Writing Wild

Even if we don’t write about nature, Tina Welling demonstrates, nature triggers our stories. This is because “everything we know about creating, we know intuitively from the natural world.” One can set the stage for creation by following these three steps: consciously naming the information gathered by the senses, describing the sensory details of one particular object, and interacting with the energy system of the universe. Welling discovered the last step while hiking and observing an intricate spiderweb shimmering in sunlight. Spiderwebs, she notes, are both “wondrous and ordinary” — ordinary in that they are made of chewed-up insects, yet wondrous in their intricacy. Welling shows writers how to make this kind of connection between the everyday and the hidden, worthy-of-attention beauty all around us. She makes the process of developing a fruitful relationship with wildness inside and out accessible to all writers and insight seekers.