How to Nurture a New Idea
A FOUR-PART PROCESS TO BRING A wobbly new IDEA GENTLY INTO BEING
WINTER TO SPRING - Intuition to inquiry
Winter is stillness and intuition.
We draw inward when the world around us quiets. I read more fiction and drink more coffee and wrap myself with wool. I dream. It’s natural. This introspective season supports us to rest and replenish, so we’re ready when the light returns.
Spring arrives and days lengthen as the world around us rustles awake. There’s movement and energy, but we’re also reminded that new growth is fragile.
Cherry trees blossom too soon and a late freeze means no fruit. Here in Asheville we start seeds in our front-yard greenhouse and gamble on when it’s safe to transfer seedlings to their cedar beds outside. It’s a dance, never as clear cut as fourth grade science led us to believe.
Our inner creative seasons are even less linear. More nuanced.
And while our personal rhythms do sometimes match the world around us, especially during significant seasonal shifts, we don’t always feel expansive in June, or restful in December.
Our ideas, too, have seasons. I’m not saying anything new here. Humans have always taken signals from our outside world. From dormancy, rebirth. From darkness, light.
But I do find the concept of creative ideas having seasons to be an especially useful, if not original, framework for working with ideas and creativity, perhaps in part because seasons are universal. We all have intimate experience to draw from.
The particular practice I’ll share today is helpful during our external shift from winter to spring, because the parallel is often true: we sleep on ideas during winter that may be ready to stretch toward the light when spring arrives.
But it can be used any time of year you have a seedling of an idea, one that requires tenderness and patience and thoughtful conditions in order to be ready for the outside world.
Spring equinox is a soft return to more light, a stretch outward, an unfurling of energy.
The reality, though, is that as much as we crave its arrival after a long winter, spring isn’t necessarily an easy season. It can stir up a restlessness we aren’t always sure what to do with.
What I’ve seen in myself, and in many clients and friends, is that we can sabatoge ourselves in one of two main ways when we become aware of an idea we’ve been overwintering that suddenly asks for our attention.
The first way is that we might paralyze ourselves into keeping our idea tucked safely in our subconscious, where no one will ever see it, and where we definitely won’t have to find out if it’s a dud, or so successful it changes our lives, or any number of other other fears we may have.
The second way, which is talked about much less, is that we might instead feel an urgency to fly full-speed from “I feel like this murky idea wants to be outside of me now” straight to “Here it is, world, fully formed!”
This impulse can lead us to feel pressed to choose a path that’s already been paved by someone else.
And of course it does: Everywhere we turn someone is selling false certainty: here, pay me, follow my exact formula and this way you will $$ definitely, $$ for sure, $$ succeed $$$$!
To be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with following a pre-paved path. Some paths are well-worn because they’ve carried others safely through.
But when we want to bring our own ideas into fruition, and we attempt to zip to final form without letting ourselves slow down and explore freely first, we’re likely to miss the bit that’s going to make it truly ours. We risk ignoring our intuition, and we often end up outsourcing our creativity.
In our rush, we can entirely miss cultivating the part of idea that would have been most alluring to others in the first place.
GLASSHOUSE
A four-part practice for idea-tending.
001: Name the Whisper
002: Explore One Useful Question
003: Invite Focused Inquiry
004: Choose a Tangible “Next”
…
Use this four-part process to support yourself in easing creative ideas from winter into spring, from intuitive whisper to focused inquiry.
Glasshouse is ideal for when you’re ready to actively explore any whisper that you feel called to evolve in your own way, on your own terms. It’s especially helpful during the sometimes-uncomfortable space between “I don’t know yet” and “I think I’m starting to see the shape of it.”
No urgency, no expectations, no forced formulas.
Just a gentle structure to help tender ideas take root.
INTUITION
001
NAME THE WHISPER
001
What whisper of an idea, vision, or project has been circling your mind lately?
It might be clear. It might be vague. You might not know if it’s “the thing,” That’s okay. You’re not committing, you’re just naming what’s been lingering.
What’s something you keep returning to, or that keeps returning to you, even if it’s unclear? Write down what comes up.
…
exempli gratia
Dee is a multidisciplinary artist who runs a part-time ceramics studio and teaches art in community spaces. Lately, she has been thinking about expanding into writing or publishing small zines about the relationship between creative process and ritual, but she hasn’t told anyone. Every time she sits down to work on this, she ends up cleaning the studio instead.
“I keep imagining making a zine or tiny publication about the tactile process of making. Maybe tying it to seasonal rituals in the studio. But I don’t know what it would be for, or if anyone would care. It just keeps coming back to me.”
INQUIRY
002
EXPLORE ONE USEFUL QUESTION
002
Now, get curious about that whisper.
You’re not solving it. You’re sneaking closer.
This is useful in part because our most thrilling ideas, the ones that we really, really want (or that the world really, really needs) can be trickiest to wrangle. They can scare easy. Be gentle. Tiptoes, not boots. Okay?
Ask yourslf a question from the list below, or use your own. The key is to make sure it’s the kind of question that moves you forward without pressure.
