🌀Welcome to the August 2026 edition of Spiral-Bound, a newsletter for writers.🌀

IF YOU HAVE ENOUGH KINDLING to burn the log, burn it.

If you don’t, then you have some options.

• You can use what you have to burn what you can.

• You can look for more kindling.

• You can find a smaller log.

• You can walk away.

This summer, I’ve been working with 150 memoir writers during my course Memoir Summer.

I call it a course, but really it’s an event. We’ve had the basic sessions, me lecturing from a Zoom stage. In addition, we’ve had co-working sessions, office hours, guest speakers, guest workshops, critique groups, and most importantly, writing time each week.

Part of the beauty of an affair like this is that these memoirists get to answer Seth Godin’s strategy question, Do you have enough kindling to burn this log?

Yes, I Do

For many, the answer is yes. I wanted to write this piece/essay/book, and I’m writing it. I have 2 pages now. I have 25 pages. I finished my first draft. I finished the last two chapters. I finally have the first two chapters. I was struggling with a structure, and I’ve found it. I’m writing but still struggling with structure.

Here’s an update from one writer, Beth:

I feel fantastic about my progress! I’m learning so much from you that I can’t hold it all in. I love that I can go back to the information you share. I look forward to years of pondering and putting your words into practice.

Here’s an update from another, Lisa:

I am so enjoying the class. You are a good teacher. And I appreciate your generosity and encouragement. Your kind words really stunned me and touched my heart. I wrote a lot last week and some this week.

And this one from Donna:

I use your class as a touchstone. To keep me going. I am determined to finish a manuscript if, for no other reason, to prove to myself I can do it. To finish what I've started.

Of course, those are the emails I love to read.

No, I Don’t

For some, however, the answer to Godin’s question is no. I had this idea. I thought I wanted to do it. I thought writing would be easier for me. Something came up. I got sick. My partner got a rough diagnosis. Summer is full of travel. The children are out of school.

Maybe

For others, the answer is in between.

For example, Jennifer wrote:

I had to share that in the past three weeks, I've steadily written 25k words! I finally got into a structure and rhythm that is working for me, and I hope to have a 50+k (really rough) draft by the end of the class. The piece has taken on a momentum of its own, which I find is pulling me to write every day. After I got into this routine, though, I've had less energy to attend the extra meetings of the class. I don't fully understand what that is about, but it's interesting to learn how my writing muscle works.

Jennifer is saying that she has sufficient kindling to burn her memoir, but not enough for all the class sessions. She is using her kindling to write, which seems to me like a great decision. The goal, after all, is getting words on the page.

Back to the Question

Seth Godin, if you don’t know, is the entrepreneur and marketing guru who wrote This Is Marketing. Today’s question comes from his 2025 book, This Is Strategy.

Strategy is the big picture—what you do. In his words, strategy is the “long-term vision of the change you seek to make.”

Tactics are how you do it.

What does he mean by kindling?

He means your resources, those of:

• time

• energy

• health

• creative ideas

• money

• space

• emotional stability

• love in your heart (!!!)

Introspection

Let’s return the question to you.

🌀 Join Me for a Creative Nonfiction Course

I hope you are interested in studying writing with me this fall. I sure love to teach it. I love to see people working toward their dreams.

Registration is underway for my signature course, Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction.

Please note: This is not a course geared for beginners.

This is the only cohort of Magical Craft I am teaching in 2026.

Most of my courses serve large numbers of writers and journalers, but the cohort for this fall’s course will be small. If you want a smaller group, consider it. We have six writers so far, and I’m expecting about twenty.

Therefore, if you have enough kindling for a semester of writing (a two-hour session one evening a week for twelve weeks),

come on in.

If you don’t have the kindling, join me in 2027.

Information can be found at my website.

More Info on Magical Craft

🌀 How to Learn Courage

On my main Substack, Trackless Wild, I’m working on a new offer. A Course in Courage is taking shape and will be starting soon. It’s a correspondence course that will be sent to paying subscribers of Trackless Wild. All you need to do is become a paying subscriber at the monthly or yearly level.

Climb aboard the courage train!

Take Me to TRACKLESS WILD

🌀 Southern Lit Review is Looking for Book Reviewers for Fall Titles

Greetings, fellow writers and readers! Southern Literary Review has requests for reviews and would love to have your help connecting readers to good books by Southern authors. If you are interested in reading and reviewing a title, let me know, and I will connect you with a publicist or author. We are happy to have author interviews and/or book reviews.

Warm regards,

Donna Meredith

Editor, Southern Literary Review,

southernliteraryreview@comcast.net

Meet Me in Savannah, Georgia

Join Georgia Interfaith Power & Light (GIPL) on Saturday, August 15, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at White Bluff Presbyterian Church in Savannah for a regional summit.

This summit invites faith leaders and environmental activists to dig deep and let justice grow on Georgia’s coast. When we nurture a movement grounded in equity, resilience, and healing, we create space for transformation. Together, we will explore how the wisdom of our faith traditions shapes our call to pursue justice. We will consider how to live into this call through practical climate solutions and how policy efforts can support thriving communities.

We will be joined by keynote speaker, Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.

Then, through a variety of workshops, attendees will gain tools to build and strengthen Green Teams, advance climate justice, and engage in advocacy from the ground up. Together, we will find practical ways to live out our shared call to care for our congregations, our communities, and our Common Home. (See website for more information about workshop offerings.)

General Admission is $25. Student tickets are $10. All are welcome and encouraged to attend. Tickets will NOT be available at the door, so make sure you register early!

🌀 Remember that our job is to stay out of the box and in the spiral as much as humanly possible.

🌀 Happy July to you! Here’s this month’s Spiral-Bound. 🌀

🌀 Gleaning From the Letters of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy

In my unslakable thirst to understand writing and the writing life, years ago I happened upon this book.

It’s the correspondence between two authors, Shelby Foote and Walker Percy.

I was in high school when I began to read Percy. The Second Coming, about a woman who lives in a greenhouse, made me aware of a desire I had not yet understood, much less articulated, a desire that, to this day, lives inside me like an ache. I wanted to live in a church.

Foote and Percy were fourteen when they met. They had both recently arrived in Greenville, Mississippi, following family tragedies. They maintained a lifelong friendship and corresponded for forty years.

Of the two, Foote published first, the novel Tournament (1949), which was followed by many more. Foote is, however, best known for his trilogy about the Civil War, The Civil War: A Narrative. You may remember him from Ken Burns’s 1990 documentary on the Civil War.

Percy trained to be a medical doctor but contracted tuberculosis before he started a practice. His first novel was The Moviegoer (1961), followed by many others.

Looking for secrets about writing and also looking for doorways, I jotted down many quotes as I read this book, The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy.

All of the quotes I have copied below were written by Foote. These all pertain to the writing life.

Percy was more financially privileged than Foote. Sometimes Foote survived by living on loans from Percy. Here are a few quotes on financial solvency from Foote.

I also thought you might be interested in a list of books the two writer friends read and discussed.

• Marcel Proust—"One should never be afraid to go too far, for the truth is beyond,” wrote Proust. Read that one again.

• Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night—” Really good writing is like swimming underwater, holding the breath,” one of the men wrote.

• Keats “To Autumn”

• Percy, The Moviegoer

• Foote, Shiloh (a novel about the battle)

• Chekhov’s Seven Short Stories, especially “The Bishop”

• All of Joyce

• George Eliot Middlemarch—Of Eliot, Foote said, “For these and other reasons it does what all the great books do, and does it superbly: that is, enlarge life.”

• Beverly Lowry—Come Back, Lolly Ray (I had not heard of this book, and now I have ordered a used copy.)

• Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude

🌀 In the Comments

Which of these books would get a star from you beside it?

🌀 All My Ebooks & Audiobooks Are $2.50 for the Holiday

All weekend, all ebooks and audiobooks available on my website are priced at $2.50 in celebration of the anniversary of our country’s independence. Sale ends Monday, July 6.

This offer includes The Woods of Fannin County, Craft & Current, and Journey in Place, as well as the ebook only of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.

Once you purchase an ebook or audiobook, you receive an email from BookFunnel, which serves as my distribution center. If you don’t see an email, check spam. The e- and audio-versions of these books can be downloaded quickly and easily from BookFunnel onto your listening and reading devices. BookFunnel offers great customer service if you run aground.

All audiobooks were narrated by me.

I Want to Listen to You Read

Six-Word Memoir by Andrea Adams

In June’s newsletter, “From Six Words to a Full Story,” I talked about flash memoirs, including those with only six lines. I suggested the prompt “In the lockbox” and asked for submissions. Andrea Adams sent this jewel.

🌀 Is Marketing Different From Promoting?

Some people think so. When some people discuss marketing, they separate it from promoting. Here’s the difference.

Marketing is how you position yourself as a writer long-term. This is

• your mission

• your ethics

• your promise

Marketing means platforms like your website or sentences like your tagline. As Orne Ross, director of the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) says, “Marketing is long-term and declaration-driven.”

Promoting, on the other hand, is short-term and money-driven. A sale on a particular book is a promotion.

So many people find marketing to be icky that I wanted to offer this distinction. We may be fine with setting up a website, but we don’t want to ask people to buy our book.

🌀 Marketing/ Promoting Resources

If you want more information on marketing versus promoting, check out this ALLi podcast, “Marketing That Puts the Author First.”

The book they are promoting in that podcast is Reach More Readers: ALLi’s Definitive Guide to Book Marketing, available for $7.99 at ALLi’s website.

Here’s a post from last week that looks promising, Sell More Books with These Seven Promotion Steps.

That post is promoting ALLi’s new guide, Sell More Books.

🌀 In the Comments

Do you buy this, that marketing is not promoting?

🌀 Environmental Storyteller Job Opening at Catawba College in NC

This arrived from my friend Mitch Thomashow.

For the last two years I have been advising the Catawba College Center for the Environment on a range of curricular, interpretive, and sustainability issues. They have received some remarkable donor contributions to promote environmental learning and sustainability campus-wide and for the community of Salisbury, North Carolina. Currently they are engaged in a highly innovative and unique Regenerative Landscape Campus Plan that includes rigorous and hands-on sustainability objectives, environmental interpretation, ecological thinking, and natural history. They are emphasizing ecological regeneration, community resilience, and place-based design, organized around a Piedmont Ecology and Campus as Forest template.

They just posted a position for an Environmental Interpreter and Storytelling Specialist. This is a fantastic opportunity and that is why I am writing to you. If you know of someone for whom this would be of interest, please do let them know, and share it with your networks as appropriate. If you contact me directly, I am happy to tell you more about Catawba College and this position.

For more info, scroll down on this link to the environmental interpreter position.

🌀 Best Tools & Apps for Writers

made a super helpful list for her Substack, PubStack Success, and I think any writer will find it useful. Lots of the apps are free.

Find Karen’s list at “Best Tools and Apps for Substack Writers: 10 Powerful Tools I Can’t Live Without.”

🌀 Nature Writing Prize Open for Submissions

The Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize is open for submissions. who runs the prize, writes about it in her Substack, Wild Muse. The theme is “Nature’s Power to Heal, Guide, and Transform.” First prize is $750 Euros. The deadline is Sept. 14, 2026. For more information, go here.

Gabriela is doing a series of Substack “lives” in order to promote the prize. She interviewed me last week in a 45-minute conversation called “Finding Story in the Living World.” We go pretty deep in connecting with the mysterium in order to find the heart of a story.

🌀 Your Work Diary

I always get solid advice and cultural direction from the thinking of Seth Godin, writer and marketer. I found this tiny column on a different kind of journal very useful. Here Seth talks about starting a work journal.

Each day would have five short entries.

• A generous act of leadership

• A thank-you note sent

• Curiosity explored, or a hard question asked

• A new skill learned

• An interaction with a customer or co-worker that increased empathy

For us writers, I might add

• Number of words written

• A submission

One way I marketed my work

🌀 God Has Selected Me

People still write me many emails a day, trying to sell me a spot on a podcast or in a book club. Or they want to help me market a particular book.

The emails obviously have been written by AI.

Used to, they annoyed me. I deleted them immediately.

I have started keeping them. Sometimes AI understands better than I what I am trying to do with a book. “This,” I think, “would be great marketing copy. Or back cover copy. Or a book description.” If I ever need to re-issue a book, I’m going to revisit these emails.

My advice: don’t throw them your AI spam. Those kind words may come in handy one day.

And speaking of emails, I recently received this wonder:

Please join me over at Trackless Wild for my new course—

🌀 A Course in Courage

For centuries we humans have studied war. We’ve spent billions on war. We’ve ravaged the planet for war.

Peace is treated as a default state, the thing that happens when nobody’s fighting. It is not treated seriously, not built strategically.

I will be offering a course to paid subscribers of this newsletter called “A Course in Courage.” Flash essays (very short), sometimes with a practice, will be delivered weekly for the next six months.

Here is where we study courage. Here is ground where courage lives.

I start from the premise that a world free of oppression, violence, war, and environmental and social injustice is not a distant utopia. It is buildable — now — by people willing to give peace the same rigor we’ve given war, by people willing to study courage, by people willing to take action.

What can you get from this work?

• small studies that build your creative practice of courage

• ways to find courage

• ideas about personal power & creative empowerment

• thoughts on how to take action, even or especially when the activism is the community you tend, the thing you make, the story you write

• and maybe it will become something worth binding

To receive A Course in Courage, you will need to be a subscriber at the paying level, which is $33/year. If you are already a subscriber at the paying level, do nothing. I’ll send A Course in Courage to you.

And so, our course in courage, peace, and creative empowerment begins.

A Course in Courage

🌀 Next Month

Hopefully, I will finally get to the survey results I promised you.

🌀 And a Postscript

I actually don’t agree with the title of this newsletter. I think the better you get as a writer, the less hard you work.

🌀 Out of the Boxes & Into the Fireworks!

🌀 Quit Waiting. Start Writing.

Registration for Memoir Summer Ends Tomorrow, Tuesday, June 2 at 11:30 pm

This summer I’m teaching a memoir course for writers of all levels. You only need one thing. You need a desire to get your stories down on paper—for family, friends, or the reading public. You need to feel as if you’ve been tapped to write about a part of your life or a theme in your life.

In the course, we’ll do a lot of writing prompts. We’ll study the genre. We’ll think about structure. We’ll use your memories, family photos, scrapbooks, diaries, interviews, and memorabilia to help fill in details. I’ll be encouraging you every step of the way.

I love it when people treat the course as a Writing Challenge, set a page goal, and work hard to get those pages.

When you succeed, I succeed.

This can be the summer to get your stories on paper. I’m ready. You’ll need to escape to your writing space for an hour each week with me and work on this thing that bugs you in the middle of the night.

So, quit waiting. Get unstuck. Lower your stress. Enjoy your life more. Feel proud. Be prouder. Sleep better. Tell others what you’ve done. Brag a little.

