I Gave Up Creative Writing for a Decade

It was the best thing I could ever have done

By Anna Rollins

The summer after graduating with my Master’s in English, I made myself a promise: I was going to write.

During my course of study, I’d begun a collection of essays about characters at my Appalachian fundamentalist Christian school and had been told the work had potential. I didn’t know what the collection was about necessarily, but I was determined to figure that out in process. My teaching job did not begin until the fall, I had no children or pets, and my husband’s salary covered our bills, giving me the luxury of both time and resources.

I was going to spend the summer writing my book.

I started by creating a schedule. My entire day would revolve around writing, with hour-long mental breaks to, say, clean the bathrooms, go for a run, read, or prepare dinner.

And I stuck to this schedule. The days were a dream—everything wonderful except for, well, the writing. When the clock said it was time to sit down and work, I froze. I struggled to form sentences. The ones I did compose were meandering, uncertain. I’d re-read my paragraphs and become distracted midway through. I was bored—and my words were boring! I tried to push through the haze by writing in new locations, or by alternating between my laptop and a journal, but each day, the work was drab and without tension.  

What lit me up was reading. I devoured mental health essays by Lauren Slater, new journalism by Truman Capote, and autofiction by Tim O’Brien. As the weeks passed, I gave myself permission to consider reading part of my daily regimen. Reading good literature, I reasoned, would make me a better writer. But I soon found myself dreaming up ways to incorporate these texts into my fall classes. Eventually, I stopped writing my own creative work and instead turned my attention to composing lesson plans. 

By this time, it was halfway through the summer, and I had come to a conclusion: look how much excellent work is already out there. I don’t need to add to the noise with my own mediocrity. Especially if I am hating every moment of it.

At the time (and even still), I did not find the sentiment defeatist. It was inspiration in reverse. The idea felt revelatory: if I’m not enjoying writing, I don’t have to write. No one was forcing me. There were so many great stories out there already, and despite what social media memes parroted, the world did not necessarily need mine.

And so I extended my permission-giving once again. I will stop writing. The decision was complete relief.

But I continued to read voraciously. Nothing excited me more than a perfect sentence, a compelling idea, a brave admission.

“It’s weird,” my husband said one evening as he observed me finishing my third book that week. “You read compulsively. More than anyone I’ve ever met. Don’t you want to create something too?”

“I have nothing to say that hasn’t already been said by someone else probably more talented than me,” I replied defensively.

Five years later, after my first son was born, I began to write creatively again. My life had contracted to the four walls of my home, making it harder to explore the world. I felt a desire to explore ideas on the page. Each morning, I wrote for ten minutes in a journal, whatever I wanted, whatever popped into my head. I wrote without the intention of publishing. This small practice was just my opportunity to play on the page, something fun to do in a day filled with domestic duty.

When my second son was born, I began to write more. It certainly was not because I had more time. It was because I had to—I finally had something to express, and writing felt even more necessary. I didn’t need accountability or a schedule. I’d reached a point in my life where the page was one of the only places I wanted to be.

Ten years after receiving my Master’s in English, I finally became serious about publishing my creative writing. I pitched essays to popular outlets and within two years’ time, published nearly fifty of them. I got an agent and a book deal. It appeared to happen fast. But all my work had been simmering for over a decade.

Taking those years off was not a waste. Those years of compulsive reading were necessary. I needed to read great literature, to live, and to discover what I had to say.

As for the essays I began in graduate school? Only a few of those sentences made it into my forthcoming memoir. But I needed to write that entire collection before I could compose the work I’m publishing today.

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Anna Rollins’ work has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, Electric Literature, Joyland Magazine, and other outlets. Her forthcoming memoir, Famished, (Eerdmans, 2025) challenges scripts that encourage women to take up less space and not trust their own bodies, messages that are common in diet and purity culture. She is a faculty member in the English department at Marshall University. She is running a free monthly series called “Path to Publication” where she shares pitches for work she has placed in popular outlets. Follow her on Substack and Instagram @annajrollins.