Writing When You Have No Time:

Creating Space

(Photo: Kelle Groom, Ucross, WY)

A year ago, the job that I moved to Florida to take was eliminated with no notice. As were the jobs of almost all of my co-workers. While I’d taught writing for years, I’d always returned to arts administration work, and for the last fifteen years I’d worked solely for artists-in-residence programs. I love working with artists and writers, creating and running programs, and am especially fascinated by artistic process and mentorship, seeking to facilitate that in whatever way I can.

But in my little beach town and surrounding cities, there were no arts jobs. The Governor cut 100% of state arts funding for all organizations. I returned to social services, to grant writing. One of my earliest nonprofit positions had been as Director of Grants for the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida (which I wrote about in a chapter of my memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl, Simon & Schuster). Though it had been some time, I had the experience and skills and accepted a grants position in Central Florida.

While the grant writing is year-round, I was unaware of an especially hectic grant “season” until I was in it this Spring. Working 12-, 15-, sometimes 17-hour days to meet grant deadlines, I wondered how I would ever write again.

I have to write. If I don’t, symptoms arise within a week or so. I cry. I cry all the time. I think I am having a breakdown, that my life is over, that I will never stop crying. And then I ask myself four things: Did you eat? Did you swim (or walk by the ocean)? Did you go to a recovery meeting? Did you write?

Some mix of those things has to always happen. You would think I could remember this. It seems ridiculous that I cannot. That the crying has to take over, the hopelessness. And then the little sane and sober voice inside me asks the four questions.

But how write in days (and nights) when you are overrun?

I started writing just before I went to sleep. It reminded me of the first Spring of Covid, when I felt I had never been so tired. Back then, I’d told myself that every night before I went to sleep, I would write one sentence. Even if I could barely keep my eyes open. And I did write every night that Spring, sometimes one sentence, often more.

(Photo: Kelle Groom, Cape Cod National Seashore, Provincetown, MA)

This Spring, I mostly wrote poems. Usually an hour before sleep, sometimes two (depending on how sleep deprived I was willing to be the next day). At first I wondered what kind of head space I had left to work with each night.

I was thrilled to find that shifting to writing a poem each night opened up a new space in my head. Tired as I was, it gave me energy. I was grateful to go somewhere new each night before sleep.

Around the same time, I encountered two substacks with writing prompts and exercises: Ross Gay and Patrick Rosal’s Mondays are Free, curated by Essence London & janan alexandra and Nick Flynn’s Notes on Bewilderment. Both of these substacks helped me so much, especially when I was exhausted and began to doubt again that I could go anywhere.

Even when I didn’t do an exercise, the thinking about doing it, imagining, helped me to write and get somewhere new.

It also felt like companionship, with the writers of the substacks and the writers also trying these exercises. My new grants job is remote, and I can go days now without speaking to anyone. Another adjustment. But I’m grateful for the voices of these writers offering ideas, encouragement, and new places to go.

If you’re looking for a little help, I highly recommend both Mondays are Free and Notes on Bewilderment.

And here is a short poem written during this time, published in The Shore last week:

THE SHORE

Kelle Groom

Spacesuit

for Juliette & Arthur

My spacesuit arrived from Toronto today
a border I’ve been eyeing on the map
Even uninhabited even see-through organza
the knees are flexed soles of the feet shadow-
black bouncing without gravity
In the grocery near the seafood counter
my right eye has been twitching for days
a woman called me over her brows perfectly
drawn upside down half-moons and I
went toward her she was shorter than me
the size of my grandmother saying the arm
and hammer is on sale two for one
She points to the left over there
Thank you
I say, thank you, and she nods having
given me something
and rolls her cart
into the produce section looking
as contained as anyone I wonder
who is there for her is she driving
a car it is like a secret she passed
to me a code I am going to need.