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. 🌀

If you are within driving distance of Thomasville, Georgia, I will be speaking at the iconic, 30-year-old Wildlife Arts Festival this Saturday, Nov. 22. I’ll be on the Land & Lore stage, Thomasville Center for the Arts, at 1 p.m. talking about “Rooted in Wildness: Story, Land, and Belonging.”

WHEN MY KICKSTARTER for Journey in Place ended, I promised to pull back the curtain and share stats with you. Here we go.

Running Time

Launched—5 Oct 2025

Ended—25 Oct 2025

Length—20 days (Folks who study Kickstarter advise to run fewer than 30 days. For me, the shorter the launch, the less stress.)

Goal

My listed goal—$2,225 (You have to keep the goal low. If you don’t reach this amount, you receive none of the funds.)

Hours it took to reach this goal—3

My secret goal—millions, of course 🫠

How the Money Shakes Out

Pledged—$18,397

Kickstarter fee—$895.32

Payment processing fee—$647.83

Deposited in my business account—$16,363.18

How Many Backers

The campaign amount can look sweet, but number of backers is, by far, more important. I’m trying to get my books out to people—many people. When you think of Stephen King books selling millions, a few hundred sales is humbling. That most published books sell fewer than 100 copies is important to remember at this point.

# backers—371

Average pledge—$50 (another important number)

Followers & How Many Purchased

If you’re running a Kickstarter, you want as many people as possible clicking on the pre-launch page. This indicates their interest in what you’re offering. In marketing terms, these are “warm” customers. Kickstarter recommends at least 50 people follow your pre-launch page before you go live.

Pre-launch followers—268 (huge success!)

Time that the pre-launch page was up—around 3 months (I forgot to mark the date.)

Number of pre-launch followers who went on to purchase—126

Pre-launch conversion rate—47% (excellent!)

Post-launch followers—39 (These folks clicked a link to be reminded before the project ended.)

Number of post-launch followers who purchased—8

Post-launch conversion rate—21%

The Video

People who watched the video—291

People who watched to the end—32%

Rewards

Most popular reward—paperback ($20)

# of paperbacks claimed—279 (Sometimes a person got more than one copy; therefore, this doesn’t mean 279 people.)

2nd most popular reward—hardback ($25)

# of hardbacks claimed—118

Least popular item—Bundle w/ paperback + audiobook + ebook

# of supporters who wanted this bundle—2

Most surprising reward—Bundle of 5 paperbacks

# who ordered 5-book Bundle—23 (This is the biggest success. People who recommend or give your books to others are your besties.)

# who ordered ebook only—24

# who ordered audiobook only—13 (least lucrative reward)

How Backers Got to Kickstarter

When I analyze the data regarding where people came from, far and away the most backers arrived via Substack. Thank you, thank you! A handful came from Facebook. Some came from an email blast. Some folks heard about the project and googled it, then arrived. Some went directly to KS and did a search. A handful came from my website.

If I am correct in my analysis, between 5 and 10 percent came from Kickstarter directly.

However, during the course of the project, Kickstarter is doing its part by:

1. Sending out an automated notification that the project has launched

2. Naming it a “Project We Love,” which helps their algorithm

3. Listing it to other KS backers as a “Project We Recommend”

4. Highlighting it on their home page

5. Sending out a “Last Chance to Back” email 48 hours before the end

6. Attempting to bring in backers in a few other small ways, like showing “ending soon” on their app

Expenses Breakdown

Printing—2,500 (estimated)

Shipping books out—2,200 (estimated)

Packaging supplies—150 (estimated)

Videographer—500

Cover designer—1,200

App to distribute ebook & audiobook—100

Actual cost to run a Kickstarter—0

Total Expenses—$6,650

Final Numbers

Kickstarter Gross—16,636

Actual Expenses—6,650

Profit—$9,713

Time Required

To write and design the book—16 months (working 5-10 hours weekly)

To design and manage a KS campaign—80 hours (estimated, over the course of 3 months)

To record and load audiobook—20 hours

The Rest of the Story: Kickstarter Numbers, Truths, and Takeaways

In addition to the stats, I am compiling FAQs about the Kickstarter campaign. These are some of the questions I’m answering:

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

• Why does Kickstarter use the language of investment rather than sales?

