I have often felt that writing is the one thing that I would want to do if I could do nothing else in the entire world. A sort of, if you were trapped on a desert island and could only bring several things what would you bring scenario. Writing is what sustains me, it fuels me, it makes me happy, and fulfills me. I love doing it, but I am also compelled to do it. I don’t know how not to write. But if there’s one thing that I’ve learned over the past twenty years of being a writer it’s that, for the good of your own sanity, you need to have a hobby outside of writing. Outside of books for that matter.
It’s by no means a bad thing to be all in on the thing that you love doing most, but even the best writers need to do something else sometimes. Chances are you will reach a point where you need to take a step back from your work in order to give it space to breathe. Maybe you’re stuck, maybe you’ve been looking at the story for so long that you can’t even see straight and you just need distance. Or maybe you just want to have a well balanced creative life and recognize that having hobbies outside of the primary thing you enjoy doing is a good idea. But then… what should your hobby even be?
I struggled with this question myself initially.
Reading seems like an obvious choice. After all, reading is part of what makes great writers. A love for books is, I would venture to guess one of the common denominators that defines writers as a group. But having a hobby that is not writing, and not books can be surprisingly beneficial to you as a writer, more than you might even initially realize. There’s a lot you can learn from practicing other hobbies, even other artforms that you can bring into your life as a writer.
For the majority of my writing life, hell, for most of my life period, I really didn’t have anything that I did outside of writing. Even as a teenager, I didn’t go to parties or clubs, I didn’t drink or do wild things like many of my classmates. When I wasn’t in school I was almost always writing. I never really viewed writing as my ‘hobby’, I always took it far more serious than that, even at twelve years old, but if someone had asked me what my hobby was at that age, I don’t think I could have given them an answer. Reading perhaps? But again, I would argue that goes hand in hand with writing.
What did I enjoy doing that wasn’t writing? What could I enjoy doing? Growing up I didn’t particularly enjoy school. I enjoyed English class, but I didn’t feel connected to school in any specific way. Certainly not Math. I didn’t play video games, to this day I find them rather frustrating, and at the time I tended to view making art as being able to ‘draw’ in a very technical sense, so I didn’t consider myself an artist either. I like music and television but I’m not sure I would consider those hobbies necessarily. Writing was the only thing that really came close for me.
It should be noted that I don’t recommend this as a strategy for writers. Part of any good writer’s toolkit should invariably be that you have to live life, not just simply write about it. It’s all well and good to want to spend time writing or even enjoy spending time writing but at a certain point you do have to live your life as well. It’s about balance.
Graphic Design
I still remember being twelve or thirteen years old, logging onto the family computer (an Windows XP desktop, all grey and incredibly heavy) and loading in a program that I believe came with a printer we had purchased. A greeting card maker of all things. It was no Adobe Photoshop (I had no idea how to even begin to use that at that age) but it was my first introduction to artistic style tools (not dissimilar to how Canva works now actually) that allowed me to create my very first book covers for my writing. Through clip art, some custom fonts I was able to download from websites that I found on Google (thank you dafont.com), I built not only my first book cover, but I was determined to print out my book and cut up old cardboard boxes to create a fully bound version of my book.
I still have it too (somewhere). This was long before I had any concept that book designing was a job, or for that matter that design and book binding could be hobbies. They were just things that I knew that I wanted to do for myself, things that I could figure out how to do.
It wasn’t even until I got to High School that I realized that this thing that I had been doing since I was a kid was actually a job that I could do, a degree that I could achieve.
I still design my own book covers—mostly for fun—but I also create my own logos, website graphics, YouTube thumbnails, and social media graphics, and I can do those things because I learned how design works. I studied art history, color theory, the principles of design and style, and then I explored what it was that I personally liked and evolved my art style and craft over the course of the last ten years since I graduated with my Bachelors in Graphic Design.
While I’ve never technically worked for another company in a design sense, I’ve done enough work for myself over the last decade that acts as a living portfolio for my work. This very website is proof of that. As is my YouTube channel.
Knitting:
When I was about sixteen, I decided that I wanted to learn how to knit. I went into Michael’s, bought a pair of knitting needles and some yarn, and a little book meant to teach you how to knit (this was before YouTube was really thee go to place to learn new things, at least for me) and I started trying to learn. It was incredibly frustrating in the beginning. I had a DVD that came with the book, but for the life of me while I understood (I thought) casting on and knitting, purling did not make sense to me. My tension was often wrong, and because I could only do a knit stitch by itself, a lot of my work lacked any sort of stretch and bounce and got frustrating. Part of what you’ll find is that if you’re only doing a knit stitch by itself (rather than in combination with a purl stitch to create the standard stockinette stitch) is that it takes a lot longer to create anything which can be very frustrating as a beginner. It feels like you’re never making any progress at all in a project.
Granted being the Virgo that I am I also insisted on starting with blankets rather than something small like a scarf, which didn’t help my frustration at all. It wasn’t until several years later, after I had already started making YouTube videos myself and started realizing how much I could learn on the platform that I was really able to get a hang of the proper stockinette stitch.
