Let’s Get Messy: On Mixing Writing and Life

By Bethany Jarmul

I dreamed of a certain kind of life—of nature walks punctuated by the liquid notes of blue jays and the scurrying of squirrels, of a luxurious Beauty-and-the-Beast-style home library brimming with Shakespeare, Aristotle, Emily Dickinson, of quills and inkwells, of typewriters, notebooks, journals, pens, and smeared ink. I desired the life of Thoreau near Walden Pond or Annie Dillard at Tinker Creek.

I bought into the idea that the best writing is done when sequestered ...