When I Saw the Test Results

I fall back on writing when travel takes me to unexpected places.

I took this photo two days ago in Siena, in the Tuscan region of Italy, at a glorious pool in the city center. Myth has it that a she-wolf suckled Remus and Romulus, twin babies who went on to found Rome. Likewise, the Sienese say that a wolf suckled the twins Senius and Aschius, who founded Siena. Here on a hot, dry day a city pigeon is sucking water from the wolf’s mouth.

Many years ago an editor taught me a lesson about travel and writing.

I had journeyed to Colombia, South America, wanting to experience another culture. I was 28. In Colombia I visited Purace National Natural Park, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Andean condor, one of the largest flying birds in the world. At 33 pounds they rely on 10-foot wingspans and strong air currents to stay aloft.

I remember holding early-morning vigils at Purace yearning to see these mammoth vultures. I never did.

I wrote a poem about condors, and when I returned (six months later) to the United States, I entered the poem in a poetry competition. The poem won first place, but the judge, in the strange and villainous way we don’t allow ourselves to fully praise another, critiqued the poem’s reliance on travel. Travel poetry is too easy, he said. The harder poems to write are the ones that arise from home, from a regular day, from daily life.

I see the truth in that.

I have been less interested in travel writing than I have been in place writing.

Fifteen years ago I quit flying in order to do my part in the climate crisis and to pay deep and beloved attention to place, to see what stories could arise from settledness, groundedness, rootedness.

But now I have come to Italy. My husband Raven and I left Savannah a few days ago and flew to Milan, where we met our son, Silas. I am here for a spiritual retreat—mostly focusing on yoga. I am not here to write.

Somewhere on the journey to Europe an unfortunate thing happened. Raven contracted Covid-19. Silas and I have tested negative, but Raven is isolated for medical safety, and I am his nurse, so I’m unable to participate in ashram or asana.

Raven feels awful about it, because of the significance of this trip—our first flight of any kind in 15 years—our second-ever trip to Europe—my unbounded anticipation of the yoga, breathing, chanting, and meditation—my desire to remedy the isolation of rural life.

My yoga retreat in Tuscany has turned into a writing retreat. I, however, do not want to write about Tuscany—its food, its light, its landscapes, its olive orchards, its vineyards, its tall and thin cypress trees, its stone pines, its Medieval fortresses, its hill towns. You won’t believe this, but I look around at Tuscany, and I swear to you that it pales in comparison to my home in the south of Georgia.

I am not interested in the surface of things. I am living in the layers. The most I can hope for here is that some essence of long and known history, of the permanence of stone, and of a culture of art, beauty, and rest will seep into my work, and I will be able to bring some of this essence home with me.

Perhaps I can glean more ways to understand my own place.

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Question

Why do you think I don’t find Tuscany as magnetizing as I think I should?

A view of Siena.

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I Hope You Want to Study With Me

I am a writer, yes, and I am also a writing teacher. Three courses are coming up, and all of them are very different. One is a masterclass in nature writing, which happens on Monday evenings for a couple of months starting in October. Another is a memoir course, which takes place during lunch hour on Mondays for a couple of months, also starting in October. The third is my signature Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction, which takes place weekly on Wednesdays starting in early November.

If you’re wondering if I’m authentic and experienced or just another moneymaker with hollow promises, I want to share a message that a writer in one of my courses sent me recently.

As Beth says, the classes are live on Zoom.

I want to say one more important thing. You may be following a strange whim or a long-held urge to write, and you decide to explore it. Or you may already be a writer (or were one) and you want to learn more about craft. Many people take a class from me, and they get even more urgent and passionate about committing to the work. They begin to submit and publish. They win contests. They finish a book proposal. They get book deals.

Others learn something equally important—that serious writing is not for them. They learn what they need to learn, and they decide to put their precious life energy somewhere else. That is fine.

Others focus on the healing and bonding elements of writing, and they continue the practice for themselves, not for the world.

All of these paths are beautiful. Whichever path you choose, I support you on it.

If you want to research what each course offers, please visit my website. I welcome you no matter which writing journey you’re on.

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I’d Like to See You in Person

Columbia, South Carolina

I’ll be keynoting the highly popular South Carolina Writers Association annual conference Nov. 3-5 with a talk titled Five Challenges to Great Writing and How to Conquer Them. Seats are filling up with that one, but the website shows that some nonmember seats are available for $340. I’m also doing a memoir session, Write Your Own Story, and a Friday masterclass, Market Your Book Skyward. If you’re interested in coming to Columbia (and I hope you are), jump on it.

Murfreesboro, Tennessee

I’ll be doing a session, Following Golden Strands: Writing from the Mysterium, at an amazing writing conference coming up at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro Oct. 6-7. In this lecture I look at the role of invisible forces in our work and will cover magic, ancestors, mantras, psychedelics, and wildness. The MTSU Writes conference theme is Wild | Home: Writing What Roots and Frees Us, and I’ll also deliver a keynote address on place-based writing.

The writer Amie Whittemore directs MTSU Writes, which has a fascinating model of community writing mentors.

The in-person conference is only $125, and other offerings include:

• Inhale, Exhale: The Self in Speculative Spaces with Ruth Joffre

• Crushing Writing Anxiety, Imposter Syndrome, and Creative Blocks with Jen Chesak

• “That Poem Is Dope, Muy Chido, Cracking, Merveilleux, Y’All”: Home Languages that Root and Free Us with Brenda Cárdenas

• Poetry and Place with Denton Loving

• Alan's Psychedelic Setting: Using Music to Write Setting and Develop Character with RS Deeren

• The Forest and The Path: Navigating the Worlds of Our Stories with Emily Choate

When you register, follow the link for “community member.” That means you. We’re all in this community together. Note that there’s a virtual option, but having you there in person would be superfine (like sugar.)

Moab, Utah

For more info on the Wilderness Writing Retreat in Moab, visit Moab Museum. The retreat is the second weekend in November. This immersion in red rock desert and into writing with me costs $2,000. Seven spots are left. (Robert Lee Fulghum, author of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, will be joining us as a guest speaker with a phenomenally unique perspective.)

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Dogs drink water from wolf mouths too.

Do the work > work with love > love what you do.