You Do You: Thoughts on the Writing Process

July 30, 2026

by Jennie Malboeuf, poetry faculty

I can’t say that what I’m about to say hasn’t been said before and better. By Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, Anne Lamott, etc. But maybe you need to hear it again? At readings and lectures and Q&As that I’ve attended over the last twenty-five years, at least one person in the audience asks, What’s your process? Or what are your rituals? Or what is your daily schedule for writing? Probably they are at a loss for words. Or they just want to hear the famous or talented writer before them talk a little more.

I want to hear the writer say What does it matter? I do me. You do you. Or I don’t keep a schedule. This one makes me feel better. I write haphazardly myself. Technically, I keep most of my favorite books in a little office. But I don’t think I’ve used that office once to write. I scratch down ideas in a notebook or I text myself whole poems while I’m walking. Or I race to the computer when I wake up or hop out of the shower, or when my hands are free from whatever mess mothers of young children deal with. I hate this pressure of when and where to write.

My first book came out during the pandemic, and the reading was held online with a few other writers. During the Q&A, I threw out that I hadn’t really completed a poem in months. I was pregnant, then a new mother in 2020 and 2021. I think all the creativity in me was focused on making another person. I thought a fellow writer would understand the block. He didn’t. Most likely his experiences were quite different from mine. He wrote while his baby napped, he said. At the time, that wasn’t a privilege I had experienced.

And there’s something about the rise at dawn and don’t stop until I’ve hit X number of pages jag. Bless your heart. Millennials get a lot of flack for being too sensitive, but I’ve learned to write in loud and uneven places my whole life. My childhood home, a dorm room, apartments, with a barking dog, on the floor next to a singing, jumping, lively little boy. Before motherhood, Sylvia Plath claimed to have written for at least six hours each day, in two long daylight sessions. After motherhood, she wrote before the sun rose; she grabbed any opportunity to compose Ariel, one of the most influential collections of all time.

So why do writing communities and readers make such a thing over the mechanics of how it happens? What is the point of making art, after all? To see better, to share better, to be ourselves. Quite frankly, I don’t think there’s a time I’m not writing. I write in my sleep. I write at children’s birthday parties. I write during conversations with people when I’m supposed to be paying attention to what they’re saying, but I’m really thinking about what copy this is generating. I use writing as a form of prayer. What workshops taught me best was how to sharpen my instrument. If I am keenly aware, anywhere, I am writing. I’m getting ideas, I’m revising, I’m living.

At the Q&As, I tend to like the more pointed questions. Like What were you doing when you thought of [blank]? Or What does this metaphor mean? (Even though poets especially aren’t supposed to do that work for you.) Or even When did you stop giving a damn what other people think?

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Jennie Malboeuf is the author of jump the gun, part of the American Poets Continuum Series (BOA Editions, 2025), and God had a body, awarded the 2019 Blue Light Books Prize by Adrian Matejka (Indiana UP, 2020). Her poems have appeared in New England Review, The Southern Review, and Poetry Daily. Her website is jenniemalboeuf.com.