In the years I spent teaching creative writing, and every time I’ve been asked about process, I’ve found myself repeating the same line: For me, writing is 90 percent thinking, 10 percent literally writing. It’s a way of explaining the frustrating way I work, how I have to let an idea percolate or crystallize at its own rate. I cannot force my words onto the page in a useful way—I have never been able to. The thinking is made of a million things, as life is. Thinking while having a bath, taking a walk, doing the cooking or washing up—almost anything but thinking about the thing you’re meant to be thinking about.
This is my writing advice: Approach it softly; don’t look at it directly. Approach it like a wild deer you would do anything not to startle. If all else fails, approach writing by not approaching it at all. Do something entirely different that shakes your mind into a different rhythm. Move your furniture around, cut your hair, go to a party, a gig, a show. Or my personal favorite, go for a swim. Immerse yourself in a different element. Don’t think, and the thought will come.
—Polly Atkin, author of The Company of Owls
(Milkweed Editions, 2026)
Photo credit: Alex Muir Photography