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—Shawna Borman and Kristine Snow Millard—who turn to drawing and home improvement to get their creativity flowing.
What fills you up creatively when you’re not writing? If you’d like to contribute an essay to the Writers on Not Writing series, email jen@mastersreview.com. We can’t wait to hear from you!
As with many writers, when I’m not writing, I’m usually reading. But reading is work too, more often than not. I read thirty-five to forty books a year and twelve to fifteen of them are for me to review. There’s usually a craft book or two thrown in there somewhere so I can feel like I’m keeping up with the technical side of writing (I’m not). And most of the rest are quickly forgotten. It’s rare for me to get into a book enough that I become obsessed and make it my whole personality for a week (longer if it’s a series), but when it does happen, it’s wonderful. So, like so many readers, I keep going in search of that next high.
Hobbies in general are hit and miss with me. I cycle back and forth between teaching myself to crochet and teaching myself to draw. There’re usually a few years between each cycle, then I buy all the stuff to do whichever one is calling to me, do nothing else for a couple of months, then quit mid-project because I hate when I become obsessive with things. That’s why I haven’t tried picking up actual gaming again. Mostly, I’m content to play a handful of mindless games that give me a chance to shut my brain down for a while each day. Does it stop me from thinking about writing? Nope. But it allows me to slow down those thoughts so I have a better chance of working through problems and plot holes without getting frustrated.
For me, the only thing that really fills my creative coffers is talking to the voices in my head. No, I don’t mean just talking to myself. It’s going to sound like I’m crazy, but when I’m at a point where I’m happy (or at least not super stressed and/or depressed), characters and voices come into my mind and I talk to them or put them in various scenarios with other voices until they become character material. I don’t think in pictures, so it’s much easier for my creativity to come through words. I’ve never been one for talking to actual people to spitball ideas, so I go to the source, so to speak. Sometimes, the characters aren’t even my own. On those rare occasions I become obsessed with a book, my favorite characters come live in my head for a while and I try to figure out what’s going to happen or even tell myself full on fanfic stories based around them. Those never see a keyboard, but they do help make me feel creative again.
If I’m being honest, stress and depression have been muffling the voices in my head, so writing has been a rarity lately. But I’ll keep trying until the voices and the spark comes back. That’s all we can do. Keep trying.
Shawna Borman
I am on a stepladder in the living room of our 1865 Victorian home in Cornish, Maine. A rattling wallpaper steamer hisses at my feet. Starting at the top corner of the outside wall, I reach up, then press the wood-handled steamer plate onto the forest green flowered wall. Plate in my left hand, I work the scraper with my right. Only one layer lurks beneath the surface of vinyl. It is the color of a paper lunch bag, with faint pale blue lines. Both layers come off in large swaths and flutter to the plastic-covered floor. Soggy wallpaper debris slides down the paths of sweat on my legs, interrupted briefly at the top of my well-worn work boots. My muscles and mind are a force, strong and able and focused. I am determined to get the job done. The daily machine rental rate is fifteen dollars. I am on day three.
This isn’t my first encounter with aged wallpaper and a scalding hot steamer. I am a project person, buoyed by a handy and patient husband. I have steamed dozens of walls, repaired plaster damage ranging from little spider cracks to gaping gashes, skimmed joint compound over porous walls and the taped joints of smooth sheetrock. My writing comes from my heart and mind. In a whole different way, home repairs are executed with both body and brain.
Perhaps the home improvement avocation goes back to childhood, when I handed nails to my father as he put the roof on a simple boathouse at our summer camp on a New Hampshire lake. He bought the property when such purchases were manageable, even on an Episcopal priest’s small salary. He built a house and I was born our first summer there. A decade or so later, Dad outfitted my younger sister and me with pine toolboxes he cut and hammered together himself. Jenni and I sat shirtless, like our father, pounding nails through tarpaper high above the sheen of the water.
Today, five decades and several house renovations later, my time making repairs is an output of physical energy and an input of
inspiration. My big box store stepladder is sturdy as I work, a support for my moving shoulders and arms and a foundation for thoughts both fleeting and insistent. Hours of sweating under a steamer, or under the dust of crumbled plaster, or under a paint roller on a wobbly pole, both exhaust and invigorate me. Words and phrases come to me while my muscles become sore, almost to the point of quivering.
Our living room is finished now. So is the dining room. I’ve pulled torn sheets of wallpaper down in one bathroom and the next task is, yet again, climbing the ladder with the steamer in hand. I am excited to embark on another adventure.
The effort that home renovations require complement my writing time. Sitting in front of the smooth screen of my laptop, hands on the keyboard, is a different sort of labor. But I am energized, and the words and phrases and ideas that come to me while I exert my body are there for me to ponder, to maneuver, to discard or keep. With the steamer, the scraper, the joint compound, and the paint, I aim to restore beauty. And later, with the ideas that come to me while I exert my body, I hope to create it.
Kristine Snow Millard
Shawna Borman holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program. Though she dabbles in all genres, her true love is horror. Whether dealing with your average socially awkward serial killer or an angel/demon/mortal hybrid entering the terrible teens, Shawna is most at ease visiting with the voices in her head. She resides in Texas with her father and three tiny hellhounds. For more information and links to her social media profiles, please visit www.snborman.com.
Kristine Snow Millard writes creative nonfiction in the western Maine town of Cornish. She received her MFA from the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast MFA Program in 2016. Her work has been published in the anthology Into Sanity: Essays about Mental Health, Mental Illness and the Spaces In Between, the New Guard Literary Review and other publications. She is currently working on a memoir about the intersection of mental health and diet culture. Kris has twice been a resident at the Hewnoaks Artists Residency and is a recipient of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Martin Dibner Fellowship. When she isn’t writing she enjoys walking her dogs, knitting, and tackling home improvement projects with her husband, Jim.