Some said they wrote down my quotes each day or kept screen-shots of them all.

Maggie: I certainly didn’t plan on ever having these posts in print, but in comments and DMs, people kept saying they should be collected in book form. Nick: At what point did your “notes to self” turn into a book idea? I started writing these for me, and I’ve found the act of writing them each day-the commitment to it-transformative. But honestly, the most surprising response has been my own. Yes, I was slack-jawed the first time Lin-Manuel Miranda shared one of my posts.

It floors me when strangers I admire-the actors and musicians and writers whose work has made my life better-reach out to me about my work. My life is small-“contained” might be the word-in this regard, but it feels big and wide in others because of where my poems, and now these posts, get to travel. I work from home as a freelance writer and editor. Maggie: I’ve lived in Columbus, Ohio, all my life. Nick: What was the most surprising response that you received? And so I kept writing them, for me and for anyone else who might find them useful. But again and again, I heard from people experiencing a wide variety of changes-divorce, the death of a loved one, a job loss or change in career, a bad break-up, a move, chronic illness, a struggle to get (or stay) sober. At first it didn’t occur to me that these daily posts would be useful to anyone else. Maggie: I posted the first note-to-self in October of 2018, and the next day I posted another one, and soon it became part of my morning ritual. Nick: As you sent these notes to yourself out via social media, what happened? How did people respond? I began writing and tweeting daily notes-to-self ( as a way to pep-talk myself, stay grounded and press forward through that time. When my marriage began to unravel, I wrote poems, but I also began working on a few essays, the first of which appeared in the New York Times. Maggie: I consider myself a poet first and foremost. Nick: I understand that you’ve had a difficult year - how did you channel that into your writing? The book grew out of a year of posting daily notes to herself on social media. Public Radio International called it “ the official poem of 2016.” Her new book, Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change, is forthcoming in May 2020 from One Signal/Simon & Schuster. In 2016 her poem “ Good Bones” went viral internationally and has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. Maggie Smith is Columbus-based poet who is the author of three books of poetry: Good Bones, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison and Lamp of the Body. By Nicholas Dekker, Marketing, Communications & Events Administrator for the Greater Columbus Arts Council

Maggie smith keep moving quotes