Tomorrow, June 2, is the last day to register.

Also, you should know—the course is large, with lots of folks like you. I want to warn you about that, so that you’re not surprised. There are a lot of us. And we’re all wrestling with a passion and an idea. We’re trying to overcome the demands of a busy life, of caregiving, of fulltime work, of needing to rest and sleep more, of aging, of neurological changes. We’re trying to focus. We’re trying to feel that our stories are worth the time they take. We’re trying to feel that we’re able to do this.

You can find lots more information and registration at my website.

Register Here

The course is also listed on Eventbrite, if you’d rather register there.

Or Register Here

🌀 I Studied Flash Memoir in a Flash of a Workshop

During the Oxford Conference for the Book, back in March 2026, two writers led a workshop on flash memoir at the Lafayette County Public Library.

The workshop was short and time flew by in a flash. But I got some good info that I’m sharing with you.

Beth Ann Fennelly, who popularized the micro-memoir and is the author of the newly released The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs, was one of the teachers. She lives in Oxford and teaches at the University of Mississippi. She’s bright, cheerful, and so funny she could do stand-up. She was wearing a circle skirt that had a crinoline pettycoat beneath. It was printed with colorful candies. “In honor of Steve’s book,” she said.

She was joined by Steve Almond, author of twelve books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. Steve was slim, dressed casually, easygoing.

🌀 Ever Heard of a Six-Word Memoir?

They started with tiny memoirs, only six words.

The idea comes from writer Larry Smith. He calls it “the art of short-form storytelling as a tool to get to the essence of who you are and what matters most.” He says that writing in six words “is a simple, creative way to get to the essence of anything.”

So we wrote six-word memoirs that day in the library. And people shared some. Here are a few I scribbled down:

• Still time for one more convertible.

• Westerner moves South, adapt or suffocate.

• Prayed for unconditional love, received dog.

• To China to teach, was taught.

• Named after my dad, not mom.

• Midnight regret, did not read aloud.

🌀 Smith’s Substack on the Six-Word Memoir Project Can Be Found Here

Say Less by Larry Smith & The Six-Word Memoir Project

The art of short-form storytelling for self-expression, focus, and connection at work, home, and more .

You can read lots of six-word memoirs at the website.

I find six-word memoirs to be cute, with fun turns of phrase and teasing glimpses into bigger stories, but I don’t find them satisfying. I love depth of emotion and heaping, soaring, luscious details. I, then, am not a regular consumer of tiny memoirs.

After that, we moved on to longer flash pieces. I’ve read and loved Beth Ann’s work for twenty years, and I was happy to study with her for a minute. I loved watching her candy skirt whirl out around her.

🌀 Beth Ann’s Rules for a Micro-Memoir

1. Be specific.

2. Be honest. “I still make coffee for two.”—Zak Nelson

3. Write like you talk.

4. Experiment with structure.

5. Tell a story.

6. Be metaphorical.

The goal is compression, Steve said. “A few words are doing a ton of work.”

Then he talked about something called the “rate of revelation.” He explained it as the rate of pleasure the reader experiences while reading a piece. A reader, for example, is excited by learning new things. By interesting language. By gripping emotional engagement. By delight.

A reader falls out when something is

• redundant

• evasive

• inessential

• distracting

So there you have it. Avoid, at all costs, a reader “falling out.” That means look for anything that’s redundant, evasive, inessential, or distracting. Remove it.

Increase the rate of pleasure of the reader.

🌀 Writing Prompt

In the lockbox

🌀Austin Kleon’s Edge Index. Make One.

I wanted to share one post with you, fellow book-lovers and book-devourers, from the Substack of author and artist Austin Kleon. I’ve enjoyed his uber-creative work, especially Steal Like an Artist.

On some of his books, Austin draws an Edge Index. This is a diagram on the book edge that helps you understand the book or find something in it. You can learn a lot about the structure of a book by doing this, Austin says.

He says this is especially fun with doorstoppers. And he’s learned not to use water-based ink on summer reads.

Here’s the Austin Kleon Substack about it. You’ll see a couple of other examples before you hit a paywall.

🌀What About You?

Have you ever drawn an edge index? I haven’t. Let’s do it! I challenge all of us to make one.

Send a photo to my email, and I’ll post it in next month’s Substack. My email address is wildfire1491 at yahooooo.

Leave a comment

🌀 Beware—AI Scams Are in Full Swing

I receive email messages daily that lavishly praise my work and offer to help me market it in some way. All of these messages are written and disseminated by AI. Often, there is a real person on the other end, but this person is not able to provide what they offer—a spot in the Amsterdam Book Club or on the Creative Penn Podcast. They have created a gmail account that appears to be a famous writing outlet. For a “modest sum,” they will get you into that spotlight. Please be aware of these. Friends write me often to ask my opinion on the validity of one of these. These emails are very good, and getting snookered is easy.

🌀 Two Important Things You Should Know About AI

The Book Coach Used It

A writer with whom I’ve worked for two years in courses and workshops let me know last week that she’s considering hiring a book coach. She contacted a handful and had a great interaction with one.

She had submitted pages to the coach and had received a detailed, elaborate assessment. The coach had understood her and her work almost immediately. “I was really moved by her take on my essays,” my friend said.

The sum my friend was quoted by this coach was in the tens of thousands. She wanted to know what I thought.

My friend and I arranged to speak by phone yesterday.

I asked her to create a free account on Claude AI, and I walked her through the process of uploading some pages of a memoir she’s working on. I had her ask Claude to provide the same kind of material she had received from the coach, meaning to ask for an assessment or give her some possible titles.

In seconds, my friend had a thorough, well-thought-out assessment of her pages. She was shocked to find that much of the material that Claude provided her was the same as what the coach had sent.

As writers, as environmentalists, and as people concerned about the future of human civilization on planet Earth, we can scorn AI. And I do. However, my advice is to get to know what AI can do for you. It can act as a research assistant, an office assistant, and a personal assistant. Why would you pay tens of thousands to someone else to employ AI on your behalf?

I keep saying this, and I’m going to say it again. Get savvy about AI.

The Essayist Used It

I subscribe to a large number of Substacks. This week, I received a post from a writer whose work I admire. It was a long and lovely essay preceded by a short introduction. As I read the intro, I knew immediately that it had been written by AI. For one thing, it contained the word “quietly” in a way that’s a hallmark of AI writing.

How do I know this? For months now, I’ve used AI to do various non-writing tasks. For example, when I was teaching a short writing workshop for Lost in the Letters at Trees Atlanta last year, I searched chatgpt for possible writing exercises. I thought I might find a cool exercise on writing about trees that I couldn’t think of by myself.

Half of the suggestions used the word “quietly.”

I use Claude now for the thing it’s great at, which is pattern recognition in language. I ask it to put lists in alphabetical order or to evaluate a series of responses.

Often, it uses the same adjectives over and over. “Quietly” is just one of them.

Finally, I began seeing comments about this trend, such as this LinkedIn post from John Cutler.

If you aren’t familiar with AI’s voice, you can look silly to people who are familiar with it.

I am not telling you to use AI. I am not telling you to boycott it. I’m going to say again, Get acquainted with it. Get savvy.

🌀 Let Me Introduce You to Guest Speakers and Leaders in the Memoir Course

The core sessions of the memoir course—Wednesdays at 1 pm Eastern—are me. I’ll be presenting webinar style, meaning I’m the only person talking. I am scheduling lots of adjunct events, happening in non-class time, that are open to folks in the course.

𖦹 June 14, 4 pm—Workshop | WRITING TRAUMA INTO YOUR STORY, with Ann Hite. How does a writer tell a traumatic story? Is there a wrong or a right way to handle sensitive material? Ann Hite, author of the memoir Roll the Stone Away: A Family’s Legacy of Racism and Abuse and other books. As Ann said, “Owning my history means no longer hiding what happened to my family or the choices they made….owning my history is pure freedom from the expectation that I will forget and stay silent.” This workshop is open to folks outside the memoir course. You can register here. The cost is $20 plus any taxes that Eventbrite collects.

𖦹 June 29, 7 pm ET— MICHELLE DOWD is the author of Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult and the Substack Forager Fridays. She was raised on a mountain in the Angeles National Forest where she learned to identify flora and fauna, navigate by the stars, forage for edible plants, and care for the earth.

𖦹 July 14, 7 pm ET— Award-winning writer KATHRYN WILDER works on a ranch in southwestern Colorado, where she writes, cowboys, and lives among mustangs. Her book Desert Chrome: Water, a Woman, and Wild Horses in the West won the Colorado Book Award. Her story “After Birth” published in The Missouri Review, then won the 2025 Western Heritage Award for outstanding magazine article! Her memoir, The Last Cows: On Ranching, Wonder, and a Woman’s Heart, came out in 2025.

𖦹 July 29, 7 pm ET— KELLY MCMASTERS is an essayist, professor, mother, and former bookshop owner. She is the author of The Leaving Season: A Memoir-in-Essays, a Zibby Book Club pick. She is co-editor of the ABA national bestseller Wanting: Women Writing About Desire. Her first book, Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town, was listed as one of Oprah’s top 5 summer memoirs.

𖦹 Aug. 3, 7 pm ET—Workshop | BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR. YOU MAY NOT BE READY, with Ann Hite. As a writer, are you open to a true and heartfelt critique of your work? Learn how to appreciate what is said concerning your writing and learn from it. Ann Hite, author of I Am a Georgia Girl: The Life of Lucille Selig Frank and other books, will lead this workshop on how to welcome and incorporate comments on your work.

𖦹 August 6, 7 pm ET—Ecotherapist and writer JEANNE MALMGREN is the author of Good Eye, Bad Eye: A Memoir of Trauma and Truth, the story of a childhood injury and the spiritual search that led her to peace and acceptance of a disability. She writes the Substack Rx Nature.

𖦹 WEEKLY CO-WRITING GROUP, led by Julie Nowak, Sundays, 1 pm ET—Julie Nowak (she/they) is a writer, multimedia artist, accessibility consultant, and disability justice educator who specializes in nature accessibility through their project “The Seasonal Body.” Their work is influenced by their own lived experience as a multiply-disabled and neuroqueer person. Julie lives in Ontario. Here’s the way Julie runs the sessions:

• 5 min check-in

• 25 min writing in silence

• optional 5 min break (but people can keep writing if they are in the flow)

• 25 min writing in silence

• 5-15 mins optional check-out and sharing

Total time: 1h15 (but people can leave after 1 hour if they want, and they miss the check-outs)

𖦹 WEEKLY WRITER’S FEEDBACK GROUP, led by Stacy Mote, Thursdays, 6 pm ET—Stacy Mote is an environmental scientist, an off-road bicyclist, and a wordsmith. She divides her time between Alabama and Georgia.

𖦹 LISTENING SESSIONS, processing the emotions brought up by the writing, with therapist Rachael Oliver, not pictured. Dates to be announced.

Come On In

Next Month—

🌀 We’ll Go Deep Into What New Survey Results Really Mean

I asked all the folks signed up for my summer memoir-writing course one simple question—

What is the biggest challenge you’re facing as a writer right now?

I removed names and identifying information associated with the feedback (for privacy’s sake) and fed the responses into Claude AI.

I was both surprised and not surprised by the results.

Survey responses are still arriving. I’d love to share the findings with you in the July newsletter.

🌀 Send Me a Flash Memoir From the Prompt

If a great flash piece rises from the prompt “In the lockbox,” I hope you’ll send it to me. I’d love to publish a few.

🌀 Last Call for Memoir Summer 2026

If you were a paying subscriber to Spiral-Bound when I removed a subscription fee or if you are a paying subscriber to Trackless Wild, the Substack that contains my own writing, there’s a coupon for $55 off for you. Send me a message and I’ll get the coupon code to you.

Tell Me More

I am moving to a monthly publication schedule for Spiral-Bound. This is a platform for important writing ideas.

The Top or Bust for Addie Citchens

I met debut writer Addie E. Citchens at the Oxford Conference for the Book in March. Her novel, Dominion, was published in 2025 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It’s a powerful, haunting story about the role the church plays in one black community in Mississippi, or in Addie’s words, “how the church makes heroes and monsters out of men and how sometimes the two are indistinguishable.”

A rich preacher is a womanizer; the preacher’s wife loves alcohol and pills. The results are both disastrous and redemptive.

In Oxford, Addie was on a panel called “First Books from Mississippi.” Although she lives in New Orleans, she was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, smack in the Delta.

I’d never heard of her. I hadn’t heard of her new book.

However, when she answered the first question directed at the panelists, I leaned forward. Addie was intelligent and intense, honest and so, so funny. I lived to hear her answers.

With three authors on the panel and only an hour, the questions moved quickly. When the time came for audience questions, someone asked Addie directly about her writing life and how she got published. Actually, they asked for encouragement. Things weren’t going so well in their publishing process.

I grabbed my notebook and took notes. I’m putting Addie’s words in italics.

Be patient, she said. Don’t compare yourself to others. You can’t compare your trajectory to someone else’s. Yours is going to be different.

I was picky about where I submitted my book. I sent it to only six or seven places over two years.

On Ambition

Don’t sell yourself short. A lot of journals have egregious terms. Go get paid. Start at the top.

It’s the top for me. Or bust.

Find yourself a good editor. Don’t get married to your darlings, as they call them.

On Hope

Once you send a story off, manage your expectations.

(I wish I’d heard a lot more about this, how she manages her expectations. One day, I’ll find out more.)

On Space

You’re going to have to fight for the space to write.

I quit seventy-one jobs over the years. I’ve spent my whole life avoiding responsibility.

Don’t treat writing like a hobby, and it won’t read like a hobby.

On Ritual

Set up rituals and routines, then fight for them, she said.

Addie’s ritual is to pick one song that represents a piece she’s working on. Then, before her writing session each day, she smokes weed (my partner told me not to talk about that, she laughed) and then puts on the song. She gets writing.

Dominion

I read Dominion after I arrived home from Mississippi. It’s one of those novels you’ll stay up all night to finish. Addie is a master at subtlety. Also at plot. Also at dialogue. She’s just a master.

Look at this list of awards the novel has won.

• Short-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction

• Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

• Long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

• Best Book of the Year: Elle, Garden & Gun, Electric Literature, Debutiful

• A Must-Read: New York, People, NPR, Literary Hub, Jezebel, The Millions, Southern Living, Clarion Ledger, Southern Review of Books, BookBrowse

• Indies Introduce and Indie Next Pick

• Publishers Weekly Writer to Watch

• Finalist for the 2025 LA Times Book Prize’s Art Seidenbaum Award

🌀 In the Comments

Have you read Dominion? If so, what did you think?

🌀 Tips to Rekindle the Magic of a Piece of Writing

A couple of months ago, I received the following email, a writer wondering how to return to a piece once the momentum for it has vanished.

The question brought to mind something Addie said. She said you have to keep “rebuilding your relationship with your writing practice.”

