Field Notes From a Writing Life: The Invisible Work

Reflections on the parts of writing that don't look like writing

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
— Mary Oliver

Lately, I’ve been thinking about all the ways a writing life unfolds when we are not writing.

For years, I measured my days by visible progress. Pages written. Poems revised. Submissions sent. Workshops planned. If I wasn’t actively producing something, I often felt as though I were drifting away from the work.

I’m not so sure anymore.

Some of my most important writing hours now happen when I am nowhere near my desk.

They happen while walking through the garden in the early morning. While baking something that requires patience and attention. While reading a poem slowly enough to notice how it moves. While sitting on the porch with a notebook closed beside me.

Nothing measurable is occurring in these moments. No word count increases. No draft appears. No project advances.

And yet something is happening.

Attention is being restored.

The mind begins to quiet.

The senses wake up.

A phrase arrives unexpectedly. An image resurfaces. A question that has been hovering just beyond reach takes a step closer.

For a long time, I thought these moments were interruptions to the work. Increasingly, I wonder if they are part of the work itself.

Not because everything is writing. It isn’t.

But because writing depends on more than writing.