The Pilgrimage of Writing Out West

 

As writers, we get out of our comfort zones and find “the next chapter.” Or, at least, that’s what I hoped when I traveled 2,500 miles to Tucson, Arizona, from my home in suburban Philadelphia last week.

This place of magic and mystique speaks to my creative soul, much, I suppose, like New Mexico drew Georgia O’Keeffe. I lived in Tucson for a year in 2008 when I worked as a volunteer in the nonprofit sector and came back many winters, but I hadn’t returned in six years until now.

Last March, I made a pilgrimage to Israel with the Episcopal Church. This winter, I wanted a “less heavy lift” yet a getaway that nurtured me so I could work on my novel.

I figured that coming back to Tucson was circular, like a pilgrimage back to the beginning of a time and place that I remember as happy.

Whether domestic or international, pilgrimages offer an inherent element of spirituality, a soul-nurturing. We discover who we are, not just as writers but as women looking back at the past and where we might go from here.

Serendipitously, my trip coincided with the Tucson Festival of Books. I volunteered at the first festival in 2009, came back years later, and here I was, again, only now an author of four books and two anthologies. The festival brings authors and writers from all over the country together, kindred spirits on the University of Arizona campus.

There’s this thing about being a writer. Being around other writers and sharing ideas, experiences, and creative juices is a coming home, a tribe of kindred spirits.

The idea that writing every day is required if you’re serious about your craft is one of many myths. While some authors mentioned goals of at least 500 new words a day, another said that due to her chronic health condition, she wrote only when she could muster the energy. Yet another works a nine-hour day four months out of the year. The rest of the year is devoted to teaching.

As for me, life often intervenes, steering me from the disciplined intention of working every day. A new writing project like this novel energizes me, as does my writing group back in Pennsylvania, the Women’s Writing Circle. There is one thing all the authors agreed on. A writing partner, a critique group, and editors are essential tools of the trade.

The internet has made the writer’s job infinitely easier. Researching a character…for example, in my novel, a woman has a personality disorder…is as easy as Googling the condition. What does it feel like to be “neurodivergent?” How does a character with a personality disorder express herself?

One writer who had been adopted and learned at the age of sixteen the identity of her birth mother said she wrote her story as fiction, not non-fiction “because I don’t know enough to write it as non-fiction.”

That resonates for me, too. I write what I know, often from my own life experiences. I write fictional characters that resemble people I know or once knew, but the character takes on his or her own life thanks to the alchemy of imagination.

As a fiction writer, I attended sessions on writing with plot and suspense in mind. If you don’t care about your characters, your readers won’t either. Developing dialogue that is “cagey” was an interesting piece of advice from one author…it is not what they say as much as what the reader infers as their meaning or motivation.

End each chapter with something akin to a cliffhanger or a question that makes for pageturners, a hint of something to come, or the revelation of a secret.

Create conflict between your characters. As one writer said: “Make your characters want something and then put obstacles in their way. That’s plot.”

It’s good to be out West, writing. It’s a good feeling to come away inspired to do the hard work simply because other writers validate all your experiences. The “communion” with the first cup of coffee in the morning. The endless drafts. I often wonder where I would have been in my life if it weren’t for writing. What I do know is that writing has been good for me. It’s a pilgrimage to a holy place of creativity, discovery, and learning. And I’m not done yet. More pilgrimages await along the writer’s way.