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

• What qualifies as an audience?

• How do you build one?

I’ll be scheduling a free “How to Kickstart” workshop soon. If you want the link to the workshop or if you have a question you’d like answered in FAQs, be in touch.

In Other News

🌀 DNA Anthology Exceeds Our Expectations

My co-editor Hilary Vidalakis and I met via Zoom last weekend. Hilary is working with an impressive assemblage of writers to prepare the essays for publication. (I will be the second reader.) We have received excellent work, and the anthology promises to be stunning. Right now Hilary and I are working on five things—

• edits

• ordering of the pieces

• production timeline

• business plan

• final title.

  ---

🌀This Is a Final Call for DNA Essays

If you have an essay that…

1. pertains to a DNA test that affected you

2. is already written and ready to go (or can be readied within a few days)

3. you’d be willing to publish under your name or a pen name

…please send it to us asap. If you send to me, I’ll forward to Hilary.

🌀 Emergency! I’m Missing Two Writer Names for the DNA Anthology

Somehow I received two entries that do not include the author’s name. I’m sure the name was in the email, but when I harvested the essays, the name got separated. One essay starts with a line about “massive woods behind my house when I was a kid” and was written by a man. (Young?) The other essay is titled “The Secret Power of Secrets.” Despite numerous searches through email, I am unable to find the authors of these two essays. If one of these was you, would you be in touch?

🌀 Don’t Forget to Put Your Name on Your Submissions

All writing submissions should include author name and contact info (postal address, email address, and phone number) in the upper left-hand corner, unless you are told otherwise. Blind submissions will often have you leave this information off the piece of writing but put it in a cover letter.

🌀 I’m Recording Journey in Place

I’m in my MacGyver studio, recording the audiobook for Journey in Place. The studio is a card table turned sideways atop a table that has been covered with a thick blanket. I then hung blankets over the legs of the card table and another like a canopy over everything. I record to a Shure microphone plugged into my Mac laptop, using the app GarageBand. Each chapter gets saved in a mp3 file, and these get loaded to Amazon’s KDP. I’ve been managing about five chapters before my energy flags, and that takes a couple of hours, so progress is slow. On Sunday I reached the halfway point. Reading the book aloud, I realize how rich and interesting it is.

🌀 Kickstarter Fulfillment Soon Underway

Last week the funds raised from Kickstarter got deposited to my account. I can now pay for book orders and shipping. All books have arrived to my studio, and I am signing and dating them. Books will start to go out this week. If you supported the launch, you should have your copy in hand by the first of December.

🌀 “How to Kickstart” Workshop

As soon as the book fulfillment is done, I’ll be scheduling a free 1.5-hour workshop one evening. Let me know if you’re interested and want to receive the link.

🌀 Julie Nowak Publishes in Fractured Atlas

If you were in the summer memoir course, Write Your Own Story, you will remember Julie Nowak. She is a writer based near Toronto who focuses on disabilities and nature. She continued with me this fall, taking Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction. She’s a serious, hard-working writer who is determined to get her work into the world.

Julie let me know that her flash essay published in Fractured Atlas. It can be found on Instagram here, “Artist opportunities are ableist. Here’s what I did about it.” What she did was create her own 3-month residency for free. Her essay has 5,000 ❤️s.

Julie can be found at The Seasonal Body, also on Instagram.

Many congratulations to Julie!

