How to Make Space for Creative Work—Lee S. Kohman

How to Write Poetry Series

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By Lee S. Kohman

My husband once asked me what I would do if I had a day to myself. Without hesitation, I answered, “My perfect day would be a week of reading and writing in a beautiful place.” A few years removed from that conversation, I stand by my answer. 

My perfect day? Let’s make that a week, please. 

Even as an extrovert, alone time is absolutely alluring, largely due to its relative scarcity in my current season of life. I am a homeschool mother to three elementary-age girls and a writer—by which I simply mean: someone who writes (mostly poetry). 

Educating my daughters means near-constant company; and writing, at least for my brain, requires solitude, or something akin to it. So how does one blend relationships, responsibilities, and art? 

I was hoping you would tell me. Nope? Ok sure, I’ll go first. But let it be known from the outset that I do not have this figured out. I am just a fellow traveler continuing to consider how to find and form more creative pauses in my life, for the sake of writing, yes, but also for the sake of living. I long to grow increasingly awake to the truth and beauty God has embedded in every speck of dirt tracked in and out of our comings and goings. Writing forces me to slow down enough to see more of the wonders I’m prone to pass by, which is perhaps the deepest reason I do it.

In an effort then to do a bit more, let’s treat ourselves to a slice of POETRY pie: 

Persist in the pockets

Open windows to inspiration 

Expect setbacks 

Travel with others 

Resist comparison 

Your life is art 

We’ll take each in turn.

Step One: Persist in the Pockets

Trial, error, and self-awareness can help to find our roomiest pockets in the hours of any day. 

I’ve experimented with becoming an early morning or late evening writer, and thus far it hasn’t panned out, at least in any regular fashion. I’m not usually fully awake when my kids start trickling downstairs (greeting me with “What are we having for breakfast?”), and by evening, my energy has dwindled enough that I’ll almost always opt to hang out with my husband or read.

This is why finding pockets for creative work takes persistence. There is always something else that needs your time and attention.

Since my most productive hours are given to my primary vocation—my kids’ schooling, I incorporate my art by sprinkling healthy portions of poetry into our days. Most mornings before leaving the breakfast table, we read a Psalm and a poem. We regularly memorize and recite poetry together too. (Two family favorites are The Duck by Ogden Nash and Winter-Time by Robert Louis Stevenson.) Reading excellent picture books and novels allows us to continue feasting on beautiful language, and sometimes I lead my kids in a bite-sized poetry lesson. So far, we’ve tried haikus and written our own versions of What is Pink? by Christina Rosetti. 

My largest pocket of margin comes in the afternoon during my kids’ “rest” time. Nobody naps anymore, and “rest” doesn’t quite capture what happens, but the key is that the kids are in their room for an hour or so. Sometimes they listen to audiobooks and it is actually quiet (cue the hallelujahs!), but more often than not they’re playing, which is accompanied by a fair amount of noise and the occasional sibling squabble, leading to cries for my immediate intervention. This is where persistence comes in! I aim to devote at least part of their rest time to honing my craft, though that occurs only about half of the time, as that segment of the day is prime time for a slew of other tasks. 

Step Two: Open Windows to Inspiration

Inspiration is literally everywhere! Sometimes lines that get built into poems appear in my head like little gifts. I might be listening to music while preparing dinner, stepping outside to clip some flowers, or laying my head on the pillow at night, and there they’ll be!—a few fragrant words that seem to want to cozy up together. I jot down ideas as they come, usually in my phone’s Notes app. 

My brain won’t always just do my bidding, so I have to help it out, which, for me, often involves getting outside. Nature fires my wayward synapses with a gently caressing breeze. Even if I just stand or stroll through my yard (a place generously endowed with growing, chirping, and buzzing things) almost instantly I stop taking myself too seriously and remember what I’m woefully prone to forget: I am small and relatively insignificant. The fresh air and bird flight make me more receptive and less introspective. The pressure eases, and, when it’s time, I return to creating with renewed permission to play (and maybe a few good words that sailed in on the breeze). 

Walking also works wonders, though I do it primarily for pleasure and exercise. My brain makes connections and sorts out puzzles much more readily when I move. Solvitur ambulando—a Latin phrase often attributed to Augustine meaning “it is solved by walking”—is written on an index card that hangs by my desk. When I get stuck, those two words (plus a bad stick-figure drawing of a person walking) gently nudge me to avail myself of some physical activity. We’re not only artists when we hold the pen in hand but we can move through the world with an artist’s gaze, collecting seeds for later sowing. 

Cultivating attention and noticing the note-worthy things have become habits, thanks in large part to poetry. My senses rest in a ready state. Several weeks ago my family and I were back in the U.S., and I began a poem inspired by the elegant austerity of trees losing their last leaves. It had to be set aside before it became a proper poem, but the ideas continued their work in my subconscious, heightening the poignancy of a hymn we sang at church a few days later called “Signs of Endings All Around Us”. I kept the bulletin with its lyrics, and they might just contain what my poem-in-progress needs. 

