How to Braid Your Panic
moving it all in the right direction
Hi writer friend,
In today’s issue of Wild Writing, we have:
Thoughts on untangling our obligations and desires in writing work and everything else.
Upcoming deadlines for fellowships and grants
Events and education opportunities for writers
In the Weeds: The words I’m tangled in this week
So glad you’re here. Let’s get to it.
I was standing in the middle of my kitchen at 5:10 a.m. the other day, trying to decide what to do. Read? Journal? Write this issue of the newsletter? Keep tinkering with that mess of an essay? The room was dark, the little light on the coffee maker glowing green, the first few drops sizzling in the pot.
Getting up early is not some productivity hack for me, and I’m hardly a morning person. I drag myself out of bed because I need alone time to let the sleepy wrinkles in my thoughts fall out. Otherwise, my brain will feel like the wad of wet laundry stuck in the corner of a fitted sheet while getting knocked around in the dryer all day. I use this time to read or write something that isn’t tied to a deadline—the kind of writing that is inevitably pushed aside once other people are awake and sending emails. Sometimes, I’ll just stare at a flickering candle, coffee in hand, and let the silence lay on me like a blanket.
Lately, however, my work hours have been more limited. My husband just started a new job, and our daughter isn’t in daycare yet since we moved, so my parents take her two days a week and I have her the other days. This means I’m often jumping into work mode earlier than I’d like, and my quiet mornings are often disrupted by an anxious string that ties my sleepy brain to the ticking clock: Get going! THERE IS SO MUCH TO DO!
It’s not just the work that’s pulling me in dozens of directions lately. The news headlines are all soaked in a sense of urgency. My social media feeds are essentially a stream of to-dos, posts about actions to take, protests to attend, and numbers to call to plead with our representatives to stand up for trans rights, for human rights, for immigrants; to fight for the future of our planet.
But also! I need to book a car rental and hotels for my trip around Eastern Oregon later this month. I need to map out the guidebook pages I’ll be working on. I need to research other potential stories along my route, to maximize my time on assignment. I haven’t worked on new pitches in weeks.
Standing there in the dark kitchen, I felt paralyzed by conflicting responsibilities. And frantic with the knowledge that my daughter could wake up extra early, which she often does, and then we’ll curl up together on the couch and the first notes of the Bluey jingle will obliterate any hope I had of creative thinking. Doo d-d-doo… I’m done.
On that particular morning, she did not wake up extra early. So I had time to ruminate on my tangled threads of obligation, longing, and ambition—the things I want to do competing with all the things I need to do or should do. And then I wrote this in my journal: What if I could braid it all together?
I love a braided narrative. The first draft of my recent essay for Oregon Humanties was focused entirely on the birth of my daughter for the first year that I worked on it. Then, I participated in the Volcanic 50, a 33-mile run around the base of Mount St. Helens. With the late afternoon sun beating down on my salt-dusted face, my legs heavy as boulders, it occurred to me that I was going to finish the run in about the same amount of time that I’d spent in labor two years prior. (Twelve grueling hours.) The emotion and pain I experienced in childbirth were suddenly snagged on the texture of the trail, and they seemed inextricably intertwined. Days later, I started writing about the run, and also revisiting the childbirth essay, and the two naturally became one—two very different experiences supporting one idea I so badly needed to put into words.
A braided narrative finds the throughline in seemingly disparate experiences. And I think we can apply this narrative style to our lives and how we approach our work.
There is no avoiding the hail storm of news and issues that demand our attention these days.
For most of us, there is also no avoiding the need to fill our weeks with work. And because life is expensive, we might be looking for writing work more based on our ability to pay our bills and less so on whether we actually care about the work. And then there’s parenting and what-to-have-for-dinner and resetting passwords on three different accounts to access some platform that’s supposed to make life easier but actually just gives me a migraine.
What if, instead of allowing ourselves to feel torn in all these different directions, we found a pattern that keeps it all from falling apart?
And then, when we inevitably don’t get to all of the things we should/want/need to do in a day, we at least know we’re pulling ourselves the right direction.
