A Week of (not really) Writing in the Woods
I return to the green mountains of deep New England, hoping time with the nothing but crisp air and country roads would bring me connection and clarity with myself.
Nothing I’ve yet to experience compares to an intake of crisp mountain air into wilted city lungs.
Two weeks ago, I attended a week-long environmental writing workshop in the Green Mountains of western Vermont. For 7 days, I arose to the earthy smell of dewy grass and lost time track of time ambling through meadows of fierce orange hawkweed and sweet wild strawberries. I lounged in adirondack chairs absorbing as much fresh air as I could and letting the sunlight wash over me. I gazed dreamily at the mountains and forest, allowing my mind to wander and practicing the art of deep observation and listening. I came into the workshop sure that I wasn’t a “nature” writer as I had no interest in describing hues of flowers or recounting tense scenes of wild predator and prey. I’ve been prey to the evils of our society enough times to know that the forces of hunger and greed are no game to gawk at. Yet here I am, reminiscing fondly on just how beautiful and special that place really is. Mostly for what I learned about myself while there, but also because of the trees and flowers and scenes I swore I had no interest in writing about.
I had my hesitations going into the workshop, fully aware that the majority of the group would be very white and very well published. Most of the other participants’ biographies on the private site created for us to get acquainted before arrival were mostly just lists of bylines and a few words about themselves and where they got their MFAs. I, on the other hand, wrote mostly about my ideas. I joke often that I shouldn’t really call myself a writer since in reality I mostly just liked the idea of writing. I always deliver this line with a laugh so as to come off as a funny, self-aware budding creative rather than as embarrassingly self-conscious, although I’m not sure it ever lands. In short, I’ve always struggled to take myself seriously as a writer. I went into this workshop week with high hopes but low expectations, sure that I’d be satisfied if I could find just a bit of validation and comraderie. I didn’t expect that my story line would mirror many (mostly white) writers before me who found purpose via a retreat into some mystical natural landscape.
In college, my first stint in these familiar woods only 60 miles southwest of where I’d later attend the writing conference, a few professors and loving friends opened my mind to the world of writing, for pleasure or for pay, for the first time. More specifically, they instilled in me a belief that I could be a writer, that I have stories worth telling and the voice to tell them. Their support, development, and fellowship molded my understanding of myself. Before this, and to this day, much of my hesitation to explore writing - and more generally, storytelling, which gets at what this is really about - came from not believing that I’m allowed to claim it as something I want, to practice it and fail at it until I get better, and to put myself out there and welcome experiences unknown to me. Writing was a hobby reserved for others with much more time and money on their hands than me, and only the most privileged and lucky are able to actually make money off of it. Storytelling, tinged with purpose, seemed very distant from writing, a leisurely activity I didn’t have the talent or time for. My professors and peers, however, taught me so much about the possibilities of the page and within myself.
By the time I arrived at the workshop, a year out of undergraduate and still deeply afraid of the page and what it would take to pour myself into it, I was ripe for more molding. I had never workshopped a piece of my writing before, and had always struggled with receiving criticism. The piece that I brought with me was an abridged adaptation of my undergraduate thesis that I wanted to form into a public facing essay for some southern literary magazine. For nearly 10 months after completing the thesis I was unwilling, unable really, to crack it open and take a look. The process had been gruelling the first time around, with many tears shed and many near breakdowns. It hadn’t been a graduation requirement - I simply wanted to prove to myself that I could see a large project to completion. And that I did - I completed a whopping 100+ page mammoth of a project just shy of graduation in 2021. When the deadline to submit our workshop manuscript snuck up on me in April of 2022, I knew that I didn’t want to start a new project from scratch until I had revisited my first great work and attempted to slough off the academic conventions and tell the story at its heart to the audience I most cared about - fellow Black southerners. Still in recovery from my first writing marathon and unsure of how to create a healthy creative praxis for myself, I cranked out an essay made up of excerpts from the thesis and newly drafted sections, none of which I was at all proud of. It was at this point that I really began feeling nervous about letting others view my work, and wary that this workshop would prove once and for all that writing was simply not for me.