🌀 Julie Friar Publishes “Shrapnel”

Another Julie just had a publication. Julie Friar, another new but hard-working writer, published her essay “Shrapnel” in Collateral Magazine. When she wrote to let me know, she said, “Thank you for providing a platform that permits folks like me to understand the creative nonfiction genre and develop writing skills that result in an essay like “Shrapnel.” It took a minute to put it all together but I couldn’t be happier with the result. I’m so appreciative! 🥰🥂🙏🏻

Many congrats to Julie!

🌀 Plan Memoir Summer 2026 Now

I will not be teaching the memoir course, Write Your Own Story, until Summer 2026. There is plenty of room and no hurry to sign up—this is just a heads-up that the course is on the books. It will be the only memoir course I offer in 2026. You can find more information on my website. Dates are Wednesdays 11am-12 noon Eastern Time, June 3—Aug. 19, 2026. Teaching is webinar style with extra sessions for small-group interactions.

On the homepage of my website is a link that says, GET ON THE LIST TO BE NOTIFIED OF UPCOMING COURSES. If you want to be reminded a month before a course starts, or if you want to be the first to hear when a course is scheduled, click that link. It sends an email to me, and I put you on a “Workshop Interest” list. The only information required is your name and email address.

🌀 Next Magical Craft is Fall 2026

Taking care of the baby requires that I slow down my teaching and writing for a couple of years. I have made the decision that I will only teach one Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction course in 2026. That will be in the fall, on Mondays from 7-9 pm Eastern US Time, Sept. 14—Nov. 2, 2026. This will be taught webinar style, with extra sessions for small-group interactions, socializing, live editing, and open mic. There is plenty of time to register and plenty of room in the course. If you want to think about it, you can find more info on my website.

🌀 Journaling Place | 7 Sunday Sessions of Nature Journaling School | Starts in January

Nature Journaling School is designed for you to process, document, and celebrate your life and the world around you. In this series we will focus on Journaling Place. We’ll look at nature without and nature within. 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

Sessions will take place on Jan. 11 | Jan. 18 | Jan. 25 | Feb. 1 | Feb. 8 | Feb. 15 | and Feb. 22. I will be leading the sessions, and I’m really happy about the guest artists coming on to teach segments. They include:

• Clare Walker Leslie (talking about citizen science)

• Madeleine Jubilee Saito (doing place comix)

• Melissa DeSa (phenology wheels)

• Jeanne Malmgren (guided place meditations)

• Jane Pike (book of allies)

• Alma Ramiro Alonzo (wildflowers)

As ever, these mini-courses in nature journaling are By Donation. Sessions will be run webinar style, with plenty of interaction going on in the Chat. Think of this as an hour on Sunday evenings to focus on you and your creativity.

You can find more information—including a list of what you can expect to gain from this series—and registration at Eventbrite.

Journaling Place

🌀 Remember the Mantra from The Big Leap

I expand in abundance, love, and success every day, as I inspire those around me to do the same.

🌀 This Week

Try to stay in the spiral. Try to keep returning to the notebook. Try to overcome your obstacles. Try to avoid all jealousy. Try to celebrate your wins. Try to push yourself. Try to live the life you dream. Try to sometimes do nothing.

If you read my nature writing at Trackless Wild, you will have seen this tribute to the poet Lorine Niedecker. It published on Sept. 3. I wanted to share it here.

IN SPRING OF 2024, out of the blue, I received an email from someone named Chris Fink. “I direct the Mackey Program, which brings a writer to Beloit College (southern Wisconsin) for a six-week teaching residency. I’m interested in inviting you during the spring ‘25 semester.”

I went to Wisconsin.

“Nothing turns out the way you think it will,” my brother said to me recently, and his wisdom was indeed true of Wisconsin. As I imagined it, I would drink hot tea in snowbound coffeeshops, write in booths by large windows, and meet my students in bars for critique sessions.

By spring 2025, however, my baby, Little Fawn, had arrived, and I would barely leave her for a 90-minute class, certainly not for a six-week residency.

~*~

I’ll tell you six things

that happened to me

in Wisconsin.

I ate cheese curds for the first

time. And native hazlenuts,

no bigger than capers.