Therefore, why not try her ritual?

1. Pick one of those banked essays.

2. Assign a song to it.

3. Pick a day and time to work on it.

4. Decide on a physical space to do the work.

5. When the hour arrives, leave your phone in another room, forbid family members to interrupt you, move to your workspace, put on the song, and get to work. Okay, you may need your phone to listen to the song. But then put away your phone or use the Freedom app (“Block distractions. Unblock your life.”) to give yourself uninterrupted space to focus.

🌀 In the Comments

What advice would you give the writer who sent the email above?

🌀 Use the Mysterium To Help You

Let your subconscious work for you. Before you go to sleep tonight, assign your subconscious the job of helping you solve this writing problem. Say: “Tonight, while I am sleeping, pick up the dropped strand of this essay and guide me easily through to the end.”

🌀 My Summer Memoir Course Starts in June

Because I’m parenting a little one, I’m only teaching two writing courses this entire year.

Starting in June, running through summer, I’ll be teaching memoir writing. If you are interested in writing memoir of any length—flash, essay, family notebook, or book—I invite you to join me.

The course consists of a session each week, one hour on Wednesdays at 1 pm Eastern, taught online, live via Zoom. Sessions are recorded if you can’t make a class. There are additional, optional sessions for coworking, Q&As, or guest speakers. Guest writers so far are Kelly McMasters, Kathryn Wilder, Jeanne Malmgren, and Michelle Dowd.

My goal is to help you get stories on the page. That’s it. Stories on paper.

Experience level for Memoir Summer is beginner to already published. Goals range from collecting a few stories for your family to publishing a book-length memoir.

I could tell you more, but the best thing is to go to my website. Tuition is $300. If you’re a paying subscriber here at Spiral-Bound, there’s a discount code. Be in touch.

I'm Interested in Writing Memoir

The only other course I’m teaching in 2026 is Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction in the fall.

More About Magical Craft

🌀 I Need a Book Contract Attorney

I, Janisse, am in need of an attorney savvy about literary contracts to look over a creative collaboration contract for me. The contract is written. I simply need a reviewer. Can anyone recommend a good attorney for this? Does anyone know how I can find such a person? Thank you for any and all suggestions. I may be reached at wildfire1491@yahoo.com or in the comments below.

🌀 The DNA Anthology is Launching via Kickstarter

Wild Branches: An Anthology of DNA Surprises is a moving and memorable collection, co-edited by Hilary Vidalakis and me, of 29 essays from people whose lives were upended by DNA results. Folks got test results and

• found absent fathers

• located blood relatives

• lost blood relatives

• had to rewrite origin stories

• learned buried secrets and unexpected truths

If you want to make sure you get a copy of the book, do it through the Kickstarter launch. I cannot guarantee a copy any other way. The pre-launch page is up. We should go live by June 1 and run for a couple of weeks.

To get an email notice when we go live, head to our pre-launch page and click the button “Notify me on launch.”

Notify Me on Launch

🌀 Writers in the DNA Book

Wild Branches is co-edited by Hilary Vidalakis and copyedited by M.K. Creel. Cover designer is Peter S. Elgin.

The work of the following writers appears in the anthology.

✍️ A.B. Rowell ✍️ Alana Edwards ✍️ Ann Hite ✍️ Beth Cleary ✍️ Cate Hurlbut ✍️ Chelsea D. Hillyer ✍️ David Gallipoli ✍️ Dorette E. Snover ✍️ Erin McAllester ✍️ Frances B. Stephan ✍️ Gabriela MacKee ✍️ Gail Krueger ✍️ Helena Hubl ✍️ Joy Ramirez ✍️ Karen Salyer McElmurray ✍️ Kathy Conway ✍️ Kelli Nicole Bivins ✍️ Kory Wells ✍️ Laura Dennis ✍️ Leeanne R. Hay ✍️ Lisa Harris ✍️ Lindsay Kolasa ✍️ M.K. Creel ✍️ Marilyn Moriarty ✍️ Mary Dansak ✍️ Mary Tebo ✍️ Maxine Smith ✍️ Niles Reddick ✍️ Rhonda Mullen ✍️ Shirley Harris ✍️

The paperback will sell for $20, the hardback for $30, and the ebook for $10. We will not be offering an audiobook.

I'm Pretty Sure I Want the DNA Book

🌀 Important Thoughts from Seth Godin on Courage Vs. Excuses

There are more available excuses now than ever before. In just two letters, “AI” is a simple, brand-new, all-purpose excuse for laying people off, averaging things down, closing things up and generally finding an easier/quicker path.

Courage, on the other hand, is the commitment to take risks and work hard to make something better than most people think it needs to be.

The conversation behind most of the excuses all around us is built on a simple choice: what’s the purpose of our work? Why are we showing up, putting in the cycles and making promises to the world? The short-term path to quick returns is usually excusable, and then we can get back to what we were doing, even if we’re hesitant to label it. “We don’t do this because it’s important, we do it because we’re getting paid right now to do it and because it’s easier.”

On the other hand, if your purpose is bigger, longer-term or more important than the easy path to quick profit, labeling it is important.

Tom Peters called it Excellence. It’s valuable because it’s scarce, and it’s scarce because there are plenty of available excuses. Excellence is an option, and excellence is a choice.

It’s much easier to find courage if you know why you’re looking for it.

🌀 Southern Lit Review Needs Book Reviewers

Donna Meredith, editor of Southern Literary Review, has a few titles needing review. She sent me her latest list, which she will send to you if you email her and get on her notification list. If any of the books interest you and you think you can help one of these authors out by reviewing their work, let Donna know. She will connect you with the publisher or publicist to obtain a copy. Interviewing the author instead of (or in addition to) a review is usually possible. Also, if you already promised SLR a review, please let Donna know if you are not able to complete it. She hates to disappoint authors who are counting on SLR. Donna may be reached at meredithds@comcast.net.

🌀 If You Are a Poet With a Manuscript

This comes from Abigail Card, managing editor of Cider Press Review. It was forwarded to me by Simmons Buntin of Terrain.org.

I wanted to announce that Cider Press Review is officially open for submissions to our Editors’ Book Prize!

The annual Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize offers a $1,000 prize, publication, and 25 author’s copies of a book length collection of poetry. No First- or Second book requirement. Author receives a standard publishing contract. Initial print run is not less than 1,000 copies. Cider Press accepts submissions for the Editors Prize between April 1 and June 30 annually.

The winner is selected by the editors of Cider Press Review. Recent winners can be found here.

🌀 Goodreads Adds D.N.F. Shelf

Goodreads, the online reading tracker and book review site, has added a new shelf. Readers have always been able to move books between shelves.

• Want to Read

• Currently Reading

• Read

Reviews, ratings, and reading history stay with the book.

Now, you are able to slide a book to a shelf marked DNF for “Did Not Finish.” The app allows you to record how far you got before setting a book aside.

DNF books with a read date count toward your goal; books without one don’t.

Yikes. I hope none of my books wind up on a DNF shelf.

🌀 Friends Receive Major Writing Award

Of the four writers inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors this year, two are good friends, J. Drew Lanham and Jenks Farmer (see his Substack, Plant People.) I look forward to getting to know Dianne Johnson and Claudia Smith Brinson. Congratulations to all!

🌀 Beware—AI Scams Are in Full Swing

Daily, I receive email messages that lavishly praise my work and offer to help me market it in some way. All of these messages are written and disseminated by AI. Often, there is a real person on the other end, but this person is not able to provide what they offer—a spot in the Amsterdam Book Club or on the Creative Penn Podcast. They have created a gmail account that appears to be a famous writing outlet. For a “modest sum,” they will get you into that spotlight. Beware! Friends write me almost daily to ask my opinion on the validity of one of these. These emails are very good, and getting snookered is easy.

🌀 Are You a Georgia Writer with a Debut Book?

Georgia Writers Museum’s digital magazine, Page Turner, features a brand-new Georgia author in each issue. Editor Chip R. Bell is looking for debut Georgia authors. He can be contacted at chip@chipbell.com.

🌀 Let Me Know

What do you think of Spiral-Bound arriving in your inbox around the 1st or 2nd of each month? Does that work for you?

🌀 Happy May!

I wish you well in building, rebuilding, or enjoying your relationship with your writing practice.

Now, I Need Your Additions

What wild and weird literary must-dos would you add?

Leave a comment

A Personal Update

🌀 A scheduled poet got ill and couldn’t teach during the Ecopoetry Summit in January. I rescheduled her workshop for yesterday, but at the last minute, she had to bow out. Rather than cancel, I pulled together poetry exercises. Eleven of us used the hour to write poetry. We did a bit of sharing along the way. I was brought to my knees by the quality of the work coming out of folks. All recordings for the Ecopoetry Summit are now in the Google Drive.

🌀 As of last night, I have completely fulfilled the Kickstarter for Journey in Place.

🌀 Speaking of Kickstarters, we’ll be running one for the anthology of DNA surprises. This has turned into a potent, gripping book of true stories of revised families. Hilary Vidalakis, co-editor, and I are really happy to bring it to you. You are going to very much enjoy this book. The book is now in the design phase. Hopefully, I can have a Kickstarter link for you soon.

🌀 I will be publishing Spiral-Bound for two more weeks only. I discussed this in last week’s newsletter, in case you missed it. Since my first post was March 21, 2023, Tuesday, March 24 will be my final post. The archives will remain available. I have ended the option already to become a paying subscriber. If you are one, you have the choice to cancel your subscription and receive a refund. Likely, Substack will prorate it. Thank you so much for your support. I’m grieving the end of this newsletter, because (on the down-low), it was my favorite. I love hanging with writers and writing for writers. However, eliminating one deadline per week will free up time for a deeper, more permanent, more world-changing project.

🌀 I invite you sincerely and lovingly to subscribe to Trackless Wild—the newsletter where my own writing lives—if you aren’t there already. Thank you, thank you. In the future, when I post writing-related material, it will show up there.

🌀 This coming Saturday I’ll be speaking in Columbus, Georgia, at the botanical garden’s Naturalist Day. If you’re anywhere near Columbus, I’ll be hoping to see you.

🌀 Later this month, I’ll be traveling to Oxford, Mississippi to give the Ann Abadie Lecture at the Oxford Conference for the Book. It’s a huge deal, both to me and to all who knew Ann. The organizers and I decided to make a special bookmark with a place challenge on it. This week, I got that designed. It’s at the printer.

🌀 I recommend the Oxford Conference. All events are free. And, isn’t wandering around Oxford, MS, on your list of 100 Writerly Things to Do Before You Die?

🌀 You may have heard that the great Sterling College in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont is closing its doors. My good friend Carol Dickson has taught there for years. Next month, I will be speaking one final time, online, to her final class. You may have attended the iconic Wildbranch Writing Workshop at Sterling. Losing it as a college option is a troubling sign of the times.

🌀 Good luck doing your taxes. I hope you had enough writing income in 2025 to report to the IRS. If so, your subscription here is tax-deductible. Remember, as you’re paying taxes, all the great things that taxes bring us. They give us our national parks, for example. Think, as you pay, I am supporting Great Smoky Mountain National Park!

🌀 This one is important. If you are learning to market your work; are developing an online presence; are running an online business or a business with an online component; or want to be more visible in a digital world, I highly recommend Captolia Eaton’s upcoming course, Witch and Famous. It was life-changing for me. Everything you want to know about it can be found at The Digital Witch. A few things to keep in mind:

1) The course is not cheap. ($1,111)

2) You can pay on time.

3) You pay once, but you can retake the course as long as Captolia offers it, usually once per year.

4) This will be my third time through.

5) If you are uncomfortable with alternative spiritualities, this may not be the course for you.

6) Captolia is awesome with mindset work as well as all things digital marketing. She’s well-trained, up-to-date, experienced, and always uplifting and encouraging.

7) The code JANISSE gets you 11 percent off the course.

8) You need to register by March 15.

9) If you have any qualms or questions, I will give you my completely honest opinion on the course. Be in touch.

10) I attribute Captolia with resetting my nervous system and allowing me to do the online work that I do. That reset moved my income above six figures. I don’t promise the same results for you. I’m letting you know what worked for me.

🌀 Wake up in the spiral. Go to bed in the spiral. Stay in the spiral as much as you can. The spiral is possibility, hope, love.

The Chinese zodiac rotates through a 12-year cycle of animals—Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig. It also cycles through five elements, those of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water.

2026 is the Year of the Horse + Fire.

We are, therefore, in the Year of the Fire Horse, a combination that occurs once every sixty years. The last occurrence was 1966.

Horse means independence, freedom, speed, and energetic pursuit of goals. When Fire gets added, it can look like revolution.

I’ve been immersed in thinking about revolutions desperately needed in the world, in our country, and in my own life. I’ve been spending time getting clear on what I want to gallop toward. I’ve been cleaning too—cleaning up clutter, clearing out old papers, sweeping off desks and floors. Cleaning out the old makes space for the new.

Therefore, an Announcement

One morning recently, coming out of sleep, I understood with great clarity one thing I have to give up as we move into the Firehorse.

I have to give up Spiral-Bound.

I came to that decision because something else is necessary.

My schedule with Little Fawn means that I have only a few precious hours a day for my own pursuits—my writing, my business ventures, my self-care, my yoga, visits with my 86-year-old mother, care for my home and farm and family.

I have loved writing Spiral-Bound, and before it, The Rhizosphere. I love nurturing a community of writers who care about nature and each other. I love facilitating conversations here.

Firehorse now requires, however, that I make space. In this case, the space is for writing and editing longer and bigger projects of my own.

I started this newsletter on March 21, 2023. I will post weekly until the 3rd anniversary, two weeks away.

Then I will not be posting.

For a while after March 21, 2026, I will leave the newsletter up. It will simply be inactive. However, I plan, at some point, to delete it entirely.

I will focus my firehorse energy on Trackless Wild, where I post my own work, mostly about how we live on the Earth. There I talk about culture, wildness, and radical sustainability, and I’ll pass along ideas and opportunities.

Because writing craft is one of my great passions, I will sometimes post writing-related pieces there.

Taking Care of Business

I have already turned off paying subscriptions here on Spiral-Bound.

If you are a paying subscriber, I will ask Substack to refund your subscription. That will likely be prorated.

If you do not wish a refund, I happily offer you a complimentary year-long subscription to Trackless Wild.

Some of you subscribed here as part of a workshop bundle you purchased that included a one-year subscription. The newsletter archives will remain in place for you, and I will gladly extend your Trackless Wild subscription by a year.

If you have a specific request for me regarding your subscription, you can leave it in the Comments, send me a direct message, or email me at wildfire1491 at yahoo.

If you are not subscribed to Trackless Wild, I invite you to do so.

TRACKLESS WILD

This Is Not Yet Goodbye

I’ll be here for a couple more issues. Thank you for being here and for all you have meant to me.