Thanks to practicing on much thicker yarn which allowed me to see what I was doing, and YouTubers who were able to slow down what they were explaining, I was finally able to understand how to purl a stitch and with time I was even able to practice and perfect other stitches that I enjoy. One of my favorites is often used for the edges of blankets (a knit 1 stitch then purl 1 stitch and move back and forth down the row, also known as a rib stitch).
Acrylic Pour art
Of all of my hobbies, this one came to me relatively recently, and courtesy of YouTube. From Jenna Marbles to Safiya Nyguard to professional artists that I started following later, acrylic pour art was really having a moment in the early 2020s, and it was something I felt compelled to explore. For one thing, it was gorgeous, and for another it looked kind of fun and low stakes. As someone who wasn’t especially confident in my artistic skills what I appreciated about acrylic pour art was that it’s low stakes and a pretty high reward. The process is straight forward and while there’s some wiggle room and artistic opportunities to do things differently and have fun with it, the main process is fairly straight forward. Canvas, paint mixed into separate cups with a paint spreader (usually Flood) and water. There are different methods to the madness (I prefer to pour the colors onto the canvas individually then use a blow dryer to spread them about rather than simply moving the canvas around). Et voila! A beautiful painting that is abstract and creative and that allows me to have more artwork around my home than I otherwise would have all made by me.
It’s incredibly therapeutic and because it generally doesn’t take a lot of time I have a plethora of art that I’ve made that I can use for a variety of different things (including sharing it on this very website).
DIY
As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to have a deep and fundamental appreciation for DIY when it comes to clothing. There’s something special about taking the time to make something you own uniquely yours. Whether it’s an old faux leather motorcycle jacket, a jean jacket, a purse, or even a pair of headphones there’s something particularly special about turning something that you own that was otherwise plain, into something beautiful and unique, and true to you as a person.
Oil Pastels
My most recent hobby, and one that I never imagined I would actually feel confident in my abilities in is oil pastels. This actually started this year in 2025 because I saw an artist I follow on Instagram, making something with oil pastels and I thought—oh wow that’s gorgeous, I kinda want to try that. I had played around with them as a kid when they came in one of those art sets that you get with crayons, markers, colored pencils, water colors, and of course oil pastels, but I wasn’t really exploring the possibilities with them at the time. Like with a lot of my feelings about art for much of my life, I tended to assume that because my technical drawing skills were lackluster at best I wasn’t sure how I was going to fair at creating anything with oil pastels. Like with most hobbies that I attempt, I really just threw myself into it headfirst and decided I wanted to just try and make something. Anything. So I did, and I found that I actually really enjoy it. Oil pastels are fun, and now that I’ve stopped looking at hobbies as something you have to be “good” at, I’m really just enjoying myself and what I’m making.
Out of all of my hobbies (and there are a lot more than even what I’ve discussed here, photography, makeup, scrapbook art, not all of my hobbies are what I would call hobbies that I entirely successful at. Or even good at. Whatever that means, it’s arbitrary anyway.
Some of them are hobbies that I’ve kind of abandoned despite my lofty goals. For instance, even though I wanted to learn to knit, it was a hobby that I fell in and out of from the time that I was sixteen into my mid-twenties because I couldn’t quite get the hang of it. Coding is something that I actually found surprisingly fun and interesting (enough that I could consider it a hobby), but despite some of my loftier goals and despite what I’ve had to learn to make this site, I’ve fallen off of it quite a bit as of late. I’m sure there are arguments to be had if I am “good” at makeup (I think that I am but I’m also just trying to have fun with it). And I think that’s kind of the point.
Hobbies are meant to be fun. Part of the importance of having hobbies outside of writing, and for that matter hobbies that you specifically and explicitly are not monetizing, is that it doesn’t matter if it’s any good.
I’m not a professional makeup artist, nor have I ever claimed to be, so whether or not my makeup is ‘good’ is irrelevant. It’s fun and I enjoy it. I’m not a professional painter, so whether or not my acrylic pour artwork is any good is irrelevant because it’s fun and I enjoy it.
Sometimes hobbies fall in and out of interest. Sometimes you try a hobby and you find it frustrating and it’s not something that you end up keeping up with, and sometimes you find a hobby that you really want to try but when you do, you don’t actually end up liking it. That’s okay. Maybe your hobby is playing video games, maybe your hobby is collecting old tech, maybe your hobby is reading, or making comic books for your friends. The key is, having hobbies that you just do for fun. They don’t have to be serious, they don’t have to be good, and they don’t have to be interesting to anyone other than yourself. It helps you stay creative and creatively stimulated, and you can learn a lot about yourself as a writer from making other types of art, or having hobbies. Knitting requires a sort of stillness and concentration. Acrylic pour art requires color theory and a sense of adventure. DIY requires a creative aesthetic, and all of these things can help you better yourself as a writer.
Even if they don’t contribute anything to your writing, they help you as a person have a little more enjoyment in your life and that is worth anything.