Stood by the Mississippi River, frozen

and white, counting bald eagles

above shores lacy with snow.

Outside my office window

an owl dismembered a squirrel.

I discovered Lorine Neidecker.

You tell me, was it worth it?

~*~

Chris Fink was a dream. Right away I felt a deep kinship. He was the English Department chair, thus my boss, and also editor of the Beloit Fiction Journal. Chris is author of three books:

• Farmer’s Almanac (fiction, 2013)

• Add This to the List of Things That You Are (fiction, 2019)

• Forage Like a Bear (illustrated radio essays, 2025)

He should be in the poem above, first on the list, seven things that happened to me in Wisconsin.

Here is Chris.

~*~

Toward the end of our time, Chris said we had to take a field trip. “You can’t leave Wisconsin without seeing Lorine Niedecker’s cabin.”

We were sitting together in his office, looking out over the Beloit College campus. He was holding the baby, which he loved to do. He called the baby “Forest Beloved.” Or “Little Feller.”

“Who is Lorine Niedecker?”

“A poet,” he said. “She lived on Blackhawk Island. Her cabin is still there.” He stood and moved to his overloaded bookshelves, baby in one arm. “Here,” he said. “This is yours.”

“I can’t take your book,” I said.

“It’s an extra.”

When I read “Paean to Place,” I fell in love with Lorine Niedecker.

The next Sunday I pulled up at the beautiful Fink home, transferred the baby to Chris’s car, and away we went. Chris’s gorgeous wife was down with COVID, but his teenage daughter came along, and I tended Forest Beloved in the back.

We headed to Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin and to a place called Blackhawk Island.

~*~

I’m going to tell the story in photos as much as I can. These murals in Fort Atkinson are excerpts from “Paean to Place.” You can find my recording of the poem below.

Fish

fowl

flood

Water lily mud

My life

I was the solitary plover

a pencil

for a wing-bone

From the secret notes

I must tilt

The Life of Lorine Niedecker

1903—Born May 12. Her maternal grandparents owned a resort on the Blackhawk Island, the Fountain House Hotel. Her father was a carp seiner.

1922—Left Fort Atkinson, WI for Beloit College. Was writing poetry.

1924—Returned home to Blackhawk, her father no longer able to pay her tuition.

1928—Married Frank Hartwig, who started a road-construction business, and she took at job at the local library.

1930—Separated.

1934—Went to New York, following a two-year correspondence with poet Louis Zukofsky. They became lovers.

1938-1942—Moved back to Wisconsin, worked with Federal Writer’s Project, Madison.

1942-1963—Returned to Blackhawk Island, divorced Hartwig, and worked a series of manual-labor jobs, including cleaning the kitchens at Fort Atkinson Hospital.

1963—Married Al Millen, an industrial painter. Moved to Milwaukee.

1968—Returned to Blackhawk Island with now-retired Millen.

1970—Died of cerebral hemorrhage at Blackhawk, Dec. 31.

~*~

Here is a map of the place. The Niedecker cabin is 47307 Blackhawk Island Road. You can see all the surrounding wetlands.

Her Books

Niedecker published five volumes of poetry in her lifetime. By her death she was at last becoming known as a brilliant Modernist poet.

• New Goose

• My Friend Tree

• North Central

• T & G: Collected Poems 1936-1966

• My Life By Water

My Recording of “Paean to Place”

One More Thing

Chris had been to a hunter’s breakfast that morning, and he brought along a gift from one of the guys, rum-soaked plums, another paean to place.

Meager

marsh

muse

Rum soaked plums

My life

That Sadness

Think what Lorine Niedecker would have accomplished as a poet had she been a woman of means. Instead, she cleaned the hospital.

So many things about her life fascinate me:

• That she was a woman, coming of age in the 1920s.

• That she was eclipsed by male poets.

• That she wrote despite menial jobs and duties.

• That she wrote despite her poverty.

