of your intention as a seed, and it is, and you follow the farmers' way, you'll want to wait at least a few hours after the darkest phase, till the moon starts waxing again, to set that intention, to plant that seed.

I am writing this as we approach the New Moon in Aries, the first new moon after the Spring Equinox. This marks the start of the astrological year which falls, in North America, on April 11th at 10:30 pm EDT. In case you don’t know, that’s because Aries is the first sign of the Zodiac. It may be the best time of the year to set intentions and plant seeds.

When you plant a seed, it has to germinate. What happens when that seed starts germinating? It has to push through dirt before it finds the light of day. You also have to push through dirt as you develop new ideas, intentions, habits, and creative work.

I learned this concept at my first professional coaching training 15 years ago and it's always stuck with me because I've found that it's mostly true. It's good to keep in mind when you're in the start up phase of just about anything.

Getting back to creative work is a tricky thing. It’s not unlike planting a garden. If you’re a gardener, you’ll know that not every seed germinates, not every seed that germinates makes it into a full grown plant, and even seeds that grow and flourish can fall to mold or burn or rot or bugs. So it is with creative ideas and intentions. But just because every one won’t flower or bear fruit does not mean that you shouldn’t plant and water and nurture the thing. You never know what’s going to happen (which is a bit of a thrill) but nothing’s going to happen if you don’t start in the first place.

When we're at creative work, that dirt will show up as distractions, interruptions, self-doubt and just about anything that might possibly throw you off track. In fact, those varieties of dirt are designed to force you to grow, to transform your thoughts, and to strengthen your will and resolve. The dirt will make or break your intention and can help that seed of an idea to strengthen and transform itself in ways you may not have originally considered.

I was planning to share with you the ridiculous list of dirty distractions that have presented themselves as I’ve recently plunged back into work. I'll spare you the list save one item: I had to track a possum who took up residence in the crawl space above the ceiling of my apartment. I’m sure that any of you who have struck out on any new project or adventure (an that's probably all of you) have lists of your own.

Distractions are a part of the process and every time I am interrupted, I have to sit myself back down and find my way back to whatever I’d been in the middle of before whatever the uproar was had started. Sometimes I feel as though I am always getting back to work and being distracted and getting back to work again.

Once I post this, I plan to get real dirt under my fingernails. It's time to set up my patio garden. I don't have seeds this year, just a bunch of flowers and herbs that are already started. That’s fine with me because I have plenty of metaphorical, creative seeds that are pushing through dirt as I write this.

The trees are flowering and putting out leaves. Loblolly pine pollen is ALL OVER EVERYTHING. I can't wait to set my plants in the dirt, give them water and sun, and watch the garden grow.

Once my patio garden is potted and set out, I’ll return to the seedlings of my rejuvenated coaching and creative practices to help them reach through the dirt for sun and fresh air. And then I might take a nap to sleep off the pollen.

What are you bringing to life now? What are your intentions? Seriously, Let me know in a comment below. 

Imagine your seeds in full bloom. It will help to keep that image in mind as you push through the dirt.

Happy Astrological New Year. 

Read more about Gustave Doré, and his illustrations, specifically for the Divine Comedy here.

Read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's translation of the Divine Comedy here with thanks to Dartmouth.

But wait... See? Even in the midst of writing this piece, I've lost the straight way. Because, what I really wanted to do here was to explicitly apply this experience of getting lost in the dark woods to the beginning of any creative process when the right way is often not clear at all. Sometimes you can stumble through the forest and get lost in the confusion of dim early stages or fail and fail and fail and then simply check out of the process. But, sometimes, even when the woods are dark and the way through is confused, the journey might feel right for no good reason that you can point to. That's usually when you find unexpected signposts and guides that appear out of thin air. That's when it feels alright to move forward without a defined end in sight. That's when creative faith kicks in.

The beginning.

Where does the creative process begin? How does it start?  What is the initial spark that kicks the ignition of an idea on to another idea on to a string of things that weave a form that begs to step onto the material plane?

A fragment of bird song turns George Meredith's head and he watches a skylark ascend, singing. He turns what he beholds or imagines into verse. Years later, Ralph Vaughan Williams reads the poem and is compelled to compose a piece of music for violin, the lark, and piano. Marie Hall helps Vaughan Williams illustrate the flight and song of the lark through the medium of her instrument.  Later, the composer orchestrates the piece and that is mostly how we know The Lark Ascending today. "The silver chain of sound" reverberates from bird song to idea to poem to duet to orchestral piece to all of the recorded and unrecorded interpretations and inspiration since. 

