Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you first hoped. — Lillian Hellman
Sometimes, after all the creating and rewriting and hair-pulling, we writers need a little R&R. By which I mean we need to get away for a few days to be surrounded by other writers, learning about the craft, exchanging ideas and getting re-energized about going back to the otherwise pretty isolated world of putting one word in front of another. For me, this meant going to the James River Writers (JRW) Conference in Richmond last weekend. It was my third JRW Conference, and they keep getting better and better.
As a native New Yorker who had lived in the Boston area for some 15 years, I wasn’t expecting much of a literary community when we moved down to Richmond five years ago. Boy, was I wrong. The Poetry Society of Virginia, for example, is the second oldest State Poetry organization in the U.S., founded in 1923 at The College of William and Mary. A newcomer by comparison, James River Writers was founded in 2002 by a group of well-known professional writers, among them David L. Robbins, Dean King and Phaedra Hise. The Writers Conference debuted in 2003 as a two-day affair to provide seminars and lectures for both aspiring and working writers. Over the past eight years, it has becoming a state-wide phenomenon.
And JRW itself? It has grown to host a year-round calendar of literary events, including the monthly Writing Show and Writers Wednesday get-togethers, writing contests, and the annual Virginia Arts & Letters LIVE. This year, JRW was even the recipient of an NEA grant. All in all, it’s a great supporter of central Virginia’s literary community.
At this year’s conference, I was once again in the difficult position of having to choose between a group of great panels. Really, I need to clone myself. But I had to choose, and so I did. My final answers were: Writing Religion with Kristen Swenson, Zachary Steele and Susanne Cokal; Writing in Multiple Genres, with Silas House, Michael Olmert and Jason Howard; Memoir, with Melissa Sarver, Jason Howard and Margaret Edds; The Art of the Interview, with May-Lily Lee, Harry Kollatz and Phaedra Hise; Writing About Nature, with Stephanie Pearson, Jason Howard and Meg Olmert; Changes in Publishing, with Lucy Carson, Joseph Papa and Jeff VanderMeer; and Publicity through Social Media, with Lauren Oliver, Joni Davis and Joseph Papa. Add to that several plenary sessions and the very helpful “first pages” critique session and you’ve got an informative, exhausting and — somehow simultaneously — exhilarating 48 hours.
So now I’ve got business cards to file, authors and agents to contact, websites to look up, books to read, tweets to tweet, query letters to craft and — most importantly — new words to write. I’m leaving for Boston and Salem today and will be there until late Sunday, during which time I will have lots to think about. I’ll leave you with some of the more delightful/telling/disturbing comments I discovered in my notes and a helpful list of the “go-to” sources of inspiration, especially for nature writers.
But first, tell me: where do you get your inspiration? How do you kick-start your imagination? What do you do for R&R? Let’s share some ideas to help each other . . .
“Being a writer is not something you should turn on; you should have to turn it off.” Silas House
“Our lives are defined by what’s outside.” Silas House
“A lot of people don’t see nature anymore.” Meg Olmert
“[As writers] we have no idea what we’re doing . . . but just keep plugging along.” Meg Olmert
The “go-to” sources for grounding and inspiration:
- “Self Reliance” by Emerson
- Anything by Thoreau
- The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich
- Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray
- Anything by Mary Oliver
- Anything by Wendell Berry
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Buon viaggio!
Linda Dini Jenkins is a card-carrying Italophile, travel planner, freelance writer, and amateur photographer. Travel is her passion, so writing about her travels just comes naturally. She hopes all her travelers find a way to express their joys, surprises, and fears as they travel and gives every traveler a nifty journal to help smooth the way. Learn more…
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