• That she loved her place. She said, “I am what I am because of all this—I am what is around me—these woods have made me.”

• That, fifty years after her death, her community embraces her work, painting her words on buildings in town. I’m fascinated with the intersection of art and community space.

Find Out More

Friends of Lorine Niedecker

The Spelling of Her Name

I have seen the given name spelled both Lorine and Lorene, and I have seen the surname spelled both Nei- and Nie. I believe the correct spelling is Lorine Niedecker.

Oddly, Lorine’s father, Henry, engaged in a longtime affair with a married neighbor, Gertrude “Gert” Runke, wife of Otto Runke, who bore a daughter named Lorrine.

Thank You

Thank you, as ever, for being here with me at Spiral-Bound. I’ll be back next week with updates, opportunities, and news. In the meantime, do the work, make it good, love what you do.

Janisse

The tripwire was a book.

The book looked authentic. The title page said that Tim Ferriss, bestselling author and prominent podcaster at The Tim Ferriss Show, had written it. It was a book about selling direct on Shopify.

I Didn’t Fall the First Time

We’ve known for a while that AI scams are getting smarter and more rampant.

My first known encounter was an eloquent email six months ago that proved without a doubt that the messenger had read my first book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.

“I hope this message finds you well,” it said. “I am writing to express my sincere admiration for your remarkable book. Your insightful narrative and compelling storytelling have left a profound impact, and I greatly appreciate the depth and creativity you bring to your work.”

The email did not ask for anything. Someone or some bot was trying to start a conversation and then sell me something.

Luckily I’d been warned, although that flattery was nice, I admit.

I Didn’t Fall the Second or Third Times

The emails continue. They are created with the help of AI, which—knowing a person’s body of work intimately—can personalize and customize, until the messages seem to be written by real people. Some are very good.

I have no idea what “piece” that “Neal” is talking about, although the info likely derived from the book Wild Spectacle, since it contains an elk scene. Note the vocabulary: the piece slaps. tbh. dont sweat formality. And how could “Neal” make money by me spotlighting a relevant expert? Would I have to pay to spotlight that expert?

I slide these messages over into the trash.

Then I Fell

A book, dang it, tricked me.

Why I Wanted to Read a Book About Shopify

I sell my books on my website. I want them available to all readers, including someone who doesn’t have a local bookstore or can’t get to it. My website makes a fine little bookshop, but Shopify was built to handle e-commerce. So I contemplate moving.

A notice popped up about a new book: How to Achieve Financial Freedom With Shopify.

I ordered it.

The book arrived, 8.5 x 11, manual-like, 18-point type, not looking like something Tim Ferriss would produce but promising nonetheless. I saved it for bedtime, and finally—bedside lamp on, the baby asleep, quilt under my chin, a few precious minutes of my own time ahead—I opened it.

By page 2 I knew I’d been duped. I went blind for a nanosecond.

Someone has used AI to transcribe a Ferriss podcast interview. The interviewee is unclear. The transcription still says “Speaker 1” and “Speaker 2.”

The book is unreadable. Here’s a line, from page 11.

Yes, freakin’ gobbledygook.

I spent $15 for a chunk of poppycock and balderdash.

What Chatgpt Says

Janisse: Did Tim Ferriss write a book called How to Achieve Financial Freedom with Shopify?

Chatgpt: No—there is no indication that Tim Ferriss wrote this.

• Ferriss’s official website lists 5 books, and the list does not include this one.

• Wikipedia lists the same 5 books.

• The Shopify book is not listed on Ferriss’s official bibliography.

• Its publisher is “Independently Published,” which is unusual for an author like Ferriss whose previous work was with major publishing houses.

• The style and subject matter differ markedly from his mainstream brand of lifestyle-design/self-improvement bestsellers.

• There is no credible third-party source confirming this book as his work.

Therefore, AI Said, It Seems Highly Likely…

• Either this “book” is unauthorized or misattributed to Ferriss.

