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, we hear from two writers—Barbara Sargent and Karen Levine Egee—who both find ways to take care of their surroundings and themselves when not writing.
What fills you up creatively when you’re not writing? If you’d like to contribute to the Writers on Not Writing series, email jen@mastersreview.com. We can’t wait to hear from you!
I’m sure many of you have experienced the utter joy of rearranging furniture and deep cleaning a room. Honestly, it’s like inheriting a whole new space without the cost. Suddenly, the hutch looks brand new in that corner. And the newly laundered curtains and washed windows add so much more brightness to the room.
I love writing. I love crafting thoughtful emails, I regularly write letters to my family and friends, I take special pride in the newsletters I generate for the organizations I’m connected to, it’s a privilege to hunker down and work on a story, and I’ll edit just about anything! Still, the chance to rearrange a room, to do the type of cleaning that happens seasonally—or even once or twice a year—and wind up with a new and beautiful space, tempts me from my writing every time. Paradoxically, I’ve come to realize that this temptation isn’t actually a distraction from my writing, but an essential part of it.
To be clear, I’m not talking about weekly cleaning. Not regular vacuuming, tidying, and laundry. I’m referring to the type of cleaning that happens when you take the Christmas tree down and put away the decorations. The type of cleaning that happens when your amazing adult son moves into his own apartment and you get to completely rethink his space. When the first whiff of spring hits and you’re feeling the need to lighten your life and your home. That type of cleaning.
The practice of rethinking a space. Considering what other furniture might work better in this room. Relocating family photos, plants, lamps, chairs and more into a new zip code of your home. This is the creative opportunity that calls me from writing every time. Yet, it’s frighteningly close to the interior design version of copy editing. One deals with words on a page, and the other deals with furniture in a room. And at their core, both practices share the exact same mission: taking an existing space and making it functional, beautiful, and comfortable for the person using it.
When you rethink a space, you move furniture away from walls which prompts the need to vacuum more thoroughly, clear cobwebs from ceiling corners, and dust like crazy. Then, you consider where else this furniture piece might work. On a different wall? Kitty-corner? (Oh, I can feel my family rolling their eyes.) In a different room? Some of my best design decisions came from using a low dresser in a dining room to store linens and special serving pieces or repurposing a lamp or bookshelf in a new room. As my hands are busy lifting and polishing, my mind is unexpectedly liberated; it’s during these physical tasks that my writing snags suddenly untangle themselves.
Rearranging a room is not unlike the work of an editor who rearranges the paragraph structure so the reader can move effortlessly from one idea to the next. Or a copy editor who does the exact same thing with text, honing a sentence to eliminate filler words that crowd sentences. By clearing out the verbal (and visual) clutter, the core message actually stands out. A designer walks into a cluttered room and strips away items that don’t serve a purpose—the oversized faux plant, redundant side tables, and knick-knacks collecting dust. In writing, we call this “killing your darlings”—purging those self-indulgent sentences that look pretty but block the flow of the narrative. Aligning throw pillows, adjusting the lighting, and surveying the space for uncluttered comfort serves the exact same designing purpose.
Deep cleaning leaves me with a visible sense of creative accomplishment. The space looks fresh. Welcoming. New. And, other than the time and sweat equity devoted to the work, there is no financial cost.
How, might you ask, does this relate to writing? To sit in a beautiful space that you alone have designed. To smell lemon furniture polish and beautifully scented candles. To settle into an environment that is uncluttered, fresh, and inviting can only inspire the type of new ideas that supports amazing writing. Ultimately, rearranging my room rearranges my mind, teaching me to look at the structure of my prose with fresher, sharper eyes.
Tell me now, wouldn’t that bookshelf look so much better against that wall?
Barbara Sargent
When I’m not writing, I’m having PMR. PMR is Polymyalgia Rheumatica—a lovely polysyllabic name of a not-very-lovely autoimmune disease that comes on with blinding speed.
To be clear, I do lots of other stuff, too: shop for food at Hannaford’s; walk our dog, Casco, in the woods; play pickleball; have happy hour on the deck with my husband, David; and even, on rare occasions, vacuum the house. But the impact of PMR on my life is what feeds my writing these days.
When I first started having symptoms—agonizing pain in my shoulders and hips (to the point where David had to help me dress)—I knew that some sort of ailment was brewing. But I also knew that some sort of writing was brewing, too. Both the symptoms and words came thick and fast, and I couldn’t stop them.
On one of the first mornings, I made it—with colossal effort—from the bedroom to the kitchen without waking David, and filled Casco’s dish as usual, on the counter, with his kibble. Casco watched, wagging his tail excitedly. But how was I going to get the dish onto the floor? My hips shrieked when I tried to bend. So did my arm when I tried to extend it. I finally just poured it onto the floor, scattering kibble all over. Casco had no problems with this, probably feeling it was a fun new game. As I watched him, his tail wagging with joy as he chased kibble under the sink, around the corner, onto the porch, I thought, “I bet I could write about this!”
Every morning, I fill in a Measures chart, recording my PMR stats by date, with entries for doses of prednisone (the steroid they treat me with), days at that dose, pain levels, and sleep hours. In the afternoons, the symptoms all but vanish. This pattern is a weird hallmark of PMR, but a blessing. Two afternoons a week, I go to the gym and fill in a Weights chart, recording my progress on a dozen machines as well as my PT exercises. One day, it dawned on me that writing “+10,” for example, on Weights when I went up ten pounds on a machine was a lot like writing “–10” on Measures when I went down ten mg on prednisone (the goal for prednisone doses is to taper downward). And I thought I could write about this! I even cooked up a good title—“Weights and Measures”—while deadlifting.
Not long after, when I’d created a plan to collect my PMR essays into a book, I met with my kindly young rheumatologist. PMR usually lasts two to five years, but the doctor, to my astonishment, proposed an unlikely best-case scenario for my prednisone tapering in which I could be done with PMR in just five months. For a moment, I was amazed and relieved, imagining I could be well so soon. But then I thought, “Hey, wait a minute. Five months? I can’t finish my book in five months! Five months won’t give me enough essays!”
Time will tell. For now, I continue to write and to keep busy with PMR, my unwanted collaborator.
Karen Levine Egee
Barbara Sargent is the proud Superintendent of Schools for the Hermon School Department in Maine. A former New Jersey educator and leader, Barbara is widely published in areas of best leadership practices and women’s leadership. Now settled into the rhythms of New England, she is thrilled to bring her passion for words, wisdom, and wit to the Maine landscape.
Karen Levine Egee is a retired child psychologist who writes to savor the good and figure out the rest. She lives on the coast of Maine with her husband and dog, four miles from her father. Her work has been published in The Brevity Blog, The Brevity Podcast, and Unbroken Journal.