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—Shannon Bowring and Mariana Serapicos—one who has taken up birdwatching to calm her mind and the other whose dance practice has translated into the kind of discipline writing requires.
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!
Just before my thirty-sixth birthday, my new therapist suggested that the mental turmoil I have endured my entire life may go beyond my pre-diagnosed PTSD, anxiety, and depression. “What do you know about obsessive-compulsive disorder?” she asked. In the months since, I have learned about rumination, perfectionism and reassurance seeking, urges to perform rituals that will guarantee safety—traits I have spent nearly four decades believing were inherent and debilitating personality quirks.
One way to combat this inner torment is to throw my energy into words, disappearing into fictional worlds and characters of my own making. When writing doesn’t alleviate distress, I turn my attention toward something else: Birds.
As I sit outside with the birds who frequent my backyard, my inner clamor quiets against the chorus of songs, chirps, and calls. Knowing there’s no chance of controlling how the birds act or whether they will even show up, the only thing I need to do—the only thing I can do—is keep still, listen, and watch.
Mourning doves chase each other around the seed pile, tiny heads bobbing indignantly. From her perch in the hemlock, a blue jay scans the ground for the perfect peanut. The fledgling grey catbird hurls his loud opinion from the roof of the shed as his parents work the suet nearby. Bluebirds and robins flash their painted bellies. A ruby-throated hummingbird zips to the feeder for a slake of sugar water. One block away, in the tallest pine, a crow sends a warning cry to her family, cautioning against incoming grackles; on the ground, in the dirt, my beloved and rarely-spotted Northern Flicker pecks for ants. Sparrows splash in pollen-whirled puddles. Parents feed their babies, open mouths begging. Birds I will likely never see call out from high, leafy castles—red-eyed vireos, American redstarts, warblers on their migration elsewhere.
If I sit for long enough, my brain and nervous system ease from the usual relentless strain. Negative thoughts still hammer at the door, but the noise of their fists is muffled. When I’m lucky, I can reach a state calm enough to invite creative thought—writerly wanderings and ponderings free from the personal judgment I often inflict upon them.
The birds remind me of the writing process itself. The chimney swifts darting above the trees are the ephemeral ideas for stories that hover, always, just beyond reach. The unexpected arrival of a Baltimore oriole, breast shining in the sun, is the miraculous bolt of a fully formed and perfect sentence. The incessant cries of the baby starlings are the revisions I have been putting off. Even the act of waiting for the birds, wondering who will show up, feels like an extension of writing—that courageous, onerous task of sitting at the desk to see what words, if any, will deign to arrive.
Inside my mind, there are so many voices arguing, mumbling, whimpering, demanding to be heard. Sometimes I can re-orchestrate this discord into the voices of fictional characters. Other times, only my feathered wonders will do. I sit under the trees, and my internal dialogue hushes to make way for a greater symphony, one that ripples from branches and rooftops and the rounded vault of sky. The birds sing. I listen. I stay still. And suddenly, right in front of me, there it is: A flutter of life. A flicker of joy.
Shannon Bowring
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t dance. My mum tells me I learned how to walk before I crawled, so desperate was I to be on my feet. There are videos of me mimicking my dad’s moves as a toddler, trying to follow his steps as he danced. At the age of five, I became obsessed with ballerinas; I wanted the shoes, the tutu and the inherent grace they possessed.
My mum, however, always found a way of directing me towards a different modality: “Have you tried tap?” she’d suggest, worried that the discipline imbued in classical dance would be a much too perfect match for someone who minded authority as I did. She was worried that such a rigorous approach would remove the joy of the activity itself. I obeyed her between the ages of six and eighteen by adventuring into contemporary and jazz. As an adult, I did finally go en pointe, fulfilling my childhood dream.
Like writing, dance has been a constant in my life. I would find my way to the barre just like I made time to put pen to paper as soon as I learned how to write. Lately, I have to carve out time to write an essay or a story because of life’s daily demands and the limited time I have on my hands. I squeeze in a hundred words at lunch break and another hundred after work, and, like stretching, it becomes an everyday practice.
For a flawless step, one must recap the same movement over and over again, repeating a choreography until it is burned in your mind. My dance teacher calls a sequence a sentence, and I understand why. Practicing dégagés increases speed and articulation, it builds muscle memory for jumping and landing. When I write, I try to keep that in mind.
I have accepted that a paragraph won’t be polished at the start, that transitions won’t be smooth, and the pace won’t be quite right. That’s the beauty of the second, third and fourth drafts, it’s a reminder that it takes practice to achieve that triple pirouette.
Dancing is not only the moments on stage or the clapping at the end, but also the work you put in beforehand. Likewise, writing is not just the word count, it’s the idle moments when my mind wanders, it’s the snippets of conversations that I hear, it’s every moment of the day, it’s in the dreams that come to me when I’m asleep, it’s becoming sensitive to the textures of things. One must develop a porous skin to allow stories to seep in.
Dancing is also storytelling; its themes can be expressed with the swing of a leg. The movements and the shapes I create are rich with meaning; they are their own language, and they defy the arc of a conventional narrative.
Dancing challenges my thinking; it throws me on the ground (quite literally). I test my body and discover my limits; it takes my mind places I don’t usually visit. On that linoleum floor, I find myself present in body and spirit.
In class, we are asked to focus on the direction of our eyes, to ask ourselves what space we occupy, and where we will land our gaze. We are encouraged to avoid giving a blank stare, a look that doesn’t say anything, that doesn’t inform our movements. I reflect on that as I stare at the empty page and ask myself all the questions required to convey an interior world through words. Five, six, seven, eight, five, six, seven eight.
Mariana Serapicos
Shannon Bowring’s award-winning work has appeared in numerous journals and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. Some of her recent short fiction can be found in North American Review and a forthcoming issue of the Sewanee Review. Shannon’s The Dalton Novels trilogy, published by Europa Editions, has been recognized by Kirkus Reviews, Publisher’s Weekly, Indie Next, NPR, and Oprah’s Best list. The first book in the series, The Road to Dalton, received a Kirkus Starred Review and won the Maine Literary Book Award for Fiction.
Shannon was born and raised in Northern Maine and now resides in the mid-coast region of the state. After over a decade working in public libraries, she has recently shifted her focus fully to writing and freelance editing. In her spare time, she can be found reading, rewatching her favorite shows, feeding the crows and squirrels who visit her backyard, and cuddling with her many-toed, three-toothed cat, Rosie.
Mariana Serapicos is a Brazilian writer and filmmaker based in London, publishing work across both fiction and nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in Scribble literary magazine, Tint Journal, and Electric Lit. In 2023, her essay “Nine Lives” was featured in the Hear Our Stories anthology, published by Victorina Press. Between swims and strong cups of coffee, she reflects on the quieter moments of life in her Substack newsletter, The Rest is Memory.