As you write, notice if you feel compelled to stay in this step, to keep answering prompts instead of going on to the next step. There’s nothing wrong with this. But you might consider whether you’re using it as a way to avoid taking a gentle action that you truly desire. For many of us, it’s far easier to either launch our ideas straight into a form (haphazard or based on someone else’s formula) or to let it stay in our inner world forever than to really sit with it and allow it to reveal itself.
But in the same way leaping into full expansion and action (summer) can be a trap because it skips over the rich potential of our wandering curiosity, remaining in introspection (winter) too long can trap ideas in our minds that are ready to stretch toward the external world.
Greenhouse, David Hosack Estate, Hyde Park, New York
CHOOSE ONE OF THESE QUESTIONS TO journal about
What do I want to understand better about this idea?
Because sometimes we feel stuck not from lack of effort, but from not knowing what we’re actually missing.
-
What would make this idea feel lighter, more joyful, more mine?
Because it’s easy to inherit (internal or external) expectations that weigh down ideas before they ever take shape.
-
What kind of energy or feeling does this idea carry?
Because tuning into the mood of an idea can reveal more than logic ever will… and most of us forget to ask.
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What am I avoiding asking about this idea?
Because deep down, we often know the hard question. But we protect ourselves from naming it too soon.
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What would I explore if I didn’t need to know yet where it’s going?
Because needing a clear outcome too early can stop an idea before it’s had time to breathe
…
EXEMPLI GRATIA
Dee chooses this question:
“What would I explore if I didn’t need to know where it’s going?”
Because she’s noticed she shuts the idea down every time she tries to turn it immediately into a product or project.
She writes just a few lines at first:
“Okay if I can just explore freely… I want to understand more what I am really trying to express here. What I am trying to say? What am I really trying to get at? Maybe the reason I haven’t started is the question feels really big. Or how vague it is overwhelms me? I’m not sure. But I’ve been doing art a long time. So if I let myself explore the breadcrumbs of a few different things I have already been saying in my art, that seems like a good start.”
FOCUs
003
INVITE MORE ACTIVE INQUIRY
003
Now choose 2 or 3 light ways to gently invite your whispering idea into the external world a bit more.
Use your exploration from 002 as a way to shine a soft light on it, stay in your curiosity, and look a little closer at the still-amorphous shape of this potential concept… without forcing it to be anything in particular just yet.
Think of this as a soft invitation, not a task list.
Francis Bedford, Ilfracombe, The Victorian Promenade
you might…
Listen to a podcast or read book or article on a related topic.
Start a new page in your “Notes” app to collect words, links, ideas as they arrive.
Post a casual related question or poll to your community.
Brainstorm possibilities using a mind map, using paper or a whiteboard.
Meditate for five minutes, then set a timer to write for 10 minutes. See what else floats up from your subconscious around this.
Think of someone you know who you admire in this realm and research their backstory.
Go for a walk without listening to a podcast or music, with the aim of letting your mind wander around this idea. Voice memo thoughts that seem meaningful as you walk.
Start a moodboard, digital or analog, related to this idea.
Journal potential forms this idea might take through the lens of “what if.” Keep asking: “what if?“
Anything else that feels like a low-stakes next step.
The point here is that there is no correct answer.
You’re inviting movement, not manufacturing a final product.
…
EXEMPLI GRATIA
Dee keeps her explorations low-key:
I.
She pulls three old sketchbooks and flips through them.
She finds a few studio notes, quotes, and poems she forgot she’d written. Suddenly, the zine feels like it actually began forming itself ages ago. Breadcrumbs appear.
II.
She voice-memos a 2-minute ramble while walking her dog, just saying out loud what the zine feels like.
III.
She realizes she keeps repeating the word “devotional”… okay, interesting, a thread to follow.
She jots down a few bits and bobs that seem relevant on sticky notes and stick them to the studio wall: tactility, repetition, earth, repair, reverence.
anchor
004
choose one tangible “next”
004
You don’t need a full plan. But it can help to name one small next step or insight, something to hold onto as you carry this idea forward.
Choose one of the following ways (or another) to anchor what you uncovered. What feels intuitive to you?
Write a single sentence that sums up what feels different now.
Highlight one phrase or idea that stuck with you from your exploration.
List one small experiment you want to try this week, just for yourself.
Create a placeholder in your calendar for 30 minutes to return to it. No expectations, just space.
EXEMPLI GRATIA
Dee writes:
”This idea isn’t fully formed yet. And that’s okay. For now, it’s a container for noticing. I’m going to keep actively noticing, and see where that leads me.”
To keep that commitment to herself, she also sets a reminder for the next time they’re in the studio: “Take 10 minutes to sketch or write about ritual. No pressure. We’re following the feelings. I LOVE YOU.”
How did this practice feel?
My biggest encouragement to you is to nurture your unshaped ideas with as much tenderness as you would seedlings in a greenhouse.
Tend them gently. Water them with love.
Allow them to stretch toward the light they’re seeking in their own direction, in their own time, and pay close attention to what they ask of you next.