I distinctly remember sitting in the bedroom of my Cozy Court duplex on 5th Street in Santa Monica, watching Sam Waterston play J. Robert Oppenheimer on TV way back in 1982, and thinking, "I must write a song about Oppenheimer". And the weird and winding process of the song commenced.

I don't remember the trip to the library but I do remember that it was really difficult to find any book about the Manhattan Project though I did find one that described Oppenheimer's drive to and arrival at Los Alamos along with some choice anecdotes about the team at work there. I checked that book out with a copy of John Donne's Holy Sonnets. The Holy Sonnets, especially XIV, gave me the idea for the for the framework and form of the lyrics and musical parts along with a literal quotation.  The rest of the song then worked its way out. 

I had no inkling when I grabbed hold of that initial idea that I would build the song around the concept of Trinity, that I would regularly perform the song at anti-nuclear rallies over the next couple of years, that I'd become friends, a decade later with two physicists who'd worked on the Manhattan Project and knew Oppenheimer, or that someone I gave a copy of my Souvenir CD (on which I finally recorded the song) would take my general concept and, without acknowledgement, turn it into a libretto for an acclaimed opera.

But that's another story. But not unrelated to the question of where ideas come from, the creative process, and working through that process. And it is work. A lot of work. But not the kind of work that you can necessarily point to and assess by hours or a set of tasks, on a particular schedule. Working through the creative process, or what I am calling Creative Wayfinding is a matter of opening up to chance, drifting in a follow-your-nose sort of way, picking up books at random, turning left instead of right down an unfamiliar street, and browsing, lots of browsing through printed words, pictures, recordings, and whatnot, then isolating a relevant paragraph or poem or snippet of conversation, interview or dialogue in a film that leaps out and says, I am your next step. Pay attention to me.

That's one part of the work. Grazing for clues but not too intently. Fun but but desperately scary, too when you snap out of the magic and start dwelling on the uncertainty of the entire operation.

Now that I'm somewhat settled again, I'm back to my old habit of collecting books. Apparently, ever since I learned to write my name and address, I've been claiming books. I was horrified once to discover this fact when I opened my father's hand-varnished, olive green, leather bound volume of Arthur Quiller-Couch's Studies in Literature to find my kindergarten pencil marks carved in the flyleaf.

After selling off the majority of several collections over the past 40 years when they became too weighty, I should know better. I do know better. But I found a nearby thrift shop with a quickly rotating stock of good books at about a dollar a pop. It's cheap entertainment with high value, so here I go again, magnetizing books.

I am not a fast reader. In fact, it's difficult for me to read because of the mechanics of my vision. Also, I'm a contemplative reader by which I mean that I'll read a little and then reflect on it. And inevitably, I'll go down rabbit holes, looking up words I don't know, chasing down references. I don't mind so much, especially because, as I said, books help me swing my way through the creative process.

Right now, I am surrounded by all sorts of books. I am clawing my way through the brambles of getting back to work, having no real clear idea of where the next steps lead or certainly, the eventual destination.

I'm okay with that, too, because one of the books I recently picked up is Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. I love reading Bradbury. As much as I love Bradbury’s poetic fiction, his introductions to his books are worth the price of admission and are directed squarely at writers, or really anyone involved in the creative process.

His introduction to Dandelion Wine opens as follows:

“This book, like most of my books and stories, was a surprise. I began to learn the nature of such surprises, thank God, when I was fairly young as a writer. Before that, like every beginner, I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.”

A couple of pages later, he continues:

“Thus I fell into surprise. No one told me to surprise myself, I might add. I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of bushes like quail before gunshot. I blundered into creativity as blindly as any child learning to walk and see. I learned to let my senses and my Past tell me all that was somehow true.”

I read that and thought, thank you, Mr. Bradbury! I must be on the right path. Or at least I am on a path that I can kind of feel beneath my feet and I am glimpsing signposts that are starting to make sense. I've constructed enough of a vehicle to start traveling down this path and I am choosing to have faith that I am going somewhere. Life seems brighter. Maybe that's because Spring has sprung or maybe it's just a nice coincidence.

Anyway, here we are at the start of Creative Wayfinding.

Welcome. Let's see where we go from here.

Suzanne McDermott is an artist, writer, musician, and teacher who coaches creatives through transition.