Writing through Holy Saturday

The creative process through the lens of Easter weekend

I love to think of the writing process through the lens of the three days of Easter weekend. No matter what your belief system is, trust me, I don’t know where mine exists these days either; I hope this serves you.

The first day is Good Friday. It represents the day of suffering, darkness, and death. It is the day of Christ’s public execution, where his family and friends watched alongside, their hope evaporating along with his last breath. We all have Good Fridays in our writing process as well, when the pain arises, especially in personal material, as we reacquaint ourselves with the past, the hope, the desires, and the inner ache that all died at some point. This Good Friday in our writing invites us to sit at the feet of our grief, to feel the feeling of loss, so that we can move through it to the other side.

The second day is Holy Saturday. It is the day after Christ’s death. It is the day of no day, the day of not knowing what will happen next. This second day, in the most basic way, is the blank page, the writer’s block, the creative stuckness. Have you experienced this feeling in your writing? If so, then you have experienced the Holy Saturday of the creative process. This in-between space between loss and hope is also called the liminal space. The idea is that one is suspended in the air, waiting for the ground to reappear so they can begin again. The gift of this space is the invitation to continue showing up to the blankness and the doubt with an ability to sit with ourselves in silence when no words can suffice.

One of my favorite quotes of call time is the epitome of this Holy Saturday of creative writing. Annie Dillard writes, “I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.” And that’s what we do; we stay with ourselves, our writing, and our creative shadow as an act of faith in what will come next.

The third day is Easter Sunday, the representation of resurrection, of rising from the ashes, of arriving on the other side of creative wounding, self-doubt, and the dark night of the soul until we finally see the light at the end of the creative tunnel. This is the day you break through to an idea, clarity, compassion, and gratitude. This is when you look back at those sacred writing days of suffering and doubt and see that it was all worth it. I want to clarify: this third day isn’t about an arrival or an ending but your creative evolution. We do not go through these three days only once, but rather cyclically. I believe that every creative endeavor that asks us of something truly transformational will take us through this three-phase cycle again, and again, and again.

Which phase are you in now? Have you known any of these cycles so far? Wherever you are in your process, I hope you know that this journey of uncovering our voice, truth, and creative longing is sacred. I am on the road with you dear friend. 

Keep on keeping on.

Love, Megan

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