Instead, what I received was a week full of compassion, care, intention, and affirmation from fellow place-based writers who truly saw my voice and stories as worthy of commitment to the page. In such a short period of time I felt deeply transformed and lovingly held, validation and affirmation pouring in from every person I met and shared my writing or ideas with. I was faced with the realization that I was truly the only person who didn’t believe in my writing, and that my fears only served to keep important stories from being told. In so many words, my workshop leader shared that while many people can write about the same topic or theme, no one can write exactly the story that I wanted to write because no one else was me. In just 7 days, my perspective of myself, my craft, and my place in the world went through more transformations than I thought possible.
As the workshop week came to a close, I was sad to leave the mountains and return to city life as a part of me felt like I was leaving some other piece of me behind. Like the cost for enjoying the retreat of the mountains is that it takes a piece of you in return, an only fair exchange for sharing in its solitude. You walk away with an emptiness not easily filled but deeply felt. Perhaps I was simply afraid that the version of my future that I got a glimpse of that week in the woods - a successful, skillful storyteller and accomplished writer - seemed unrealistic when I no longer donned rose-tinted glasses about what it means to lay your heart out on a page for a living. Writing, as I learned that week, is a constant process of observing and making sense of the world around us, and of learning to accept when there isn’t much sense to be made. The stories I want to tell about the Black South are particularly laden with scars and scabs that never fully healed, and it is wishful thinking to believe that uncovering such wounds will always prove to be worth enduring that pain and asking others to sit in it with me. If however, according to Mary Ruefle, “we write because we must,” then I shouldn’t worry about my aptitude for the craft being left behind in the mountains with the people there who had validated me the most. If the story is inside me, it will find its way into my pen and onto the page.
What I was most afraid of, then, was losing the sense of community I found in the old inn, in the stadium seating of the Little Theater, in the dusty little cottage library huddled over a translated short story collection I recruited many others to read with me and to sit with its grotesque curiousness. I feared that I would never again find readers who would treat my work with the care and intention that my workshop group provided me, and that their praise of my work was just an anomaly. This, I now realize, is the ongoing quest and challenge of creative community - seeking people to hold you/your work tenderly and yet who will push you towards growth. Those who will catch you when you’ve fallen off the wagon of self-belief, and who will lovingly build you back up with reminders that your art is needed in the world.
It is so freeing to have space to absorb, commune, and create without the ticking clock of capitalism chiming away in your ear. We all deserve that freedom and peace. Not just for $2k/a week, and not solely via isolated retreat and aloneness. While there is something to be said for how time spent with your own thoughts and selfhood leads to deeply unique transformations, the myth that creativity thrives on solitude is one that does us more harm than good. It is just as much a product of the toxic individualism driving society towards destruction in so many other ways. Much of writing, just like any other creative practice, comes largely from going out there and experiencing and observing life. Experiencing joy, pain, deep belly laughter, heartbreaking mournful sorrow, and all the emotions that fall elsewhere on the spectrum are the scaffolding of creation. Not only does creative expression draw from living and experiencing life with others, but we all deserve the freedom of our time, resources, and energy to create as we please, when and where we please. Creativity thrives on community, not solitude. Unfortunately, with the current constraints placed on us that require we work ourselves to the bone just to have our basic needs met, indulging in our innate creativity has become a privileged ability. As I return home to my cozy apartment, flexible work from home job and four day work week, and all the other things that make it possible for me to create, I have a newfound gratitude. To be human is to feel a whole range of emotions and be a part of complex webs of relations and kinship, and to be human is also to creatively express these webs of desire and existence. As we’re faced with the impending necessity of building a new world that priortizies people and whole livelihoods over profit and grind culture, I hope that the world we create has room for us all to be deeply transformed by the power of nature, community, creativity, and the unique aliveness I haven’t quite found a way to put into words.
Song of the day:
Not you making me reminisce on when I had these same thoughts 😭. I really resonate with this and I'm so happy you went on that dope retreat to remind you your words and story matter and are valid 🙌🏽
This was so beautiful. Thank you for sharing your art!