In Other News

🌀Poet to Give a 1-Hour Workshop

Liz Bradfield was unable, because of illness, to give her workshop as part of the Ecopoetry Summit in January. We rescheduled her session for March 9 at 6:30 pm Eastern US Time. I’ll send a notice to everyone who signed up for the Summit. If you didn’t sign up but you’d like to attend the March 9 event, let me know. There is no charge.

🌀Job Opening—Director of the University of Utah Press

My friend Glenda Cotter is retiring from her position as director of the University of Utah Press. If this is a position of interest, you can find more information here. Get your application in by March 8, if possible. They can close the position at any time.

🌀Deadline for Anthropic Settlement Claims Approaches

You’ve probably been following the case of Bartz v. Anthropic. Various authors alleging that Anthropic violated the Copyright Act by downloading copyrighted works to train its large language models (LLMs). Anthropic settled the lawsuit last fall.

If Anthropic used a book you wrote, you may be eligible for the settlement.

To be eligible, an author must 1) have been published prior to August 2022; 2) been registered with the US copyright office; and 3) appear in the Works List covered by the settlement.

Authors can check whether they are eligible for the settlement here.

You can choose to submit a claim. The deadline to submit is March 30.

For more information about the case and FAQs, please consult the Authors Guild guide here.

🌀Check the Copyright Status of Any Book You’ve Written

Over the course of this case, it has been brought to light that some publishers have not always been diligent in registering copyright for their titles. Therefore, if you are not listed as being eligible for the Anthropic settlement, I also recommend that you search the public US copyright office database to ensure that copyright has been registered for each of your titles, which can be done through this link:

https://publicrecords.copyright.gov/

🌀Study & Write Memoir With Me This Summer?

• Level: Beginner to Mid-Level

• Weekly for 12 weeks, 1 hour a week

• Wednesdays 1-2 pm Eastern US/Canada Time

• June 3-Aug. 19, 2026

• Live via Zoom

• Participant numbers not limited

• Session dates: June 3 / June 10 / June 17 / June 24 / July 1 / July 8 / July 15 / July 22 / July 29 / Aug. 5 / Aug. 12 / Aug. 19

• Sessions are recorded.

• Open Mic Night (currently set for Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026, 6 pm Eastern Time)

More Info Here

🌀I’ll Be Teaching Magical Craft in the Fall

I invite you to join me for a 8-week session of Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction. In this course I cover the essentials to writing great creative nonfiction. We will meet live via Zoom one evening a week, Mondays from 7-9 pm Eastern US/Canada Time, starting Sept. 14, 2026 and running through Nov. 2, 2026.

We explore the personal narrative essay, memoir, prose poetry, micro-memoir, and the infinitely usable flash essay. This is the only place I teach the Kittredge essay schema.

The class is Live via Zoom. You will receive a Zoom link that will work for all sessions of the course. Sessions are recorded in case you have to miss one.

Magical Craft Info Here

🌀Oxford Conference for the Book Is Free

Consider attending. You could visit Faulkner’s home, stroll the square, roam Square Books, attend Thacker Mountain Radio, and be around a lot of writers and book lovers. I’ll speak on Wednesday, March 25.

Oxford Book Conference Info

🌀Another Chance to Get Witch & Famous!

You have probably heard me attribute my comfort with social media and online marketing to The Digital Witch, Captolia Eaton. I took her “Witch & Famous” course a few years ago, and it changed everything for me. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I learned.

Looking back, I think it was the mindset work that was most potent for me. Captolia would say things like, “Who told you that you weren’t supposed to do this?” or “Audacity alone changes the world.

I wrote about my experience working with Captolia Eaton in the post, Witch & Famous Approaches. Start there if you’re intrigued by this.

I also wrote about it in “Me, Bro, That Is Who.”

If you want to share or promote or market your writing online—if you want to learn to show up—if you’re tired of hiding your gifts, I highly recommend Captolia.

A new cohort of Witch & Famous is starting soon. Enrollment is open now. It closes March 15.

Tuition for the course is $1111. You don’t have to pay it all at once. You can make 8 monthly payments. You can also get 11% off by using the code JANISSE at checkout.

So you see that this is a serious investment. This is something to investigate. If you decide to spend the money, I encourage you to really show up—be in class, do the homework, stretch yourself, do the mindset work.

You can find more info below.

Witch & Famous

🌀Out of All the Boxes & Into the Spirals

Here it is.

That’s me. The Caretaker battles The Hedonist.

I think most of us know this conflict by heart. It’s a contest between the choice to labor for common good or to go sit by a river.

The conflict is especially poignant now, when the Earth itself, all wild beings, and we humans suffer from acts of death and destruction.

There are letters to write, protests to attend, streets to march, good people to elect, money to raise, trees to plant, gardens to tend, survival skills to learn.

🕸️

Sometimes, I’ve realized, we don’t have to make this choice.

Caring for my baby, for example, is a way I can both save and savor. Cooking supper can be a way to do both. So can gardening or practicing yoga or many other things.

Doing writing that matters is a way to both save and savor.

🕸️

Having the baby means that some of the day-planning gets done for me. Because of her, acts of civil disobedience are out of the question. I can’t afford to get arrested right now.

🕸️

We’re torn in many other ways.

• “I wake up in the morning torn between a desire to make money or give everything away.”

• “I wake up in the morning torn between a desire to relentlessly pursue my goals or to enjoy every moment.”

• “I wake up in the morning torn between a desire to keep trying or to quit.”

🕸️

What does this have to do with writing?

I think it’s a chance to look at the projects we’re working on and make sure they align with our values.

Core values are things like happiness, love, peace, health, authenticity, courage, compassion, and fun.

If our work doesn’t align, we are slogging uphill.

If we align our goals and actions with our actions, the day gets easier. Magic can happen.

Things are more likely to fall into place. To get done. To bring meaning and enjoyment. To bring fulfillment.

We are more likely to enjoy our work.

Our work is more likely, as well, to change the world.

In the Comments

What do you think of White’s lines? Are you torn between saving and savoring? What other things are you torn between?

I would appreciate your thoughts on any of this.

And what are you working on, if you don’t mind saying?

What kind of writer are you?

Recently, I was listening to a podcast produced by Orna Ross of The Alliance of Independent Authors. I heard her divide authors into three camps. She was speaking about indie authors, but the “types” are widely applicable.

You are one of three kinds.

✍️ An Engagement Writer

Engaging with readers is what means the most to you. You love community. You like social media, in-person events, and doing lives. You love interacting. You find book fairs and library events thrilling. If a lit mag publishes one of your poems, you are delighted to dress up and attend the launch party. Your work might be more conversational in tone.

✍️ A Craft Writer

The quality of your writing means the most to you. You look at a book as a beautiful, even sacred, object. You are most likely to pursue book reviews, awards, and literary festivals. You are happiest if one of your poems publishes in a top literary magazine. You might not even attend a launch party for the issue. Your work is likely more lyrical.

✍️ A Volume Writer

You are most interested in making the most money possible from your work. In the publishing realm, you might be a rapid-release author (more than one book a year) who uses paid ads to drive people to a transactional website. You may be writing to market, meaning writing in the hottest genre at the moment. You may have a pen name. Or two.

So which are you?

Most of us contain elements of all three categories. Most of us, for example, like to hear how our work touches readers. We want to be good at writing. And we would like our work to reach millions.

However, take a few minutes and study the categories again. Which of these constitutes over 50 percent of how you operate in the world? Choose one of the three.

Knowing what kind of writer you are helps determine how you show up. Your subject matter, your marketing, your voice—everything—will depend on this.

If you show up as a writer in ways that harmonize with your personality and your beliefs, you’ll be happier.

In the Comments

Which are you?

Or if it feels more fair, list the three in an order that fits you best.

I’ll go first.

The Source

Recently I joined The Alliance for Independent Authors.

ALLi calls itself a “global, nonprofit association championing author freedom, excellence, and creative control.” I joined because of an incredible level of support ALLi offers authors.

You can find their enormous backlist of podcasts here. I think the episode where I learned about the three kinds of writers is New Takes on Marketing Must-Dos.

You may want to check out ALLi.

Poke Around ALLi

Here was my chance to truly assist someone—to change their trajectory, to retool their personal narrative, to help them accomplish something big.

How does anyone know when they need to move on? From anything?

Here are six ways to figure something—anything—out.

• You have an epiphany.

• You get hints from the universe.

• You listen to intuition.

• You notice which doors open, which doors close.

• You have an ethics boundary that you won’t allow to be crossed.

• You pay attention to your body. It measures your stress, your fatigue, your unhappiness.

Life is good for non-writers too.

If you want to spend the last decades of your life enjoying your home and your beloved, do it. If you want to spend time with your grandchildren, do. If you love to cook and garden and ride horses, do.

Choosing not to write is absolutely okay. It’s beautiful, actually.

You have a decision to make.

However, if you’ve been called to write—if you’ve been tapped to tell a story—if a story has been handed to you (here you go!)—then do it. Not doing it is cheating.

Who are you cheating?

Yourself.

And all of us, especially the humans who may need your story.

You’re cheating the mysterium itself.

Here are ten tips on getting the work done.

1. Set aside pockets of time, as often as you can, to honor your calling. Yes, I know people tell you to write every day. I tell you that. Dorothea Brande in Becoming a Writer is particularly persuasive. And no way, with all you have going on, are you able to write daily. I understand. So let me tweak my advice. You think that I’m going to say, Write when you can. I’m not. I’m going to say the opposite. Once a day is not enough. Write many times a day. Write every minute you can.

2. Actually do it. Show up. Honor the commitment you made to yourself.

3. Set deadlines, if they work for you. (I’m sorry to say that self-imposed deadlines don’t work for me. I find myself baking the birthday cake, even if I’m supposed to be writing ten pages. But you may be different.)

4. Read The Practice by Seth Godin. Take notes. Underline. Read it again. The subtitle is Shipping Creative Work. That means getting it from the inside of you to the outside.

5. Get clear on your mission. What exactly are you doing? What is your book about? Ignore everything else.

6. If you can make an outline, great. That will save you loads of time later on. If you can’t, no worries.

7. Now, plan how to spend your writing sessions. Brainstorm a list of prompts you know you’ll need. The scene of your mother leaving. The scene of you watching a hawk take a bunting. A description of your grandparents’ farm. How you feel about cotton. Go on and on and on. Make the list long. Keep adding.

8. Carry your journal with you everywhere you go. When you find yourself in a waiting room, pull it out. Read the first prompt on your list and start writing.

9. As soon as possible—right now—begin to pull every one of your bits and pieces together in a single document. Start arranging them in some kind of order. Your idea is now a manuscript. It’s not a stack of ideas, fits and starts, odds and ends. It’s happening.

10. Remember the advice I learned from a poet I interviewed for The Seed Underground: Always Be Finishing Something. Try not to start anything new until you have finished this important project, the major project of your life.

I sound like a preacher.

If procrastination and lack of commitment are not your challenges, you don’t need me telling you what to do. Go forth and multiply.

Please Let All of Us Know

Are you a person who has worked on a project for years? Do you dare say how many? Are you a procrastinator? What do you do to trick yourself into getting the work done?

Better Yet

How do you know when you need to move on from something?

I Hope You Sign Up for the Summer Memoir Course

Write Your Own Story is open for registration. It is one hour each week, on Wednesdays, during June, July, and August.

• 1-2 Eastern Time

• 12-1 Central

• 11-12 Mountain

• 10-11 Pacific

• 9-10 Alaska

• 8-9 Hawaii

This course attracts lots of writers, and I teach it webinar style.

If you don’t like large numbers, I advise you not to sign up. To make up for the class size being large, I work hard to offer many small-group opportunities. These are sessions like Q&As, Social Hours, Office Hours, Silent Writing Time.

However.

If you are self-driven…

If you don’t need other people to distract or save you…

If you’re ready to get down to business…

If you want everything I know about…

• writing in scene

• three elements of all prose and how to recognize them

• how to make your stories come alive on the page

• publishing

• marketing

• truth and how much you can invent

• protecting yourself from sharing hard things

• and much more

…then I’d love to work with you.

You’ll write each and every session, and you’ll leave with dozens of new pieces that you can make into a whole. Or add to your whole. Or that may be whole as they are.

Each session contains a lesson, writing exercises, flow-writes, handouts, and mindset work. I hand out lots of encouragement and inspiration.

My goal is to make you a happier writer, whatever that means to you.

(Happy to me means I’m producing, I’m inspired, I’m on a tear, I have a idea that’s burning me up, I’m proud of myself, I’m putting words on paper.)

The memoir course costs $300.

Although people are already signing up, don’t feel rushed. I’ve created a course with lots of room. I’ll save a space with your name on it.

More Info Here

Here is a link to Write Now with author and naturalist Janisse Ray.

In the beginning Dawn and I talk about “speculative memoir” or “fictionalized memoir,” a genre that Dawn is exploring in a book she’s currently writing.

The conversation moves into:

• the difference between memoir and autobiography

• writing the truth

• keeping a journal and how a writer might use the entries

• what to do if you want to write memoir but don’t want to collect stories via journaling

• my book Journey in Place and how activism fits into literary writing

• why my writing manual Craft & Current includes sections of memoir

I invite you to listen.

About Dawn Major

Dawn Major is author of The Bystanders, a finalist for the 2024 Georgia Author of the Year for Best First Novel. Major is associate editor of Southern Literary Review and a co-editor of Well Read Magazine, where she writes a column called “TripLit with D. Major.” She serves on the board at Broadleaf Writers Association, which produces the Write Now Podcast.

A big part of Dawn’s ethos is advocating for Southern writers and artists, which she does on her blog, SouthernRead and at Southern Literary Review. She is a member of the William Gay Archive, helping edit, publish, and promote the late author’s previously unpublished work.

Dawn has a graduate degree in creative writing. She lives in Atlanta with her family and is currently working on her speculative memoir, The Dandy Chronicles.

I especially admire Dawn’s commitment to other writers, the writing community at large, and Southern literature. Please know that she belongs to more writing associations and salons than I have mentioned here. She gives as much time to the work of others as she does her own work. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

I am indebted to Dawn for her thoughtful reviews of my books and extensive support of my work, including this podcast episode.

About Broadleaf Writers

The Broadleaf Writers Association is a nonprofit educational organization of writers and writing professionals assembled to instruct and inspire writers in refining their craft. They do so via seminars, workshops, an annual conference, peer and critique groups, and community events.

Broadleaf Writers was founded and is directed by Zachary Steele, author of four novels, including The Weight of Ashes, nominated for Georgia Author of the Year in 2021, and Perfectly Normal. He has been featured in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Publisher’s Weekly, Writer’s Magazine, Shelf Awareness and City Lights with Lois Reitzes on NPR. Currently, he is working on The Fallen Hero, the first in a series of fantasy novels. Follow him at http://zacharysteele.com/.

