When I get stuck in my writing, I sing. I am in a blues band called Last of the RedHot Mamas, and every so often I trade my laptop for a mic.
Writing occupies my mind, mostly, though it suffuses my whole body with longing. Singing reaches into the diaphragm, the sternum, the back of the throat. Blues refuses the polish I chase in prose: It circles the same three chords, states the wound plainly, and lets the room answer back. There is no revision. Whatever leaves my throat is the final draft.
I come back to my desk with my body reset—looser jaw, slower breath, a truer sense of what a sentence should say. If you are seeking a respite from staring yourself down in a document, find something that uses a different instrument of you. The page will be there when you return.
—Kristen Millares Young, author of Desire Lines (Red Hen Press, 2026)
Photo credit: Natalie Shields