• It could be a self-published work by someone else using his name (either mistakenly or knowingly).

Meanwhile

My web designer wrote yesterday that she has installed “two-factor authentication” on my website.

“With AI getting smarter every day,” she said, “I’ve added features to help your website stay secure.” She says I’ll need to complete it the next time I log in.

“I know an extra step can feel like a hassle,” she said, “but it’s going to be a wild future as AI grows in abilities, and cyber security requires more attention each day.”

Listen at that.

“It’s going to be a wild future.”

Yeah.

Be Forewarned

It’s going to be a wild future.

My Take

Three of my eleven books were used to train AI, and they are listed in the Anthropic settlement, which means I’ll be paid a few thousand. Whatever.

AI has been coming at us a long time—transcription services, GPS, self-driving cars, navigation maps, Google searches. Did you embrace Alexa? Then you embraced AI. Do you use GPS? Same.

Generative AI was a decision by the tech giants to speed things up.

I would never use AI to write—my own writing is leapyears better than AI’s. However, I use it freely and widely for research, meaning I almost never type a question into a Google search bar anymore.

I’m going to propose something here.

Being opposed to AI is not helping matters. Nothing is going to stop Generative AI. It is here to stay. It’s only going to speed up. It’s only going to get smarter. The scams are only going to increase.

So, my advice is, get smart about it. Look clearly at what we’re dealing with. I see three viable responses.

1. Keep taking steps to stay a few paces ahead of the scam-bots.

2. Take advantage of any way AI can help you. If it can sort a column of expenses in a fraction of time you can sort them, why not? Generative AI can do so many things for you that don’t rip someone else’s job away but instead, give you more time. Hire a personal assistant, if you can afford one, and let him add and alphabetize for you. And if you can’t afford one, consider AI as a personal assistant.

3. Double down on being human. (If you want a post about how to be more human, let me know. I’d be delighted and honored to write one. I’ve spent my entire adult life thinking about what it means to be human.)

The Environmental Toll

Yes, the whole shebang is destroying the environment.

Computers are. Data centers are. Cell phones are. Cell towers are.

Airplanes are. Shopping malls are. Suburbs are. Agriculture is. Roundup is. And a million other things we all use every single day.

Now hyperscale data centers are.

I’d give up all of it in a heartbeat.

But it’s coming at us—hard—whether we want it or not. So my advice?

Get ready.

About Books

I have advice about book recommendations. The time has come when you need to check them out. The book-scammers are buckling in, and the scamming is only going to get worse.

Don’t be like me.

One More Thing

As writers, we should be aware that the literary market is being flooded with books written or co-written or transcribed or bastardized by AI. This will increase the confusion among readers about what is good—worth reading—and what is not. That confusion is already intense, and it’s going to worsen.

Readers will be more wary. Books will get more difficult to market. More people will, so to speak, throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Figuring ways to find your readers and serve them well will become more important than ever.

Let Me Know

How can I better serve you, my dear reader, my dear writer?

Leave a comment

Some days, I’ve found, are like this.

My father lived with bipolar disorder. So did my grandfather, my great aunt, my uncle, my aunt, my first cousin, another first cousin, another first cousin… The list goes on. And on.

Sometimes the condition translated into suicides and addictions.

I’ve puffed myself up all my life for avoiding mental illness.

Perhaps, however, none of us avoid it, if by “it” we mean lows and highs.

Perhaps we all come, some days, to the page raw and seeping.

Outside, winged aster goes to seed. A mockingbird lands on the deck as if looking for lost keys. In the distance, along the dirt road, a single young sycamore flares like a candle flame against a backdrop of evergreen live oaks.

~*~

Last night I opened an extra session for writers in my current online course. I billed it as a conversation about writing: “Where are you stuck?”

One writer with disabilities has skidded into a health slump. One, mourning a dead husband, said, “My grief is tied up in my metaphors.” Another said, “I’m restless inside my soul, and it’s coming out in my work.”