Listen on Spotify

Annual Conference

Broadleaf’s annual conference is scheduled for two days, September 19-20, 2026 at the Decatur Library in Decatur, Georgia. Registration is open at 11th Annual Broadleaf Writers Conference – Broadleaf Writers Association.

On Saturday I sat in on a seminar taught by my old friend Ann Fisher-Wirth, as I’ve done many times in the past.

Below I’ve put together notes taken while listening, over many sessions, to Ann talk specifically about prose poetry. Her direct quotes are in italics.

What Is a Prose Poem?

With most poetry, you get to determine where line breaks go.

Prose poems are not arranged in lines. They are arranged to take the space of the page. This is an open form that uses paragraphs instead of lines that break. And a paragraph has no requirements—it is simply a block of text.

Prose poems open out. Writing them, you don’t have to worry what the next 15-syllable line is going to be.

What Are the Features of Prose Poems?

• often short, autobiographical pieces of writing

• intensified attention to language, rhythm, cadence

• God is in the details. Or the devil is in the details.

• a distillation

How To Arrive at This Distillation

Learn to love to cut. What you write is not you. It is a made thing. You make it out of your entrails. You have to pare and prune and find the shape of something.

Let the poem breathe.

It’s a common phenomenon to write beyond the ending of something. We get into this desire to explain everything, even to ourselves. Trust your rhythms and trust not having all the answer. As Machado said, “Comrade, there is no path. We create the path by going on it.”

How To Start?

You must consent to be a beginner. It’s a visceral process of learning to listen with the whole body. Is something interesting? Then figure out why you’re interested. William Carlos Williams wrote, “The dream/ is in pursuit.” Any piece of writing is doing this work.

A Few Tips from Ann Fisher-Wirth

1. Trust your memory. Bring back memories into the verbal present.

2. Trust your images, too. Your saturated images.

3. Move between reality and fantasy. Let yourself be surprised.

4. Trust not having all the answers.

On Variation and Repetition

Don’t forget variation. Variation keeps the poem alive. The body longs for variation. Also, the body longs for repetition. Repetition is grounding. We keep coming back to something. As a poet, then, work with both variation and repetition.

On Style

You don’t have to write in complete sentences.

Go in fear of semi-colons. They tend to be academic. I can’t think of when you’d ever need an exclamation point. Use colons sparingly. Commas are useful.

Experiment with leaving space between phrases. Empty space is as important as space with words on it.

Is Prose Poetry the Same as Flash Nonfiction?

No. They can look the same. They are both compact, thrifty with words, lyrical, made of paragraphs. But a poem, as Ann explained to me, doesn’t have to stick to truth, for one thing. A flash essay does. In a flash piece, the narrator is the actual “I.” In poetry, this may or may not be the case.

A Personal Note

I’ve known Ann for three decades. Back in 1996, I was organizing a gathering of Southern nature writers. At that point in American literary history, nature writing was literally called “a marginal literature.” Very few writers were confronting environmental crises or contending with nature at all in their work. In 1996, I found myself scouring the South for writers who were also tramping the woods. Someone told me about Ann. I invited her to Ossabaw Island, where we were meeting. And she came. At that gathering, January 1997, I met her in person. We’ve been friends and colleagues since.

Every time I hear Ann speak, my body zings with electricity. Ann has devoted her life to poetry, my old love. She lives and breathes poetry. When she is done with a session, I write her things like “Your spirit is mesmerizing. You are such a magnificent teacher.” and “You always give straight from the soul.”

Official Bio

Ann Fisher-Wirth is poet laureate of Mississippi. Her many books include Paradise is Jagged, The Bones of Winter Birds, Mississippi, Dream Cabinet, Carta Marina, Blue Window, and Five Terraces. With Laura-Gray Street, she coedited The Ecopoetry Anthology, which has become Volume I, and Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology, which serves as Volume II. Both these important anthologies were published by Trinity University Press. (Please note that Trinity is discontinuing its Press at the end of 2026, and you may want to consider adding this book to your library now.)

Ann’s poems appear widely in such journals as Prairie Schooner, Blackbird, The Valparaiso Review, Terrain.org, CutThroat, The Mississippi Review, and Copper Nickel. She has received numerous awards, including the Rita Dove Poetry Award and 13 Pushcart nominations. Ann was a senior Fulbright lecturer at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair at Uppsala University, Sweden. In 2006 she was President of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment.

She is newly retired from the University of Mississippi, where she taught in the MFA program and directed the Environmental Studies program. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi.

Catalpa (A Prose Poem)

By Ann Fisher-Wirth

This tree is older than Columbus. Ten years ago my honors students standing in a ring could barely get their arms around it. I took their picture—hands joined, cheeks against the rough wood. Mostly they loved it, but one guy told my friend who supervised his lab, She made us hug a tree. It was the worst class ever.

When I think of the tree as a sapling, my mind enters a great quiet. Before the Depression, the yellow fever, before the burning of Oxford, before the University Greys left their classrooms for the battlefield and died or were wounded to a man at Pickett’s Charge, and before Princess Hoka of the Chickasaws set out with her people on the Trail of Tears, this tree sank its roots deep and deeper into the ground. Generations moved about beneath its boughs, spoke and loved and died as it grew.

And here it is, still, in the clattering present.

Ten years ago I could walk around it, smell it, stroke the lichen on its bark. If I put my hand into the hollow in its trunk right near the ground, it was always cold, always comforting. No matter how brutal the summer, its dark, mysterious lungs kept serenely breathing.

Now fences surround it, stakes hold up its branches. No longer do art majors loll on the benches and smoke under its big-leaf shade. A sign warns NO CLIMBING: KEEP OFF. Still, every spring, wet tender leaves unfurl on branches jagged as broken bones, and the tree bursts out in a froth of white petals.

And every spring, the preachers line the sidewalk near the tree, and thrust their Bibles as we pass by. Repent and be saved, they say. Turn or burn. I want to tell them, Turn around, turn around, and look at the tree.

A Writing Exercise from Ann

This exercise is based on Ann’s poem, “Catalpa,” above.

Pick something in the natural world that’s really old and then trace it backward through human history. Roll time back to what the world must have looked like at different stages in its life.

In Other News

🌀Writing With the Earth, Wilmington, North Carolina

Jen Johnson, mindfulness and creativity coach, has scheduled a “WRITING WITH THE EARTH” workshop for February 7, 2026 from 1-4 pm at Halyburton Nature Park in Wilmington, NC. It’s for writers and non-writers alike. She’ll offer a presentation and facilitate discussion about the science of climate change, then talk about its health and mental health impacts. She offers skills for developing inner strengths to help stay grounded and help find your place in the climate crisis. After the presentation, she’ll lead the gathering in journaling prompts for writing and discussion.

To register, click here to create an account. Then click here to register. If you have trouble registering, contact Jen.

To learn more about the workshop, go to Writing With the Earth, and check out Jen’s work at her Substack, .

🌀Submit Short Pieces to the Climate Writing Exhibit

This workshop accompanies an exhibit of writing that will be on display for one month at the Halyburton Park Nature Center in Wilmington, NC. The exhibit begins Monday, March 23, 2026.

It provides an avenue for us to express what we think and how we feel about the ways climate change is impacting us and the places we love.

If you are unable to attend the in person event but would like to submit writing for the exhibit, please respond to the prompts below.

Responses to each prompt should be brief and able to easily fit on a 5 x 7″ postcard. You may respond to any or all of the prompts.

You might consider taking 5 minutes to sit quietly in nature as you contemplate the ways that climate change is impacting you and the Earth’s landscapes that you love. Here are possible writing prompts:

• My grief is for…

• If the (what you love –birds, rivers, trees, wind, land) could speak, it would say…

• My greatest hope is…

• Dear future generations…

• My plan for being resilient is…

Submit your response here.

🌀Southern Literary Review Needs Reviewers

Donna Meredith, editor of Southern Literary Review, has received requests to review more books than her editors can manage by themselves. She writes, “So we need your help once again. If you see a title that interests you, please let me know and I will connect you with the publisher/publicist to obtain a copy. You can let them know how to get a copy to you and tell them whether you prefer print or electronic.”

Below you’ll find the current list of titles.

Slr Titles To Review

151KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Stephanie Cornais just let me know that she wrote her first official book review for Southern Literary Review! She said she was surprised by how much she enjoyed Bees in June by Elizabeth Bass Parman.

One cool benefit is that you get a bio page when you become a contributor of Southern Literary Review. Here’s Stephanie's.

🌀Deadline for Feather Story Approaches

This comes from Jeanne Malmgren of . “I want to remind you that my friend Rebecca and I are looking for submissions to an anthology we’re planning to publish later this year. It will be a lovely, uplifting book, full of first-person stories about memorable encounters with the natural world. You can find details and submit your story here. We’re looking for submissions of prose or poetry, even voice recordings. Word limit is 2,500, and the deadline is January 31, 2026.”

🌀”How to Kickstart” Is Tomorrow Evening

I’ll be teaching a one-hour session, online and free, on best practices for running a Kickstarter campaign. We’ll do it tomorrow evening, Jan. 28, 2026 at 7 pm Eastern US Time.

The following folks have signed up to receive the Zoom link. If you name is not on the list, it’s possible that I forgot to write you down. Let me know. If you’re just hearing about this and want to attend, great. Let me know. Email is best.

Amie, Beth, Brandy, Carolee, China, Coco, Hugh, Jeanne, Kelly, Lisa, Mary, Mirra, Nancy, Sarah, Sonya, Sue, Susan, Susanne, Tania, Yasmin.

I will be sending the Zoom link to you privately.

🌀out of the box and into the spiral!🌀

I Feel Sheepish, Coming Back to Poetry

LAST YEAR, MY grown son, Silas, found some of my old papers.

He was home from Massachusetts for a visit. He drove over to my hometown to visit his grandmother, my mom, who still lives at the junkyard where I was raised. Tooling around among old trucks and cars, he found a galvanized trash can full of my papers. They dated back to high school and the first two years of college.

He brought the can to me.

That trashcan offered proof that I began my writing life as a young student, and the first genre I pursued was poetry.

I found poems I wrote in high school.

I found a poem that published when I was seventeen.

I found my homemade booklet of poems that was my (unsuccessful) application to the Governor’s Honors Program.

I found a notice in my college newsletter about winning a poetry prize from Agnes Scott College.

However, when I discovered creative nonfiction, which was more popular and sellable and readable, I mostly abandoned poetry. Occasionally I wrote a poem. But by far I was spending my time on creative nonfiction.

I surprised myself recently when I decided to lead a workshop on nature poetry.

I shouldn’t be surprised.

I love poetry. It’s a magical genre. It’s powerful. It speaks for so many—all, really—of us, speaks so much of what we deeply feel. It puts words in our mouths. It elevates us.

I’ve studied Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder, Pattiann Rogers, W.S. Merwin, and William Stafford. I’ve published two books of eco-poetry, both with small presses. When Mary Oliver died in 2019, I grieved alongside millions of other heartbroken readers.

Although my love for poetry never died, I feel some contrition with this return to it. I feel as if I haven’t given poetry the attention it sought from me. If it were a pet, I ushered it into the backyard and shut the big door. I left it to fend for itself.

Maybe I’m at a stage in my life where I can love poetry again. I don’t know. But I feel myself turning back to it, somewhat mute, somewhat baffled, somewhat contrite. And still completely in love with its mastery of language, its ability to find the god, and its competence in saying things that can’t readily be said.

I Am Not Running This Summit Alone

MOSTLY I AM a student myself. I am the hopeful laying talismans at the altar of poetry. I’m leaving a blue-jay feather. I’m hoping the poetry gods smile on me too.

Maybe you’d like to work on your poetry. Let me tell you a few things about this workshop.

1. I called it a “day-long” workshop, although it’s really six hours. That’s a long time. We’ll take breaks. I’ll also record the sessions separately, in case you have to duck out. You can come back and watch a session as you need.

2. We’ll work with Elizabeth Bradfield, Ann Fisher-Wirth, and Leonora Simonovis. Who knows? I may corral another poet to join us. But for now we’ll have four poet guides, if you count me.

3. Sometimes my workshops—especially the nature journaling ones—attract lots of people. Even a few hundred. This one is going to be small. I promise. I don’t know how many folks have signed up, but I could find out easily enough. My guess is that we’ll have fewer than 25.

4. But whoever wants to come is welcome to come.

5. The workshop is pricey, at $77. I am offering a coupon for $33 off for paying subscribers of Trackless Wild or Spiral-Bound.

6. If finances are an obstacle, contact me.

Eco-Poetry Online Summit

Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026

11 am - 5 pm Eastern Time

Wonderful poets will guide you through creative exercises using the natural world as inspiration. By sharing forms and ideas, they empower you to bring a passion for nature into poetic form. Plan to leave this workshop with 1) drafts of your own poems in hand; 2) better awareness of your voice as an eco-poet; and 3) copies of other nature poems to inspire you. You do not need prior experience as a poet, only a willingness to slow down, notice, and let the living world speak to you and through you.

11—Welcome

11:15-12:15—Leonora Simonovis, Odes & Elegies for the Earth

12:15-12:30—Janisse, The Art of Finding

12:30-1:00—Cameron Mitchell, You in the Garden

1-1:15—BREAK

1:15-2:15—Ann Fisher-Wirth, The Wild Prose Poem

2:15-2:45—Janisse, Deep Place: Writing the Source of Your Power

2:45-3—BREAK

3-4 pm—Elizabeth Bradfield, Loosening, Tightening: Playing with Lyric/Narrative Balance

4-4:30—Open Mic

4:30-5—Poetry Forum

Writing Prompt

Isn’t it wonderful, the way…

I was in Athens, Georgia to lead a workshop on structure. I’d been invited by Moni Basu, director of the MFA in Narrative Nonfiction at the University of Georgia. Moni wrote for CNN, as well as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, although I know her from my undergrad years at Florida State University in Tallahassee. There she wrote for an alternative weekly, the Florida Flambeau. Her writing was cutting-edge, incisive, intelligent, and world-changing. When I picked up a copy of the Flambeau, I always looked for her byline.

I called last week’s presentation “Finding Form: the art of arrangement,” using John McPhee’s word from Draft No. 4. That’s his book on writing.

~!~

What I really love to do with this subject of structure is teach the essay schema I learned from William Kittredge. That thrills me because

• we’re all looking for a secret code

• the schema is a powerful learning tool

• lots of well-recognized writers learned it from Kittredge, to their advantage. This includes Andrew Sean Greer, in my class, who won a Pulitzer in 2018 for his novel Less.

~!~

In order to learn the schema, a person should know first that many trails lead to the treasure. That’s important. This is not the only way to get where you’re going. It’s one way.

A story (mostly I mean an essay) can take one of an unknowable number of forms. Let’s say a gazillion.

• It can be a journey.

• It can be stream of consciousness.

• It can be organized by units of time, such as months of the year or “a day in the life of.”

