Megan Baxter: On Full-Body Creativity

Megan Baxter has won numerous national awards including a Pushcart Prize. Her work has been listed in The Best American Essays of 2019. Recent publications included pieces in The Threepenny Review, Hotel Amerika, The Florida Review, and Creative Nonfiction Magazine.

Megan mentors young writers and loves developing cross-genre and innovative creative writing pedagogy for her workshops and classes. Megan lives in New Hampshire, running her own small, organic farm and teaching creative writing. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

In this post, Megan discusses melding together creativity with being in tune with our bodies to write her essay collection, Twenty Square Feet of Skin, her advice for writers, and more!

Name: Megan Baxter
Book title: Twenty Square Feet of Skin
Publisher: Mad Creek Books, Ohio State Press
Release date: May 19, 2023
Genre/category: Personal Essays/Creative Nonfiction
Previous titles: The Coolest Monsters: Essays; Farm Girl: A Memoir
Elevator pitch for the book: Megan Baxter explores storytelling and ponders what makes us human by examining the body in Twenty Square Feet of Skin.

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This book began as a challenge. Over coffee, an author that I deeply admired encouraged me to write about and celebrate the everyday.

At the time that I began drafting this book, I was making my way through my MFA in creative nonfiction and working as a fitness coach and personal trainer. I often felt as if these two things were at odds with each other, the world of words and the world of the body. I'd be teaching someone how to deadlift while thinking about Joan Didion. Or I'd be counting down a workout clock and my mind would wander to something that Galway Kinnell said about Walt Whitman. This made me feel like an imposter, both in the gym and with other writers.

My whole life I have had physical jobs, from farming to teaching yoga, but I had always felt as if these things didn't belong in my creative work. The challenge of this book was to bring attention back to the physical self and the everyday moments within the body. Much of my sense of identity and individuality begin with the body. From tattoos to the color I choose at the nail salon, my body is an outward expression of my personality and history. I wanted to meld together the creative and the physical in this book. And so, each of the essays in this collection grew from that challenge.

I began working on this book in 2017 and the essays grew over time. I realized almost immediately that the work I was creating was destined to be part of a collection, but its shape evolved.

As a creative nonfiction writer, my work reflects my personal life, and so these essays and ideas changed as I changed. The scope of the book grew larger as I traveled and moved back to New England, so there are many more settings and locations in the work than I had originally intended. But I think that this change overall works well for the book because it isn't about a specific place, but rather about a specific body.

The collection was more or less complete by 2020, but in the editing process I added several newer pieces as well. From start to finish Twenty Square Feet of Skin took roughly five years to go from idea to publication.

Placing this book with Mad Creek Books through Ohio State Press was a real joy. I think one of the real learning moments for me as an author was that working in collaboration with talented readers, editors, and designers, creates an even stronger text. With the assistance of everyone in the publishing process, Twenty Square Feet of Skin is a better book than the original manuscript I queried with. Finding a press that is truly interested in your work is essential for a project like this one, which features unique forms and experimentations.

This book is very music-focused, many of the essays themselves include song lyrics and some are written specifically about musicians, like Prince or Bruce Springsteen. Music is a big part of my writing process, and as the daughter of a professional musician, music has always played a huge role in my creative life.

I learned while writing this book that I also have a lot to say about music itself and was surprised by how much I enjoyed writing about music. I usually create playlists for my works in progress, but I did not for this book because each essay has such a unique soundtrack.

Some of the pieces focus on a single song, and others on a full body of work. Music was not something I considered in the writing process until after I had organized the essay collection and I was surprised to see how central it was, and how many of the essays are bound by this consideration.

I hope that readers leave this book with renewed appreciation and interest in the body. I also hope that they feel that they can celebrate the small everyday moments that make up our lives.

From going on a morning jog to weeding in the garden, this is the fabric that creates our stories and deserves attention, consideration, and examination. By giving space for these moments on the page I would love for the reader to feel that there is beauty and importance in the little things and that anything, no matter how ordinary, can be art.

Don't give up. I teach creative writing to people of all ages and backgrounds, and this is the first thing that I say when I'm asked for advice. Don't give up. The writers whose books you love, whose books fill your shelves and nightstands, who you have memorized, made beloved, quoted, and shared, are the ones who didn't give up. Work to build resilience into your practice, and just keep writing.

I also recommend that writers see their craft as being many-faceted. Too often we see actual composition as the only component in the writing life. I teach that writing includes reading, community, outreach, and revision as well.

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