~*~

The question tugging at me today is one I pulled from Seth Godin’s strategy deck. What are my resources? Followed by, What is scarce?

The word “scarce” is haunting. Things that are scarce in my life follow me around, making scary faces. I don’t want to inventory them—that would grant them more power.

All of us have scarcities, seething and hissing from the shadows. Not enough community. Not enough belief in ourselves. Not enough brainspace to think through a book-length work. Not enough money.

Privately, on a page I can fold over, in a book I can close, I list them.

(Brene Brown says that we think about what’s scarce before we think about what’s plentiful. We wake up each morning thinking we didn’t get enough sleep.)

~*~

Outside, a titanium sky is tense, immutable. Close to the ground, wind keeps elder bushes restless. Leaves on a pear tree palpitate dizzily. A leaf falls inside my sternum and leaves an empty space.

~*~

My resources?

A beautiful farm. Beauty in every direction. A rose-petal of a baby. A husband who takes care of tangible brokenness—fences, water pipes, fallen trees. Health. Ideas, more than I can possibly implement. Courage. A good mind. Conversations about things that matter. A living wage. Love, Category-5 kind of love, love with 200 mph winds, by which I don’t mean a destroying love, only a powerful one.

But here’s what’s wild:

Many of the things on my Resources List once lived on my Scarcities List. Courage, for example. For years, I didn’t have it. (I still don’t have as much as I’d like.)

Courage? Can be found.

Beauty? Can be found.

Love? Can be found.

(When I say “found,” I mean studied, desired, cultivated, manifested, enjoyed.)

And this fact gives me hope for all scarcity.

~*~

Perhaps, then, what we can do on a day like today, when we come to the page indigo and ash, hurricanes seething, is to keep doing what it takes to move our poverty toward provision, our fracture toward facility, our cracks toward capacity.

You know it works. It’s called transformation. And transformation is one reason we write,

• to offer sanity

• to offer healing

• to offer possibility

• to offer wholeness

• to offer resources

Even when we ourselves are tender, tentative, leafless, broken.

Writing Prompt

What are your resources? What is scarce?

In Other News

🌀 Thank You for Making the Kickstarter a Thumping Success

Thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting the Journey in Place Kickstarter.

The campaign ended on Saturday night at 10:25 p.m., after running 20 days. In an eleventh-hour surge, the book launched with 371 backers pledging $18,397. 🎉🎺🧨 My secret goal was 300 backers, and we shot beyond that. Thank you so much. I am very excited and grateful.

When I looked at Kickstarter’s analytics, they show that, by far, supporters for the project come from Substack. Thank you very much for your strong-hearted and everlasting support. 🥂

Next I will send out a Backer Survey out to gather email and mailing addresses. Right after that I’ll begin sending out copies of the book. I’ve ensnared my walking group into helping me.

If you signed up for one of the workshops, I’ll be in touch.

And as promised, I’ll write up a final report on the process—how I launched, secret tips, best practices—and share it with you. I’m also offering a free “How to Kickstart” workshop. See below.

🌀 Beloit College Seeks a Writing Professor

My friend Chris Fink at Beloit College in Wisconsin let me know that their English Department is looking for a creative nonfiction and journalism professor.

As you may remember, I was writer-in-residence at Beloit last winter, early 2025, and I loved the college, the region, the people.

Beloit’s search is open until Oct 30. Please pass this notice to anyone who might be a creative nonfiction writer with journalism experience, having the ability to teach “Intro to Journalism.”

🌀 Send Me a Secret on a Postcard

Over at the newsletter for my own writing—Trackless Wild—I’ve opened a small doorway called Wild Confessions: Postcards from the Interior, a place for truths we carry in silence. This is similar to the famous PostSecret project.

Postcards—poignant, poetic, pregnant—are arriving, and I can’t wait to share them.