• It can alternate between two speakers, or two realities, or two eras—honestly, a story can alternate between two anything.

• It can also rotate between many speakers, or realities, or eras—many of anything.

• It can flash back. It can flash forward. It can hop around.

• And so on.

Plenty of memorable, beautiful, award-winning, transformative stories have been written without the writer having purposely followed any form at all.

But, to be sure, every story has a form.

~!~

The other information a writer should know is that all prose is made up of three elements—scene, reflection, and summary.

Every other technique or craft or part of writing falls within these three elements, including:

• anecdote

• memory

• metaphor

• scientific fact

• dream

• myth

• description

~!~

In preparing for this workshop I figured out that

1. scene = the body (characters walking around saying things, doing things)

2. reflection = the mind (what you think or believe about it)

3. summary = time (how the writer manages the beast of time)

However, when I thought about this parallelism, I realize that something is missing from the trinity.

The thing missing is the spirit. The soul. And that can be found in the mysterium.

Therefore, a fourth element of all writing is mystery—meaning the invisible connections that pop words into your mind or hand you a perfect metaphor or tap on you with an idea or tell you what to write next. This is the little voice inside your head that helps you when you’re writing or planning to write.

This fourth element of all writing is invisible, so we forget it’s there.

~!~

Therefore, let’s redo the elements of all writing to be a quartet rather than a trinity.

1. scene = the body

2. reflection = the mind

3. the mysterium = the spirit

4. summary = time

That’s it.

That’s what I brought back from my quick immersion in the in-person world of writers.

What Do You Think?

Can the mysterium be counted as a foundational element of all writing?

Leave a comment

While in Athens

I got to see John T. Edge, food-writer and co-producer of the television show True South. His memoir, House of Smoke, was released about six months ago. John T. and I were staying in the same hotel, and one thing I noticed is that he made an effort to make every meal a good one. He would get up early to go out to a Venezuelan restaurant for breakfast. Or get up early to drive to Hull, Georgia to a diner he wanted to experience. I would be leaving the hotel, and I would see John T. returning, having been up for hours, pursuing his subject.

I engaged in a couple of deep conversations with Melissa Fay Greene, author of the classic Praying for Sheetrock, among others, and winner of many writing awards. She is a long-time activist, and we talked about Renee Good’s murder and what that means for all of us.

I was lucky to meet Jan Winburn, kickass and award-winning editor, who has edited many writers I know. She edited a piece I wrote for The Bitter Southerner. Jan told me that she’s not taking on new editing jobs right now. She wants to focus on her own writing.

I met Boyce Upholt, who started the new magazine Southlands. He’s a serious and determined man on a mission.

And I got to hug Chuck Reece, co-founder of The Bitter Southerner and now editor of Salvation South. Chuck and Boyce were on a panel called “How to Pitch.”

My husband, Raven, who has not watched a football game in two decades, wore his dark-green Miami Hurricanes shirt one afternoon while we pushed the baby stroller around downtown. Raven’s grown daughter, who lives in Miami, sent Little Fawn a green Hurricanes shirt for Christmas, and Raven dressed her in that. I didn’t understand the dynamics, although I know that the Dawgs had just lost a painful and important game. We took some photos under the arch.

Before we left town we arrived unannounced for a quick visit with our friends Philip Juras and Beth Gavrilles, both fine artists, mostly of landscapes, and finer human beings.

Back to the Essay Schema

You can read about it in my book Craft & Current: A Manual for Magical Writing. The book is available on my website in all versions, including audio or ebook, although I recommend a paperback or hardback.

If you want to learn the schema directly from me, I’ll teach it in the single creative nonfiction course that I’ll be teaching this year, Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction. Spots in the course are not limited, and there’s no hurry to get in. I just wanted to alert you to the chance, in case you’re ready to go deeper into craft and structure, and so you can plan ahead if you’re interested.

Writing Prompt

Write a poem in memory of poet Renée Nicole Macklin Good, murdered by an immigration agent on Jan. 7, 2026 in Minneapolis. Use five words she used in her poem “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs.”

🌀 Out of the box and into the spiral. In all the ways you can.

Sometime before I woke this morning I had a dream. I was in a car parked in a fire lane at the local supermarket. I was in the back seat, with the baby. I could see out the back window that another car was parked behind us, and Raven, my partner, had leaned over to speak to someone in that car. I waited for him.

Across an expanse of gray pavement, marked with a grid of faded yellow lines, more cars were parked.

In one of the cars, I could see a young woman also waiting. Her head was bent because she was reading. I idly studied the book in her hand.

A strange kind of x-ray vision happened then. I could actually see the page she was on—actually see the words!—and with a thrilling jolt, I realized that she was reading one of my books. She was reading Craft & Current, the writing manual, and she was at least one-third of the way in. She was on the page that talks about narrative arcs. I know that page because it contains a small diagram that I could see from where I sat a hundred feet away.

I wondered how a person in my little town had gotten her hands on that book. I wondered why she was reading it. Obviously she had designs to write. For a minute I felt a responsibility. I wondered if I should walk over and tell her that I had written it?

I woke up instead.

I think, in the dream, I was processing the idea of influence, how one person’s work can influence another, and how mostly that happens beyond the control of either of the people. A work shows up in our life. We happen upon it. We hear about it. We receive it as a gift.

We read it or we don’t. We incorporate it or we don’t. It has something to teach us or it doesn’t.

And life teases us. It allows us to pass within feet of each other without knowing who the other person is and what powerful, profound influence they might have on our life.

All of it is such a mystery.

Today I Head to the University of Georgia

This afternoon I travel to UGA. Tomorrow I teach a three-hour workshop for the MFA in Narrative Nonfiction program, which is low-res. My subject is “Finding Form: the art of arrangement.” I’m going to talk about the complicated underground (or background) of story structure, and I plan to teach the Kittredge schema.

This program was run by Valerie Boyd, best-known as biographer of Zora Neale Hurston (Wrapped in Rainbows) and a friend of mine. Valerie died in 2022, much too young, of cancer.

Upon her death, Moni Basu took over as director of the MFA in Narrative Nonfiction at UGA. Moni is a hella journalist whose byline I knew years ago when she wrote for Florida Flambeau, an alternative weekly in Tallahassee, where I was an undergrad. Moni went on to write for CNN and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, then to teach at the University of Florida.

Writing mentors in that program include John T. Edge, food writer and creative, whose memoir House of Smoke just came out; and Melissa Fay Greene, who wrote the classic Praying for Sheetrock.

The lineup of speakers and mentors also features Beth Burch, Pat Thomas, Laurie Hertzel, Kevin Sack, Jim Tobin, Rosalind Bentley, Boyce Upholt, Chuck Reece, Holly Haworth, Samantha Bresnahan, Carrie Teegardin, Lolis Elie, and Jan Winburn.

Boyce and Holly will be talking about the new magazine Southlands. Chuck of Salvation South will be talking about how to pitch. It all looks pretty exciting.

If you want me to ask any of them a question for you, send it. I’ll give it my best shot.

I think the most exciting news is that on Thursday morning Moni has asked me to talk about “The business of publishing.” Specifically, I’m comparing indie-publishing to third-party (known as “traditional”) publishing, and why I’ve chosen to walk my own path. That an academic institution, which is so much a part of the traditional world, would want this talk is a huge sign that the publishing world is changing. It’s also a sign of the visionary thinking of its director.

Stay with me. I’ll tell you what happens when I return.

Why the Dream Happened

Yesterday I packed for the trip. I decided to give each of the MFA students a paperback copy of Craft & Current, and so I signed 22 copies. The baby loves to tear apart books with her teeth, and she kept pulling at the books as I signed them. She loves to rip out pages.

I found a copy that had been misprinted. In it, the first page is the last page. A person would have to read the book backwards, which would not be possible. So I gave it to the baby. I gave her a pen as well. If I give her a pencil, she first eats the eraser, then she tries to eat the graphite. Plus there’s the stabbing factor.

For a few minutes I sat signing books while my baby made strange marks in her copy.

I think that moment is what triggered the dream.

And Also Because

Another event that triggered this morning’s dream is that a local woman died recently, without relatives, and her house had to cleaned out. My realtor (doesn’t “my realtor" sound wonderful?) was privy to this situation, and when cleaning out the home, the realtors found that the woman loved books. She lived with thousands of books.

One entire shelf was devoted to books on writing.

Someone gathered up a handful of the writing books for me. The bundle contains Writing for Your Life by Deena Metzger.

This means that a woman with an intense interest in writing lived very close to me, probably for years, and I never even knew it.

🌀 Nature Journaling School Starts Sunday, 1 Hour/Week for 7 Weeks, With the Theme of “Place”

Likewise, if you want to enroll in Journaling Place, you have four days to do it. We start this Sunday from 5-6 pm Eastern US/Canada Time. We have 1-2 flash-speakers per session. You know me. I pack a lot in. But having a rich offering also means that I work hard to ensure that the entire session is relaxed, loving, welcoming, inspiring, and grounding. Even healing.

If you want to know what other people think of Nature Journaling School, read some of the testimonials listed there.

You Can Find More Info Here

🌀 Rejection Competition

The writer Lisa K. Harris once told me about a very unusual competition for writers, one in which highest-number-of-rejections wins. This is “Rejection Competition” run by Renee Bibby. Lisa enters every year, and every year tracks her rejections. She alerted me to this Substack post from about the contest. If you need help turning the rejections into successes, this is for you.

🌀 Many Happy Returns of 2026!

I’m reeling from it.

As I wrote last week in my post, “I think many of us are feeling dramatic fluctuations in the writing world. AI is bringing changes we cannot yet imagine. We have no clue what’s coming and what it will mean for our work.”

How to Pivot?

This is the question that is currently haunting me.

I’ve always thought of myself as a writer’s writer. By that I mean I’m serious about the art of writing. Books meant something profound to me growing up—they were cathedrals, museums, orchestras. They were alchemy in my junkyard life.

Just this morning, I woke up thinking about Faulkner, wondering how he was able to access a level of artistry and vision that most of us agree was exceptional, feverish, phenomenal.

Wouldn’t that be a fine bar to set for ourselves, to attempt a vision that was beyond the ordinary? Extraordinary. That we would go in search of the magnificent birds of the sea?

AI is a system that operates by compiling and then mining human information, knowledge, and creativity. Imagine a future where human genius can go no farther than recombinant creativity.

In an AI-driven world, is there room for a writer like Faulkner, a man who did not use recombinant creativity but went to new and unbelievable elevations entirely? (I don’t mean only Faulkner, of course. I mean Flannery O’Connor and Willa Cather and James Baldwin and Leslie Marmon Silko and so many more, folks who used their wit and genius to widen the range of literature.)

My Questions

Here, at the end of 2025, this is what I am brooding over, reflecting on:

• If people read fewer books, should we keep writing them?

• If attention spans have shortened, shouldn’t we be writing flash pieces?

• If we can’t make a decent living at writing, shouldn’t we be pursuing other professions?

• If AI is blurring lines between truth and lies, what can we do to be impeccable at truth-telling?

• If AI combines human thinking, how can we access a deeper genius?

Keep on Writing

No matter how shaken the literary world is (and I am) by AI and no matter how the literary world is changing, I think that writing is brilliant for the writer as

• an art form

• a therapy

• a legacy

• a healing modality

• a means of understanding

• a way to give

I intend to keep writing and reading. The changes I’m considering involve how. I will be thinking and writing about this in the months to come. As ever, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

What About You?

Have you been thinking about the changes AI is bringing to literature? Are you considering pivots you need to make as a writer? Are there any? Would you be willing to share?

Leave a comment

Just In!

Pop-Up Workshop, Tomorrow, 1 pm Eastern, Free

🌀 Calling in the Year: A One-Hour Goal-Setting Circle

Have you done your planning for 2026? Have you decided what you’re letting go of? What are you clearing space for?

I’ll open a Zoom room on the last day of 2025—tomorrow, Wednesday, Dec. 31—at 1 pm Eastern Time.

If you would like a dedicated hour of guided planning, envisioning, goal-setting, and future-casting for the New Year, join me. This time is for you, working in your journal. The vibe will be quiet, reflective, solitary-but-together.

The Circle is limited to 100 people. Please don’t sign up if you aren’t available in person at 1 pm tomorrow, Dec. 31.

Call in 2026

🌀 Spiral-Bound’s Best of 2025 🌀

I want to take a quick meander through the year here on Spiral-Bound. Here are the year’s top three posts in three categories.

By 💙

The blue heart means number of likes on a particular post. The winner, with 43 hearts, is:

Top Three Posts by Likes on Spiral-Bound

43💙—350 Words You Can’t Say. Plus a zine so you can keep the list handy.

42💙—15 Writing Items I’ve Collected for You. They wash up and I save them.

42💙—A Letter Has Arrived. It contains some hard facts about my life + my secret for getting stuff done.

By 💬

The speech balloon means number of comments on a particular post. These are skewed since Substack counts my responses also as comments. The winner, with 48 comments, is:

Top Three Posts by Comments on Spiral-Bound

48💬—What Do You Create for an Audience of One? In the relentless attention economy, what you do for yourself is more important than ever.

42💬—When the Know-It-All Gets Edited: Thirteen things about punctuation that keep our heads spinning

33💬—Me, Bro, That Is Who: How not to lose a fortune.

By 👐

Those open hands mean open rates, or what percentage of readers opened the post to look at it, as opposed to deleting immediately. The winner, with a 44 percent open rate, is:

Top Three Posts by Open Rate on Spiral-Bound

44%—15 Writing Items I’ve Collected for You. They wash up and I save them.

44%—A Letter Has Arrived. It contains some hard facts about my life + my secret for getting stuff done.

44%—You Need More Than a Dream. You need a strategy to be successful in pursuing your passion.

🌀 Devote an Hour Each Week (for 7 Weeks) to Creativity & Your Relationship With Place

Tuition is by donation. (Scroll to the very last ticket category.) You can use the QR code or the button below to get there. Registration closes in ten days.

Register for Journaling Place

🌀 How to Kickstart Set for Jan. 28, 2026

I have scheduled a free “How to Kickstart” workshop for Wednesday evening, Jan. 28, 2026, 7-8 pm Eastern Time. I will be recording the session. If I can make it work, I’ll open a new project and go through the building process step by step.

If you want the link to the workshop, be in touch. Register by contacting me.

• What’s the most important thing to know about running a Kickstarter campaign?

• What kind of audience (in numbers) does a writer need for a Kickstarter to work?

• What qualifies as an audience?

• How does a writer build one?

• What is the #1 reason that 64 percent of Kickstarter campaigns fail to fund?

🌀 Consider Attending the Oxford Conference for the Book

The Thirty-Second Oxford Conference for the Book will take place March 25–27, 2026. I’ll be giving the Ann J. Abadie Lecture in Southern Studies, which is the opening keynote. The lecture will take place at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 25, in Nutt Auditorium on the University of Mississippi campus.

