Quiet

(And two new programs I'm excited about)

At some point my youngest daughter decided to become a stealth wall artist. She’d disappear, all would be calm, and then you’d stumble upon her writing “I LOVE MOM HEART” in sharpie on our hallway wall (at least she’s too young to get drunken tattoos). She’s at the age where neither bribes nor threats seem to make much of an impact, and so we have cohabitated in a space where the bottom three feet of many, many walls have some kind of marking for the past year or so, and it makes me crazy.

So a few weeks ago Jim took the kids to their grandparents, and I shook out some tarps and I started to paint preschool-level accent walls.

When the paint had dried and our (adorable) family photos from yesteryear were back on the wall, I looked at the sharp edge between the orange and white and realized that it made my brain feel quiet—a way it really hasn’t felt since at least November.

External quiet

I did an exercise with my writers’ circles a few weeks ago where I had them visualize the last time that writing felt good: generative, easy, productive. And to my surprise, person after person simply described quiet: a long block of time where the default was to write, and that time was protected and honored. No meetings, no other expectations, no sneaking away to write. Just space, a routine, and time (in the morning, mostly) to create words. One person talked about an archival fellowship where the expectation was to work in the archives, with documents, for much of the day. Another person talked about a Fulbright where she had afternoon responsibilities but the mornings were just set aside to write. The stuff dreams are made of.

On the microlevel, external quiet is also figuring how to silence everything else that needs your attention: emails and to-do lists and social media and doom scrolling and looking at how much it would cost to move to rural Italy (I’m not the only one googling “crumbling villas with great wifi”).

Internal quiet

I wrote before that painting my hallway made my brain feel quiet. That’s a hard thing to do! Even when I have managed to reduce all of the external stimuli to a minimum, it can be hard to keep my brain quiet enough to keep focus on the task in front of me. Sometimes, my brain starts making other lists. Or suggest I call my senators (I have Chuck and Kirsten on speed dial!) Or remind me of that super awkward conversation I had three months ago. Or recite verbatim the last mean thing a reviewer wrote, so really, why write at all?

What I mean here is that even when I find my way to crawl into a space of quiet…it’s loud.

Cultivating quiet

None of us exist in a frictionless world—and I don’t want to. I like having a noisy, frenetic life because it also has a lot of color and texture and love and interesting things to think about and do.

Please don’t think this is an argument that all of us need to have our own version of Walden Pond or there’s no way for writing to happen. My writing teacher Janelle Hanchett always reminds us of this Toni Morrison quote: “My older son was barely walking, and he spit up on the [paper]. … I wrote around the puke because I figured I could always wipe that away, but I might not get that sentence again.” And I mean, sometimes you write around the puke…but sometimes you say “welp, writing can happen tomorrow! Let’s cuddle and watch some Bluey.”

The noisiness (internal and external) is my default state. Which means quiet isn’t going to just come to me. And while I can carve out REAL WRITING EXPERIENCES that replicate some of that quiet (you can still come to France with us!), the truth is that I also need to actively insist on quiet into my real life to get anything meaningful done.

A lot of the things that make my brain feel quiet are hard: clean floors, crisp paint lines, two hours where there will be no interruption. But it’s worth fighting for those things, I think—to find your version of quiet, and to think about how to nurture and protect it so that the writing can happen.

Next week, I’ll write about community—until then, write all of the words, and give your brain space to be quiet, even if just for a little while.

xoxo,

Kelly

What’s Going on Around Here

**New! So You Want to Finish (or Make a Lot of Progress) Your Book? An Advanced Book Writing Workshop. I’m so excited about this— a year-long, monthly workshop for folks with more advanced book manuscripts. One part troubleshooting/ accountability, one part advanced topics in book writing. We’ll start in May. Details here, register here.

**New! A (very rare) summer Writers’ Circle. I almost always just host two writers’ circles a year—in the spring and the fall, but my sense is that people are in need of some community this year, so I’m going to host a very rare summer workshop in May and June. AND, by popular demand, there will be space for writing built into our meetings: so we’ll talk about writing, and then actually do it. Details here, register here.

Not new, but would still love to have you!

France 2025: An exciting (and fleeting!) announcement: Mirya and I are hosting a very small writing retreat in the wine country in France from July 1-6, 2025. It’s so small we didn’t even advertise it, but—we just had one spot become available. If you’re interested, email me for details. It will be magical, and give you something to dream about as you trudge through the next few months. Email me for more details.

ApWriMo 2025! April 1-11, with a mini writing retreat April 4. You know about AcWriMo—experience our second (third?) annual ApWriMo. Write every day for 10 days, take a break, feel great about the summer starting. Register here, and I’ll send more details. Free!

So You Want to Write A Book?: Two spots left! A unique hybrid workshop dedicated to supporting writers throughout their book writing journey. Start with a new cohort in May! Enjoy discounted registration/early bird pricing through February 15. This year’s cohort just had our January meeting, and it was SO MUCH FUN! Such smart people doing cool projects. Come join us in May! More info here, Register here

Editing: I’m accepting new projects to edit in 2025! My editing calendar fills up three-to-six months in advance, so if you have something you’re hoping to get edited, this is a great time to chat about it.

You can see all of what we’re doing in 2025 here.