1. Write your secret on a postcard. No rules, no return address, no names, no identifying evidence. The secret can be a sentence, a drawing, a fragment, a confession whispered to the trees. The secrets can be big or little.

2. If you create your own postcard, the standard size is 4 inches x 6 inches, on paper that is cardstock or thicker. That size will require a postcard stamp, which costs $.53. However, a postcard can be any size. Those larger than 5 inches x 7 inches will require a letter stamp of $.73.

3. Mail your postcard to me, and let it travel alone through wind and weather until it lands in my hands.

4. I will be sharing these in Trackless Wild, as testimony to the mysterious, untamed lives we all lead.

Send to:

Janisse Ray

895 Catherine T. Sanders Road

Reidsville, GA 30453

Wild Confessions Postcard

1.71MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

🌀 Free “How To Kickstart” Workshop

I am offering a free workshop on launching a book via Kickstarter. I will show you how I run a campaign, what I’ve learned so far about what works and what doesn’t.

I have ten names so far.

Get on the list by sending me an email. I’ve not yet set a date.

🌀 Hilary Is Editing the DNA Book

Co-editor Hilary Vidalakis and I will have news soon on the DNA book. If you have submitted a piece, you have probably heard from Hilary. If not, a message will be coming your way. Thanks for all the beautiful essays you sent in. This will be a gorgeous, engaging, moving read.

We are searching for a great title and subtitle. If you have an idea, please share.

🌀 Again, If I Owe You Anything

I want to start 2026 with a clean slate. This request came in this week from a person who purchased an audiobook at my website:

Hi, Janisse! Love how you’re tying up all loose ends by year’s end. It’s inspiring. Thanks for this opportunity to retrieve your audiobook. Bookfunnel hasn’t sent me anything yet to download it, so if you could make that happen I’d be so grateful. Thanks and enjoy the upcoming holiday season! C—

C said that she hadn’t wanted to bother me. Please believe me when I say that serving you and making good on all promises is extremely important to me. Don’t stay silent if I’ve forgotten something.

🌀 Here’s a Deal for You, Thinking of That Writer Friend

The coupon below gets you $7 off a Bundle of Craft & Current: A Manual for Magical Writing. That’s the paperback + the companion workbook. The list price is $42; the current price is $32, which includes shipping.

So you can get both for $25, including shipping. I stick in a bookmark and sticker, and I will gladly personalize. Just add a message to your order. Note: Only 20 of these are available.

Coupon Code: spiralbound7

Get the Bundle

🌀 I Am in Need of a Particular Kind of Illustrator

I find myself in need of an illustrator who works in the fantasy/ witchy/ oracle sphere. The job is small. If you know of someone who loves to design in this realm, would you let me know? Thanks to the suggestions I have received so far. I’m still collecting options. Many thanks.

🌀 Submit Your Story About a Sacred Nature Encounter

See more at Jeanne Malmgren’s Substack post, “Wanted: your nature writing.” The book, to be called Feather Stories, will contain “inspiring encounters with earth medicine.” I’m going to submit and I hope you do too.

Rx Nature

Wanted: your nature writing

Read more

7 months ago · 27 likes · 15 comments · Jeanne Malmgren

🌀 What I’m Reading

I’m still reading Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg.

You’ve been told again and again that you have to seduce the reader,

Sell the story in the very first paragraph.

          (Nonsense, but it explains a lot of bad writing.)

The reader isn’t looking for the tease of a single paragraph,

Or numbingly clever prose, or sentences full of self-exhibition.

The reader is in love with continuity, with extent, with duration,

Above all with presence—the feeling that each sentence isn’t merely a static construct but inhabited by the writer.

Examine yourself while reading and see if that isn’t true.

—Verlyn Klinkenborg

🌀 Until Next Week

Stay in the spiral. You do that by remembering what’s working and what you’ve accomplished and what you have and how far you’ve come. And by continuing the journey of turning scarcity to resource.

🌀 Bring Friends

The spiral is wide and has room for all.