Maybe it’s because I’m pregnant and thinking of food constantly, but I started to wonder what poets do to feed their creativity. I practice yoga and find the meditation afterwards leaves my mind feeling peaceful for days. This quiet mind is vital for me to create. The first time I visited a residency — at MacDowell in New Hampshire — my mind was rattled. I arrived in the middle of the night, was dropped off by a driver I hired and slept in a nearly empty 13-bedroom house (which was VERY hard to find in the pitch black). Creepy. Needless to say, I found it hard to get my mind together. Since then I’ve been to other residencies and use different practices to leave the outside world behind me, so I can focus on the present and on the quiet where the good ideas live.

These days my mind could race a million miles an hour what with running a magazine, working full-time as a web marketing diva, keeping in touch with lots of friends, knitting, reading, writing, and eating, eating, eating. Sometimes I’ll just sit in quietly in a room and do NOTHING. Have you done that? It’s MUCH harder than it sounds, especially for an action-oriented chick like me. If you feel adventurous, try sitting still DOING NOTHING for five minutes.