Productive Living: Creative Self-Care, with Mary Adkins – TPW464

Making time for our natural creativity to come out can improve our productivity and enrich our daily lives In this episode of our Creative Living series, I’ll share with you my conversation with lawyer, novelist, and writing coach Mary Adkins about caring for our creative side. Who is Mary? Mary is a graduate of Duke University and Yale Law School and is now a writing coach and founder of The Book Incubator, a 12-month program to write, revise, and pitch your novel or memoir. She is the author of the novels When You Read This (Indie Next Pick, “Best Book of 2019” by Good Housekeeping and Real Simple), Privilege (Today.com “Best Summer Read,” New York Post “Best Book of the Week”), and Palm Beach (recently named one of the New York Post’s “Best Books of 2021”). Her books have been published in 13 countries, and her essays and reporting have appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, and more. I’ve been looking forward to talking with her about making time for creative self-care. How Mary got started Mary has always had the drive to be creative and carve out time for her creativity, a spark she has had since she was a little girl. The instinctive drive to make things and create has been a big part of her life but writing is where she really came alive. Whether she is writing a fun, whimsical story or something more personal, writing has always fed and nurtured her. On the other hand, Mary also had an interest in law and attended Yale Law School. Once she graduated and got her first job as a lawyer, though, her true purpose was made crystal clear to her, which was to pursue creative writing. Within 7 months of starting her job as a lawyer, she left to pursue writing full-time. Mary is proud of herself for making this decision because she followed her heart. Initially, Mary estimated that writing a book would take about a year but it took closer to 7 years before she received a contract and was a published author. Since then, Mary has continued to enjoy her career as a novelist and writing coach. She teaches others not only the fundamentals of writing but how to make time for creativity. When Mary is not writing, she enjoys spending time with her husband and 5-year-old son, who has just started Kindergarten. A typical day for Mary Mary makes a concerted effort each day to make time to write, in spite of what other things she needs to get done. She wants to write from her heart, whether that be journaling, working on a novel, or another piece she wants to publish. Mary tends to get this writing done very early in the morning, around 5:00 am. This is her quiet time with her coffee when she is at her most creative, which she likes to take advantage of. Mary also tries to get some exercise in during these early hours. Between the hours of 10:30 and 3:00, she is focused on running her business - coaching her clients, teaching classes, responding to emails, and other tasks. At 3:00 she picks her son up from school and then tries to wrap her day up by 4:00. This is when Mary wants to focus on her family, cook dinner, and wind down for the evening. In the past, Mary would work continuously up until it was time for her to go to bed, which would lead to anxiety and poor sleep. This caused her to have an unhealthy relationship with productivity so now she completely stops working in the evenings (with only a few exceptions). This has been truly decompressing for her. She no longer puts productivity requirements on herself regarding how much she needs to get done in a day before she is allowed to relax.