I highly recommend this book conference.

I don’t think registration is open yet, but keep checking here. The list of speakers and talks looks phenomenal.

Consider coming. You’ll see what book-love looks like.

🌀 Upper New Seeks Volunteer Bioregional Correspondents

I don’t know Ben or The Upper New. Simmons Buntin of Terrain.org sent this notice to me, and I thought I’d share it with you.

The Upper New is seeking volunteer bioregional correspondents across the biosphere to contribute to a library of bioregional resources for ecological learning. Essentially, we want folks to serve as groundtruthers reporting evidence of bioregional activities, wherever their chosen bioregion may be within the biosphere.

The work of correspondents will be published in The Upper New Review, our online-first literary arts journal, with the potential for credited re-use across many of our learning-focused projects and programs.

You can read more about what we’re looking for on this announcement post: https://uppernew.org/seeking-volunteer-bioregional-correspondents/ - please share this information with people you think would be interested in volunteering.

If you or someone you know would like to volunteer with The Upper New as a Bioregional Correspondent, please apply using the following form: https://form.jotform.com/253234572928059

Thanks!

Ben

--

Benjamin Erlandson, Ph.D.

Founder

The Upper New

uppernew.org

Before I reflect on 2025 and forward-glance to 2026, let me thank you for being here. I’m grateful that you’re deeply interested in the subject of writing and that you trust me enough to let me email you weekly. I am sincerely grateful to you.

What I Plan to Do Differently in 2026

1. Collaborate

“Collaborate” is my word of the year. I plan to do more of it. I’ve never been much of a team player. Writing truly has been a solitary existence, but I am working intentionally to change that. In January and February, for example, I’ve organized Journaling Place, a seven-session mini-course of Nature Journaling School, and I’ve brought on ten artists to co-teach that series. My trusty Zoom facilitator makes eleven colleagues.

2. Reduce Deadlines

To be present for Little Fawn, my baby, I am reducing stressful demands on my time.

3. Apply the 80/20 Filter

Pareto’s Law says that an 80/20 ratio controls almost everything. Eighty percent of income comes from 20 percent of efforts. In reverse, 80 percent of headaches come from 20 percent of clients or projects. The advice is to constantly run your pursuits through this filter. Keep offloading the negative 20 percent and increasing the positive 20 percent.

4. Be More Human

This is called for in this era of AI. I’ll be writing a lot about this in the months to come.

5. Define “Enough”

I need to figure out what is enough and remind myself of the places where I have enough or have done enough. I’m an ambitious person, and if I don’t do this, I keep pushing for more. I want to scale back in 2026.

6. Increase Passion

I’m sadly at a place in my life where I need reminders of what is good and hopeful and fun. I plan to return to some of my early passions, like gardening, reading, crafting, homesteading, genealogy, and gathering with others.

7. Get More Fit

I need to focus on personal health, with yoga and a walk daily, plus remember to take my vitamins and to drink plenty of water.

What About You?

What will you do differently in 2026?

Leave a comment

What I Won’t Repeat

I Won’t Invite Myself

Last summer I attended the biennial conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. In giving this a heartfelt evaluation, I know that I wouldn’t do that again.

I Won’t Kickstart the Same Way

My second Kickstarter, for the trade version of Journey in Place, was too much work for the income received. I will do more Kickstarters in the future, since the platform introduces new readers to my work, but I will alter the process dramatically in order to make the time well spent.

I Won’t Constantly Teach

I will not teach multiple segments of Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction. While Little Fawn is young, I simply don’t have the time.

What About You?

What do you plan not to repeat?

Leave a comment

Accomplishments of 2025

1. I taught for six weeks at Beloit College in Wisconsin.

2. I compiled and published the Course Edition of Journey in Place.

3. I ran my 2nd Kickstarter, this one for a trade edition of Journey in Place.

4. I released the trade version with a new subtitle, new cover, and a few changes in content.

5. Rhizosphere became Spiral-Bound, with a more intentional mission and layout. (Thank you!)

6. I revamped Trackless Wild, where I publish my own writing.

What I’m Grateful For

1. warm shelter

2. the entire farm

3. money to pay the bills

4. health

5. a beautiful, healthy, happy baby

6. a partner who cares

7. plenty of good food

8. beauty all around

9. my mind

10. the people who read my work, especially you, right here

What Lies Ahead in 2026

Work Smarter

I reached the money goal I set for 2025, but I did so only through grueling physical labor. I worked with my right arm while I held Little Fawn in my left. I woke at 4:30 am to work while she still slept. Sometimes I taught with her in my arms. I packaged books with her in a pack on my belly or on my back. I cannot keep this up, especially at this age. I’m not willing to relinquish my money goals—I’m on a track to end intergenerational poverty—but I’m also not willing to work so hard. My goal is to work smarter not harder. That may include hiring out more of the work. I’m looking for a business coach who can help me navigate all this. If you know of a great one, please send me their name.

Definitely Teach Beginning Memoir

Life is an experience, and one way to experience it more deeply is to write about it. Writing opens space for understanding things that happen to us. We process events in the energy lines yoking the mind and the page, the eye and the hand. Writing can be healing.

This past summer I taught an online memoir course called Write Your Own Story. A lot of people signed up, 130-something. They came with all kinds of desires, from all kinds of levels, with all sorts of stories. Some were true beginners, beset with the idea of writing down their life stories. Some were already at work, pages stored in a computer or journal. Some already had a book.

These folks wanted the space to explore their lives in words.

I loved that course very much. I loved working with people. I plan to teach Write Your Own Story in 2026. You can register now, or you can indicate your interest here so that I can send you a reminder email a month before the course starts.

Teach a Single Session of Magical Craft

This is an awesome course, and I love teaching it. I’ve been teaching hard online now for five years, and my writers are finding their voices and their strides. Just this week I opened an online magazine to find the flash essay of a writer who has taken this course and otherwise worked with me. Seeing my writers publish is a flipping joy.

For anyone who wants to write well, I’ll keep teaching everything I know about the craft in Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction. However, I will reduce this to one. single. course. The single cohort I teach will be a larger group, webinar style. I will create community with smaller ancillary sessions—Q&As, social hours, group listening, workshops on particular topics, live editing. You can register now, or you can indicate your interest here so that I can send you a reminder email a month before the course starts.

Build Nature Journaling School

In Nature Journaling School, I offer mini-courses in journaling. Each focuses on a theme. We’ve done Journaling Grief, Journaling Eco-Grief, Journaling the Garden, Journaling the Sacred, and many more. We start 2026 with Journaling Place. I’ll be scheduling more of these mini-courses during the year. They last an hour on Sundays, so it’s a doable chunk of time, intensely creative and very satisfying. Probably you’ve done at least one of these with me, and I thank you. If there’s a theme you’re particularly interested in, please be in touch.

Start the Next Book

A couple of years ago a friend told me an amazing story. It was one of those stories that caught my attention. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I think the spirit of this person wants me to tell her story. I will be traveling in January to spend a night in this person’s home and begin gathering the details of this story.

Fly the Substack Kite Even Higher

My first Substack post was July 2021. I’m in my fifth year on the platform, which is, as we speak, changing rapidly. Substack has been a truly incredible way to publish work, but I recognize that likely it won’t last as the platform for writers that it has been. My plan for 2026 is to focus on Trackless Wild. I have written a few book-length manuscripts that have never published, for example. I am considering breaking these into bite-sized pieces and publishing the work on Substack. I’ll also be offering some extra material there. In short, again, I’ll put greater focus on Trackless Wild in 2026.

Publish the DNA Book

My co-editor, Hilary Vidalakis, has finished developmental edits with all the authors in this anthology. Not only has she edited all the essays, she has put the entire book together in a great order. She sent it to me on Dec. 19, as planned. Over the holidays I’ll take a pass through. In January, Hilary and will meet via Zoom (she’s in NY, NY), create publishing and marketing plans, and make our last passes through the volume. Hilary is painstaking, patient, and beyond delightful. Working with her is an honor.

Pursue Some Secret Plans

I have a few cool ideas up my sleeve, and I will be tinkering with them in the middle of the night when Little Fawn wakes up. So don’t be surprised if you hear about me doing something I didn’t mention here.

What About You?

What lies ahead? Will you give us a sneak peek into your plans?

Leave a comment

Please Be in Touch

I’m always grateful and delighted to hear from you. I try to reply to every email I receive.

In Other News

Anthropic Settlement

I received notice in the mail that authors with books in the Anthropic settlement must file a claim. I’ll be doing that soon for the three of my books that were used. Also, I heard from a writer from one of my courses that she checked the list of books and her books were on it. She hadn’t even thought to check because her books are about a niche topic (cave diving) and were published by an academic press. The takeaway is to check. One sad realization is that many authors were left out because their publishers did not file a copyright for the work. The work must have an ISBN number and also be filed in the copyright office.

Adieu to the Kickstarter

The Kickstarter for Journey in Place is fulfilled, yahoo! All books have been mailed, as of yesterday. I had arranged my walking group to help, but my entire family contracted Covid about ten days before Thanksgiving, then tested positive for the next six weeks. So I had to ship all 371 orders by myself. Egad.

If one got to you, thank you!

Eleven books are sitting in their unaddressed mailers because I don’t have a mailing address. I have emailed these backers. My thinking is that these messages land in email accounts that are seldom checked. I am marking them as “Completed,” and as addresses arrive, I’ll ship these last eleven. If they are unclaimed in one year, they get donated to a local nonprofit.

Thanks again to all who supported this project.

How to Kickstart Workshop

I’ll be doing the “How to Kickstart” I promised in January. I’ll let you know a date soon. Again, if you’re not on the list but want to be, let me know. This is an hour-long session live via Zoom, completely free.

Terrain’s Online Auction

Kat Wilder won the Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction workshop I donated to the Terrain.org fundraising auction. We worked together in a one-off “Kittredge Essay Writing Workshop” that I taught. She started an essay in that course, “After Birth,” that won an American Heritage Award. Then I blurbed her new book, The Last Cows: On Ranching, Wonder, and a Woman’s Heart. To get to work with her again is a pleasure.

Therese Halscheid was the highest bidder in the Writing Ecopoetry Online Summit.

I was top bidder for time with poets Leonora Simonovis and Elizabeth Bradfield. They will both be teaching in the Online Summit.

Upcoming, In Person, Exciting

Jan. 7—MFA Narrative Nonfiction Program, Athens, Ga. I’ll be speaking about structure and also about literary indie publishing. This isn’t open to the public, unless you can get in a back door.

Feb. 15—Black Prong, a nature resort in Florida, is hosting a lecture series called The Florida Story: Water, Wildlife, and Wilderness, hosted by Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Jack E. Davis. Cynthia Barnett speaks on Jan. 18, me on Feb. 15, and Jack Davis on March 15. Buy tickets here.

March 25—I’ll be giving the Ann J. Abadie Lecture in Southern Studies at the Thirty-Second Oxford Conference for the Book (March 25–27, 2026). The lecture is the opening keynote and will take place at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 25, in Nutt Auditorium on the University of Mississippi campus. I highly recommend this book conference. I don’t yet see a place to register, but keep checking here. Look at the lineup before you decide not to come.

Usually the dominant voices are measuring money. Is your Substack monetized? Is it a bestseller? Is your book on the lists?

Or the dominant voices are measuring how much you’ve published. Where you’ve published. Was it in New York? How was it received? How much of a sensation were you?

All those, too, are measures of money.

I find one thing very dejecting about writing these days. We have moved deeper into the metrics.

That is to say, the dominant voices are still measuring. I expected that. What I did not expect is that they are measuring harder than ever. The numbers are more important than ever.

Sometimes it seems that in every direction is a yardstick. How many likes? How many comments? How many followers? How many subscribers? How many friends?

Who could have imagined that?

Who could have imagined that a piece of writing would be less about pleasure or transformation or service and more about the metrics?

And what if our work is not hitting the metrics?

Then the question becomes this one: If the dominant voices are using metrics that skip over a person’s work, what could that person measure instead?

What if we measured change in the world? Actual, quantifiable change for the better. Work that makes the world more inhabitable.

What if we measured acts of kindness?

What if we measured resonance? Deep, emotional resonance.

I think this is an important question for each of us, no matter how much money we help the dominant voices pocket. In your work, what are you measuring? If you have been measuring yourself against the yardsticks of money or fame or digital influence—and falling short—what might you be measuring instead?

I think many of us are feeling dramatic fluctuations in the writing world at the moment. AI is bringing changes we cannot yet imagine. We have no clue what’s coming and what it will mean for our work. The booms of social media algorithms are swinging wildly. Substack, which has been a powerful and uber-useful platform for writers, is morphing before our eyes.

Now might be a great time to think about what the dominant voices are measuring and what you want to measure instead. 1

Let Me Hear From You

I’m curious if you are feeling the earth shaking in the writing world and how you are keeping your balance. Are you making some changes? Do you mind sharing one?

Note

I thought that I would have a Reflection 2025 ready for you by this week. I’m still working on it and will share it with you soon. I hope you’re doing well.

I wanted to let you know about three workshops coming up for writers, seekers, and lovers of place. This newsletter describes those workshops.

Thanks to everyone who has purchased and owns Journey in Place: A Field Guide to Belonging. If you still find yourself without the book, ebooks and audiobooks are available on my website, and signed copies of hardback and paperback will soon be up.

1.

Nature Journaling School | Journaling Place

Celebrate and document your place, your life, and the world around you through creative journaling, live via Zoom for seven Sunday Sessions Jan.-Feb. 2026, 5-6 pm Eastern US/Canada Time.

Nature Journaling School is designed for you to process, document, and celebrate your life and the world around you. It includes writing, simple drawing, and page design.

In this current series we focus on Place. We’ll look at places outside and places inside.

SCHOOL WILL BE

• 7 Sundays in a row between Jan. & Feb. 2026

• hour-long sessions

• each Sunday afternoon

• 5-6 pm Eastern US/Canada Time

• starting Jan. 11, 2026

• ending Feb. 22, 2026

• tuition by donation

Sessions take place Jan. 11 | Jan. 18 | Jan. 25 | Feb. 1 | Feb. 8 | Feb. 15 | and Feb. 22.

This is not a single event. This is a workshop with 7 sessions. Registration is via Eventbrite, link below, and tuition is by donation. On Eventbrite this may look like a single event, but it’s a 7-session course. The Zoom link you will receive is the same for all sessions.

I and a host of guest artists will inspire and guide you in nature journaling to celebrate your life journey, experience nature around you, record sightings, and write about places you have known and loved in a meaningful and creative way.

Register for Journaling Place

Note: When you go register, you’ll see a button for “Reserve a spot.” When you click that, “sold out” tickets pop up first. Scroll to the bottom to save a seat for yourself.

COST

Tuition is by donation, which means you get to determine the class’s value to you. Pay what you wish, starting at $1.00. The amount you pay remains private. I don’t look at the amounts people are able or choose to pay.

