Advanced Techniques for Avoiding Writing

And how Mary Oliver can help us get a grip

Dear Readers,

You have a blissfully open morning, your notebooks and laptops awaiting your touch with reverent anticipation, and someone starts banging loudly at the door of your mind…

It’s you, here to remind you that the ceiling fan needs dusting.

Only, you don’t have a duster with an extendable arm. So, naturally, you’re getting dressed to go to the megastore.

Only—hang on—your favorite sweatshirt for such outings, the one that spiritually settles you amidst the neon overwhelm, looks dirty. Which it is, because you didn’t get to that load you meant to do over the weekend.

You’re loading the laundry when you remember that email.
You’re sitting down to answer it when you decide you need coffee.
You’re making coffee when the phone rings, and your friend tells you about the hockey romance again.
You’re watching the hockey romance trailer when you remember the coffee.
You’re drinking the coffee as you answer the email, the laundry door ajar, your garments blinking under the weight of two laundry capsules.

Somewhere between making lunch and finally getting ready to go to the store, you remember that you had planned to write.

Wasn’t an hour alone with your writing precisely what you’d been pining for? Why, then, are you suddenly ordering stamps, doing YouTube yoga, or taking a BuzzFeed Quiz on which Bridgerton character you most resemble?

---

In “Of Power and Time,” Mary Oliver calls the internal force that pulls us away from our own work “the intimate interruptor.” She doesn’t dwell on why this inner voice distracts us, but she’s unequivocal about the need to ignore it, even at the cost of unstocked pantries and unreturned phone calls.

In Oliver’s description of this internal antagonist, I recognize my own intimate interrupter. How she “helpfully” shows up to remind me of tasks when I’m mid-thought, almost as if—could it really be this—I can’t stand the intensity and reverberations of my own mind.

Creative work requires solitude. “It needs concentration, without interruptions,” as Oliver advises. “It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once.”

And that can feel uncomfortable.

I sometimes feel I need a break from the pressure of my own creative energy, that very thing I covet but sometimes fear once it’s in my grasp. Now it really is up to me.

Now that the game is on, I might let us both down.

---

I mention all this because I coach writers on the problems that I routinely face myself as I seek to live a life of creative freedom, fulfillment, and integrity. All of which requires self-partnership and sometimes-searing honesty about why we are doing what we’re doing (or not doing what we’re not doing).

I’ve said this before, but for me, “that certainty” writing aspires to arrives the moment when an idea has enough momentum and shape that I can confidently walk away from the page, knowing that it will continue to breathe on its own in my absence. But it takes a willingness to sit still, something everything in our culture seems decidedly against, and something that can be genuinely hard to do.

Oliver reminds me of what lies on the other side of all of this resistance: “The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame.”

I want to be stained with light. And, so, I march myself back to my desk. It may not always be as soon as I wish it were, but the poem gets written, and the fear dissolves along the way.

Now, I’d love to hear from you.

Do you recognize your own intimate interruptor? What form does it take? Do you invite them to sit quietly beside you as you write, or do you chase them around the house?

Let me know.

xM

Conscious Writers Collective (CWC) is a writing program for poets and prose writers who want depth, rigor, and momentum in their literary lives outside of formal academia. We bring together exceptional teachers, continuous peer exchange, and an engaged international community to support writers at every stage of their development. 2026 is our last year of open enrollment. Join us before the waitlist/fee increase.