Step Three: Expect Setbacks

Sickness, family emergencies, kids’ behavior or academic struggles, grief, etc. will intrude into our pretty plans. Chronic low back issues often knock at my door, even though I’ve communicated in no uncertain terms how very unwelcome they are. Pain can get loud; appointments and physical therapy are time-consuming, but expecting interlopers can help keep us from being thrown too far off course. 

We all have days and weeks when, for whatever reason, we just don’t have the right words, or our loved ones need more of us, leaving little to no margin. It can be hard to be a kind, understanding boss to oneself, especially in the midst of a relatively unproductive stretch. I’m slowly learning the art of self-compassion. Beating myself up doesn’t feel good, nor does it lead to artistic breakthroughs. 

When my family and I moved to Kenya in 2022, I didn’t write a single poem for five months. That’s almost half a year. And I’d only been writing consistently for a little over a year before that, so it was a pretty new, and therefore fragile, habit. I knew such a huge transition would slow my writing down, but at times I wondered if I would ever click away at the keys again. 

Suffice it to say that setbacks of various kinds will be our companions on this journey of finding and forming creative pauses. We needn’t like those ornery things, but we can anticipate their occasional stopping by. And, we need to keep the faith that better writing days are ahead. In the words of my girls and their friends during a game of ladder golf: “Always keep hope! Never lose hope!” (This was chanted in an unceasing loop for thirty minutes, so I haven’t forgotten it.)

Step Four: Travel With Others

I’m so glad I joined the community over at The Habit a couple of years back (thanks, Jonathan Rogers et al.!). I still remember working up the courage to share a poem on the forum. It was nerve-wracking to put a piece of my soul online for the perusal of my peers—near-strangers, really—but thankfully big-hearted ones. Their kindness and interest in my words blew me away, and now I dish out big hunks of my soul to them all the time! 

A few of these same Habit members started a poetry group and invited me (because I had shared the aforementioned poem), and for the last couple of years, we have collaborated on a monthly basis. We each post a poem in progress and work together to refine them online. Then we cap it all off with a Zoom meeting during which we read our poems aloud and give and receive final feedback. Hearing my friends read their poems—in their own lovely cadence—is just the best. 

These people helped me believe that I was actually a poet, not just someone trying to write poems. Ever since linking arms with them, my writing has grown by leaps and bounds. Their friendship is an endless source of encouragement, as is their incredible writing and the generous feedback they give to mine. Traveling with others provides the accountability I need to keep writing, and their company makes the journey a lot more enjoyable. 

Step Five: Resist Comparision

With who? With your writer friends, of course. I primarily have in mind the times I have doubted myself when I think I need to apply all the advice of professional writers to really be a writer. I learned a lot from Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft as well as Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, but when I start feeling like I need to replicate their schedule, then in stomps discouragement, clad in boots. 

In A Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L’Engle writes about how she learned to seize inspiration by writing furiously whenever it strikes. Thus far, my best poems have arisen when I’ve been able to squeeze the juice from fresh ideas. But that’s not a realistic way for me to write most of the time. So, I have to resist comparing my writing life to hers, even when the advice is solid. 

I’m currently cherishing an idyllic vision of some future-Me who takes a long walk each dewy morning, then returns to her porch to sip coffee while writing beauties to birdsong at break-of-day. (I am Mary Oliver in this vision, by the way.) That is not my life right now. Would it hurt to attempt to become a little more Oliver-esque in my morning ritual? Why, not at all. As long as I embrace the mornings that look a little more Kohman-esque, whether writing on the porch occurs or not. Those blessed birds will still chorus, and I can continue learning from the prolifically poetic. The key is to keep running faithfully in the lane assigned for my race, dropping that weight known as comparison. 

Step Six: Your Life is Art

Life is not the big, bad barrier to our writing, but is itself, a story God is writing. Writing is just one way to live better, one way to remember to lean into our season, love our people, and offer it all to our Maker. 

And the setbacks? They’re sent. When I look back on last year, with all the growing pains of adjusting to living cross-culturally and the exacerbation of back pain, I see that it wasn’t wasted. The pains were a part of the labor that birthed words more honest and searching than I’ve written before. More important than what we write, the joys and challenges of our lives are bearing us into a poiema, to the praise of the author of us all. 

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I’ve yet to realize my perfect day of a week alone to read and write in a cottage overlooking Banff National Park in autumn (the dream has gained in specificity). 

But you know what? The view right here is pretty good too. Maybe I could relax my requirements a bit and plan for a long weekend. Come to think of it, I think I’ll bring a friend. Who’s in?

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Formerly inhabiting Durham, NC, Lee recently moved to Nairobi, Kenya with her husband and three daughters. She teaches her beautiful girls at home and enjoys glimmers of God through nature, stories, friendship, and chasing words onto the page. She loves to laugh and make merry and participates regularly in some seriously silly antics. Her work has recently appeared in Heart of Flesh Literary Journal.

Photo by Tami Mitchell on Unsplash