A lot of artists who create for pleasure or as a hobby find themselves facing a creative blockage at some point (or many points) in their lives. We can’t quite find the answer to the question, “why can’t I seem to create right now?” Sometimes, we’re asking ourselves a variation on that same question: “is right now the right time to create this?”

For a long time, I’d internalized that piece of writing advice that often gets doled out: “write every day.” While that advice does have some underlying merit, it also made me feel guilty whenever I fell short of that goal. Sometimes, I’d go for weeks without writing, and I felt like a failure for not living up to those expectations. I tried to figure out a writing routine to help me stick to my goals, and some months that plan worked, but other months it absolutely did not.

I finally figured out that my writing routine—or any creative routine, really—was heavily affected by the creative season I was in.