Writers pour so much energy into their craft that sometimes we forget that creative pursuits other than writing can fill us up in other important ways. Here, we’ll look at what writers do when they aren’t writing, and how those pursuits affect the return to the page. This month, Kate Kaminski and Karen DeBonis contemplate how the visual and tactile—whether watching films, making clothes, or people-watching—help percolate creativity for a return to the page.
I’m probably supposed to say I read but as an avid, lifelong film lover (and full disclosure, a former professor
of filmmaking and an indie filmmaker for over thirty years), my default “go to” for a creative boost is moving picture storytelling, whether it’s watching a film, episodic television or browsing YouTube. My other main method for refilling my creative tank is to go outside and walk every day. I generally tend toward urban walks because of proximity, and the better to people watch, but I also love walking in cemeteries and the woods. Moving my limbs and taking in my surroundings immediately engages my internal storytelling machine even when nothing winds up on the page. Walking is meditative and can very often bring ideas I didn’t know I was brewing out of the depths and into consciousness.
I started out as a novelist and very soon after went to film school thinking I would become a screenwriter. I did learn screenwriting, but I quickly turned toward producing and directing as well. Whether I’m writing a film, story, or novel, I’m obsessed with thinking about how images shape a story, and I never tire of analyzing how that process functions in my own work. I’m always considering how big and small decisions create my story through image making.
I’m not somebody who writes every day unless I’m “in” a project (or have set myself a deadline for whatever reason), so all of my noodling, as I call it, is grist for my story mill. It’s hard to describe what generates that burst of energy that moves me to the computer and to starting to fill the blank page, but it feels alchemical, as if I’ve finally gathered all the right ingredients and I’m ready to begin.
Kate Kaminski
As a child, I wouldn’t be found writing stories at the kitchen table or dreaming up poetry as I lay in bed. I was a tactile creator—designing ensembles for my paper dolls, helping my mother bake bread and desserts, drawing, gluing, painting, crafting. At ten, I hand-sewed tiny felt fruit arrangements to sit on bars of soap in my grandmother’s bathroom soap dishes. Because whose soap is not elevated by a Lilliputian pear or a banana smaller than a pinky?
I was nine when I got my first child-size sewing machine for Christmas. Paper dolls were for babies now that I had the means to sew Barbie clothes. By twelve, I was using Mom’s big machine to sew skirts and simple tops. At my Catholic school one dress-up day (the first Friday of every month), my best friend Kathy Weil and I wore trendy 1970’s maxi skirts we had sewn, and Sister Sylvester sent us home. Perhaps we showed too much ankle?
Hems rose and styles evolved as I sewed through young adulthood and into motherhood. Writing was a skill, useful for business correspondence and reports. Otherwise, it had no appeal.
Until I had a story to tell.
When my son Matthew was eleven, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. That alone was a life-altering event. The real story, however, was his three-year deterioration, the medical gaslighting, my inability to advocate for him as he needed. That tale needed to be told, and sewing wouldn’t cut it. Like it or not, I had to turn to words.
I studied and practiced my new craft on and off for two decades while my sewing machine aged beyond repair and eventually died.
Finally, in May 2023, my goal became a reality when Apprentice House Press released my memoir Growth: A Mother, Her Son, and the Brain Tumor They Survived. Marketing consumed me until the fall of 2024, when my drive for exposure crumpled like a shitty first draft tossed in the trashcan. If I guested on one more podcast, if I promoted one more event, if I wrote one more essay or newsletter, I’d collapse.
Writing had served its purpose, but now I hated the very thought of it, and was I even a writer if that were true?
Enter my new Singer Heavy Duty 4452, a gift from my husband. Like a siren, the machine’s promise sucked me in, and I spent blissful hours in a state of flow, making napkins and table runners, mending and “upcycling” clothes, and sewing newborn outfits for my expected first grandchild.
The unexpected reward: I found purpose again in writing. Sewing gives me joy, but it can’t teach me about myself the way bleeding on the page can. Typing out my thoughts clarifies my truth. It opens my eyes to who I am—the good and the bad, the vulnerable and the inspiring, the ways I am unique and yet so fully human.
For now, I’m an occasional writer, a moniker that feels right and true. When sewing and other tactile activities have exhausted me, I can return to writing with a quieter mind, ready to find meaning in my words, ready to create, ready to stitch ideas into purposeful prose.
Karen DeBonis
Kate Kaminski is a writer and award-winning indie filmmaker. She has a master’s degree in film production from Boston University and has taught fiction writing, screenwriting, filmmaking and film studies at the college level. She and her partner live and make films in southern Maine.
Karen DeBonis, author of the memoir Growth: A Mother, Her Son, and the Brain Tumor They Survived, writes about motherhood, people-pleasing, and personal growth. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, and numerous mainstream and literary journals. You can see more of her work at www.karendebonis.com.
Curated by Jen Dupree