GUEST ARTISTS

I have arranged incredible guest artists and flash-speakers during this 7-week course on Journaling Place, including

• Clare Walker Leslie, iconic author of many books on nature journaling, including A Year in Nature and Keeping a Nature Journal

• Madeleine Jubilee Saito, cartoonist and author of You Are a Sacred Place: Visual Poems for Living in Climate Crisis

• Jane Pike, guide in the Creating Wild community and writer of the Substack Making Things Up

• Alma Ramiro Alonzo, artist and teacher at A Wild Braid

• Becki Clifton, writer at the Substack Mystic Southern Naturalist

• Melissa DeSa, artist, seed keeper, nonprofit founder, cancer survivor, and blogger at Seeds and Stories

• Susannah Fisher, natural history illustrator at Cricklewood Nature Journal

• Lyn Baldwin, author of the excellent botanical memoir, Drawing Botany Home: A Rooted Life

• In addition, eco-therapist and writer Jeanne Malmgren (Rx Nature) will offer a short blessingway—a guided meditation or breathing exercise—for each session.

IN THE COURSE WE EXPLORE

• nature observation

• phenology (what happens when)

• writing, including craft

• simple art exercises, including shapes

• borders, corners, spirals, dividers, banners & other page designs

• what place mean to us

• our favorite places

• our personal spaces

• weather

• mapping

• wisdom quadrants

• natural history

• perspective

• healing

• ancestral healing

• the breath

• as well as your thoughts and feelings about it all

The course is a chance to acknowledge and transcribe the enjoyment, contentment, sense of wonder, and inspiration that you get from place, plus the complicated feelings you have about it. We will highlight amazements you have seen and experienced.

ON OR OFF

The vibe will be loving, inspirational, and hopeful.

You are not obligated to share your thoughts or your writing in any way. You will be welcome to turn off your video. Level of participation is your decision, and participation is always optional.

Show up on Sunday afternoons this winter at 5 pm Eastern Time for an hour directed toward curiosity and wonder. You can come for one session or for all 7 sessions.

YOU WILL NEED

• journal (unlined paper is best)

• sharpened pencils

• pens

• crayons and/or colored pencils or pens are wonderful but optional

RECORDINGS

We make recordings available afterward, through a Google Drive, in case you need to miss a session or want to watch a session again.

WHAT YOU GET

1. all the benefits of keeping a journal

2. a deeper relationship with nature

3. seven hours of flow

4. at least 15 pieces of writing that you can use for social media posts or as part of essays or books you are writing

5. a chance to explore art without fear of judgement

6. the space to be in community with like-minded folks

THIS COURSE IS FOR YOU IF YOU...

• brim with thoughts and feelings about the natural world

• know that journaling about them would be helpful and healthful

• think a lot about place

• are willing to give form to your creativity

• are caught in patterns of disconnection

• would benefit from being in the same space with others like you

• would like to have in hand at least 15 pieces of writing at the end of 7 weeks

• want to put more color, art, and design in your life

• want to learn more about the natural world around you

• want to be introduced to more ideas, thinkers, and colleagues

• could be inspired by prompts and handouts

• could use inspiration from me

Register for Journaling Place

2.

Workshop | Place & Nature Writing

Join me Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026 from 1-5 Eastern Time for a 4-hour intensive in place-based and nature writing to

• explore your relationship with place

• write stories you’ve been thinking about

• learn new structures and ways to craft

• honor the wild earth through story

My hope and dream is that our time together is an interlude of creativity, flow, and inspiration for you.

WORKSHOP INCLUDES

1. generative flow-writes

2. starts to at least 12 pieces of writing

3. the Kittredge schema

4. the flash essay

5. craft techniques

6. examples of the work

7. getting the work done

8. publishing and marketing

9. Q&A

Handouts, reading pages, and so forth are posted on a shared Google Drive. I will provide you with the link. The sessions will be recorded, and that will be posted to the Drive as well.

COST

The cost of the 4-hour workshop is $55.

Register for Place & Nature Writing

3.

Summit | Writing Eco-Poetry

Join me and a handful of nature poets who will be leading sessions in writing eco-poetry. The date is Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, online via Zoom. The time is 11 am-4 pm Eastern Time (8 am-1 pm Pacific) (4 pm-9 pm UK). This will be taught webinar style with plenty of time for Q&A plus rich interactions in the Chat. You will leave with multiple poems or starts to poems, and with many new ideas, forms, subject matter, and connections to nature poets.

I am still organizing speakers and teachers for this workshop. At the moment poet Ann Fisher-Wirth and poet M.K. Creel have agreed to teach.

WORKSHOP INCLUDES

• generative flow-writes

• new forms

• craft techniques

• info on publishing and marketing

• Q&A

• guest speakers and teachers

Handouts, reading pages, and so forth are posted on a shared Google Drive. You will be provided the link.

The session will be recorded, and that will be posted to the Drive as well.

COST

The cost of the 4-hour workshop is $77.

Register for Eco-Poetics

IF YOU SIGNED UP FOR ANY OF THESE WORKSHOPS VIA MY LAST KICKSTARTER

Thank you so much. You do not need to register again. You have already received the Zoom link, which I will be sending again a few days prior to our start. I am opening up the workshops beyond the wonderful folks who registered during the Kickstarter for Journey in Place.

My Personal Life Is Altering My Work Life

Important Note About Courses in 2026

Life as a new (or renewed) mother at 63 has been an incredible delight, truly joyful. In an essay Barbara Kingsolver wrote years ago, she said about marrying her second husband that she was grateful for a second chance. That is how I feel about parenting Little Fawn. The workload is tremendous, yes, but I am almost unspeakably grateful for this chance.

That said, until she is bigger, my work hours have been reduced by more than half. In order to continue supporting my family and pursuing the legacy of books and mentorship I want to leave in the world, I need to get smarter about how I work. One of the changes is that I will be teaching only one section of Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction and only one section of Memoir Summer, also known as Memoir: Write Your Own Story. I do not have American Nature Writing Masterclass on the schedule; that course is waitlisted for 2026.

This means larger numbers of writers in these full-semester courses, and that means teaching webinar-style, with little time for introductions or personal interactions. However, I make up for this with:

• encouragement for a very active, rich, and useful Chat

• extra sessions aimed at 1:1 or small-group interactions (including social hours, Q&As, & live edits)

• access to me via email

• connections with others

• inspiration to concentrate on your own work

You have plenty of time—months—to decide on either of the courses. This is only a heads-up, so you can begin to think about where you are in your writing journey and if a course with me is what you need right now.

Let me know if you want me to notify you a month before a course starts. (See ways to reach me, above, or get on the waitlist.)

Update on the Kickstarter

Thank you again to every. single. person. who supported my Kickstarter for Journey in Place. It was a grand success, and I was able to print the books plus some cool extras.

I have now fulfilled 355 of the 371 book orders. For the remainder, I am waiting on addresses of backers, as well as a couple of items I had to replenish.

The audiobook is not done. I have recorded half the pages in the book. Then my entire family got sick with covid just before Thanksgiving. The virus settled in my lungs, and I’ve been waiting for my voice to clear before I get back into the recording studio. I think I’ll be able later this week.

I still need to send out a few of the small rewards—the zine, for example, and the link for the “Ask Me Anything.” I will get these last rewards sent by the end of this week.

Journey in Place Available in My Online Bookshop

If you missed the Journey in Place Course—and if you missed the Kickstarter—and if you would like to have a copy of the book by the end of the year, signed copies are now available on my website, in hardback, paperback. Shipping is included. Ebooks are available as well. If you order by Dec. 21, you should receive your copy by the end of 2025. This means you’ll be ready to start the self-directed course Jan. 1, if you wish.

Journey in Place Now Available on Amazon

Because the Kickstarter books have gone out, I feel comfortable making the new book more widely available. It will go live on Amazon on Dec. 15. I believe that you can preorder right now, which will ensure that you receive your copy by the end of 2025. This means you’ll be ready to start the self-directed Journey in Place course Jan. 1, if you wish.

QUESTIONS?

Please don’t hesitate to be in touch if you have questions. I’m also interested in suggestions for great teachers. I understand that the guests with whom I work are mostly women, and I am working on inviting and including more men. Be on the watch for more announcements in that department.

Here are five ways to reach me.

1. Leave a comment here.

2. Send me a DM here.

3. Email me at wildfire1491 at yahoo. (the best way)

4. The contact form on my website, here.

5. Text me at 912-336-1806. (Calling is risky, since my baby still naps a couple of times a day.)

IN CASE YOU’RE NEW HERE: WHO I AM

I am a nature writer, naturalist, and teacher with a passion for place. My latest book is a guide to a sense of place, Journey in Place: A Field Guide to Belonging. I live in the coastal plains of southern Georgia. My mission is to defend and protect wildness and nature until the day I die.

OUR COMMUNITY GUIDELINES

We honor the inherent dignity and beauty of all persons regardless of identity, nationality, ethnicity, belief, age, or any other divides. We agree to create a safe, inclusive, and welcoming space for all. We especially welcome members of historically underserved or excluded communities, understanding that in order to end the fragmentation of the earth’s systems, we need every voice of every person to be as elevated and functional and unencumbered by oppressions as humanly possible. This is a safe space where all are welcome.

I wanted to tell you about two opportunities.

1. Writerly Silent Auction

Terrain.org organizes an annual silent auction of items—mostly experiences and services—geared to writers. It went live today and runs through Tuesday, Dec. 16.

I bid on a few things right away, including Birding & Beering with my old friend J. Drew Lanham. Mine was the first bid, at the $150 minimum, and I was outbid $50 later this morning.

Other items include:

• Rare, signed Wendell Berry broadside

• Hike, map and flyfish northwest Oregon with Joe Wilkins

• Essay critique with Alison Hawthorne Deming

• Poetry consultation and signed book by Suzanne Frischkorn

• Home-cooked meal, poetry and Austin stroll with Todd Boss and Hila Plitmann

• A Route Through Grief to Love: A Writing the Wild lab with David James Duncan

• Birdwatching and walking tour of South Florida’s Green Cay Wetlands with Andrew Furman

• And many more

Oh, how I wish I could hike and flyfish with Joe Wilkins. If I lived closer to the Pacific Northwest, I would spend all my Christmas money on that dream.

The auction app requires that you register before you bid, and the registration process obliges you to enter your credit card information. You will not be charged unless you win.

Notice your emotions as you peruse this auction. I’m very interested in what they are. I had a few emotions, which I won’t belabor; I am determined that a writing community beyond comparison is possible. Before you go in and look around, you may want to say to yourself, “I’m thrilled that the world has so many gifted writers. I’m glad I can be a part of a writing community as rich as this one. These writers help me expand in love, creativity, and abundance, as I help them. What can I learn from someone in this group? What could they learn from me?”

2. Book Design App

Vellum is on sale through Dec. 8 at 30 percent off.

Vellum is a book-design app that allows you to import a book draft from Word or Scrivener, name a trim size then choose one of 26 design configurations, and design a professional looking book. You can design for KDP, Kobo, Apple Books, and all the rest, generating print-ready pdf and ePub files.

You pay a one-time fee (normally $249), download the app to your laptop, and design all the books your heart desires. Vellum does not include cover design.

You do not need Vellum if

• you have only one book manuscript

• you don’t plan to self-publish

• you don’t own and use a Mac (the app is not compatible with a PC)

• you intend to use indie book designers

I use Vellum. I’m still learning its abilities, and I don’t have everything figured out. I love human book designers, and I still use them, but Vellum gives me the opportunity to design a book quickly and adequately. I’m very happy with it.

Thirty percent off of $249 brings the cost of Vellum to $174.99.

Update

Last week I began to propose a challenge, that we stretch ourselves to enter at least one contest before the end of the year. However, December is always a blur, and my current thinking is that we need to wait. The holidays are enough of a challenge.

That’s it for this week.

Stay in the spiral. 🌀

This was on my mind this morning. Not showing up is a cross many writers bear. Or no longer showing up.

Why Do We Stop Showing Up?

1. Publishing is a particularly horrible industry in that it has arranged for its devotees to need to be picked. The industry trains us to want and wait to be picked. (What is being picked? The hotshot agent, the big publishing deal, the bestseller list, the top magazines, the residencies, the prizes, the articles in the papers. Being picked is people pitching you, not you pitching them.)

2. In addition, the industry makes being picked incredibly difficult. Often the odds are 1,000 to 1. Five thousand to 1. Ten thousand to 1. You have a better chance of giving birth to triplets.

3. Not getting picked, over and over again, is like administering ourselves electric shocks, one zap after another.

4. Feeling competitive all the time is soul-crushing.

5. To do all the other things—the cranberry sauce from scratch, the swept garage, the leaf-free gutters—is a lot easier.

6. Showing up can be risky. It can require vulnerability.

7. Showing up means we have to do the quiet, unglamorous, hard work.

8. We start hanging out with the stories of defeat. I started too late. I’m not good enough. I need an MFA. That goal didn’t matter anyway. I’m happier now. (Seth Godin has a bomb list of these reasons in his book, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work.)

But what if we could show up without drenching ourselves in competitiveness? Without even caring if we win or not? Just to put ourselves in the game.

Are You Up for a Challenge?

I would like to issue all of us, including myself, a challenge to apply to one opportunity by the end of 2025.

However, before we actually start the challenge, I need your help.

First Question

How do YOU find writing opportunities without paying to see them? Is there such a place that’s easily searchable and well-respected and also doesn’t charge?

I know about the following websites. (p.s. I’ve added a few from the comments.)

• Poets & Writers—the best, but no longer free.

• Chill Subs—I have not used this. I find it poorly organized.

• Duotrope—not free.

• NewPages—I’m not sure about this one.

• Erica Dreifus’s monthly newsletter, on Substack, The Practicing Writer 2.0: November 2025, featuring 60+ fee-free, paying/funded opportunities for writers of fiction, poetry, & creative nonfiction—plus subscriber success stories, a featured resource, & more.

• SubClub, on Substack

• Submittable, under “Discover”—This is probably our best option for finding writing opportunities. Is that your determination as well? However, I find it to be limited. For example, when I search for “Georgia” opportunities, since some are place-specific, nothing popped up.

• LitMagNews, on Substack

• Erin Geesaman Rabke let me know about Ellen Bass’s newsletter.

• Lee Furey added Creative Capital.

Second Question

Where can we find residencies? I see The Write Life—a blog post with 30 residency ideas. But each residency has to be searched separately. And Dallas Anne Duncan recommended this post by Audrey Gidman.

That’s enough for now.

I have a feeling that gazillions of opportunities loom on the horizon, but here in the age of information overload, most of us never hear about them. So if people aren’t hearing about these contests, might the odds be better for winning?

Happy Thanksgiving

I wish you and yours a wonderful holiday.

Stay in the spiral. 🌀