Friday Speak Out!: My Writing Life

by Nancy Hayes Kilgore

How do you structure your writing life? Do you write every day? Do you get up at 6 and write all morning? Do you have a special room, quiet and serene? People ask me these questions, assuming that because I am “a writer” and even have the nerve to teach a writing class, I must have it down – the right way to do it.

But my answer usually comes out in hems and haws and hedges. Because I don’t write every day. I don’t write at the same time or in the same place. My writing life is a series of fits and starts – days of feeling unworthy and completely inept, days of worrying about deadlines and procrastinating until the last minute, and then, a ha! days of actual writing.

I do a lot of wandering around my garden, sitting in my living room and gazing out the window, driving through the Vermont countryside, staring at a river, looking at the sky.

Sky-gazing. That seems to be one of my best writing methods. Not exactly meditation, but a kind of meditation where I am free, my mind is open like the sky, a place where clouds can drift or birds can fly and the atmosphere can nurture the non-thoughts that coalesce into words.

Needless to say, I am not a person who churns out a book a year. And I used to feel guilty about that. But my identity is not only as “a writer.” I have lived in different places, had different professions, have a variety of relationships and ways of meandering through the world. Writing is a way to bring my unique experience into view, and, whether I write every day or once a week, my writing life, undisciplined as it is, is one part of my own rhythm.

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Nancy Hayes Kilgore, a writer and psychotherapist, is the winner of the Vermont Writers Prize 2016. Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her first novel, SEA LEVEL, was a ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year. Formerly a parish pastor, Nancy leads workshops on writing and spirituality for clergy, therapists, and writers throughout the U.S. She lives in Vermont with her husband, a painter. Her new novel, Wild Mountain, comes out October 1st from Green Writers Press. Find her online at nancykilgore.com.
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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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