Then maybe I could be better at enjoying the extra time with my daughter when she wakes in the middle of my quiet time. I could sink into the stillness of the morning with her and whatever else I was planning to do could wait.
Is this whole line of thinking outlandishly optimistic? Yes. But I think we could all use some of that.
Is the password resetting ever going to feel like it fits into the narrative? No. That will always be infuriating.
But. We can all choose to look for our braidable threads and our throughlines. After all, we’re writers. We’re trained to look for a theme that brings it all together.
For me, in work and in life, curiosity about places and our impact on those places is an important theme. It’s what led me to Portland, Oregon, where I spent a decade learning about local environmental issues. My work felt most aligned with my values and my passions when I was writing about those issues. Attending meetings for local environmental activism groups felt urgent and necessary—and it also gave me story ideas and contacts. Check, check.
I want to get back to more of that. For one, instead of allowing my panic over climate change to distract me from my work, I can look for ways my work might overlap with those issues in the place where my family and I are now calling home. As a travel writer, that means looking for ways to educate readers about how places they visit are changing, the threats those places face, and what people can do to better support those ecosystems.
I could look at my upcoming guidebook writing assignment as the kind of content that skims the surface of a destination with simply the top things to do/eat/drink/etc., encouraging more people to take flights that add more carbon to the atmosphere. Or I could look at this guide as a framework that might inspire travelers to respect and care about this place a little more. Because I do believe there are actions we can take as travelers that make up for the impact of getting there and have compounding positive effects—and they’re not buying carbon offsets!
In a recent Q&A with environmental writer Devon Frederickson, she told us she got the idea for her story about eider keepers from a guidebook. A little sidebar mention about generations of women caring for the eider ducks of Norway led Devon to travel to those remote islands and visit the people there, then dive deep into this mutualist exchange and what we can learn from people who devote their lives to another species.
There are plenty of ways to bring other types of work into this braided narrative, too. Outside of journalism, I can look for clients who align with my values and do work I really care about. A local nonprofit is not going to pay as much as a big bank or an insurance firm might pay their copywriter, but I know I’ll waste a ton of time resisting the work that chafes with my values. I’ll waste a ton of energy on trying to make myself do the work I don’t enjoy or care about.
I don’t have that time or energy to spare. None of us do.
Listen, this isn’t easy. We need to get paid, and there’s only so much work out there. But even a subtle shift in perspective, I think, can bring our threads together. Simply identifying the themes we want our braid to incorporate can help guide certain decisions toward days that feel less strained and more purposeful.
That morning, I snapped out of my paralysis in the dark kitchen once there was enough coffee brewed to pour myself a cup. And then, I decided to read a book I’ve been revisiting as I prepare for my Oregon trip. Wild Horse Country is about the evolution of mustangs in North America and the public’s complicated relationship with wild horses as both an American icon/symbol of freedom and also an “invasive” species that must be legislated and controlled. On the couch, with my coffee, I settled into the sage-scented, sharp-edged expanse of the high desert.
There are about 5,000 wild horses in Eastern Oregon. Reading about them and understanding their complicated history and the stories that swirl around them feels important to understanding this place. And I want to be the kind of writer who understands the places she writes about. It’s a fascinating book, and it feels important to my upcoming work. If I can incorporate some of this awareness into content for people who might be venturing into this area for the first time, hoping to see wild horses, then perhaps I can encourage them to do so with a better understanding of some forces that shape this land and the communities that call them home.
I should read this book. But also, I want to read this book, because I’m going to write about this place that’s home to 5,000 wild horses and feels like a kind of home to me, too. And there it is. After 30 minutes of morning reading time, I’m excited to dive into the logistics of my trip and research more stories and book my hotels.
There is some magic in the overlap. And I’m looking for more of that.
So, here is what I want from my to-do lists these days:
I want to love what I write and care about the topics I’m writing.
I want to make enough money to take good care of my family and myself—and also support important causes.
I want my work to make a difference in the world, even if it’s a small one.
When those three are braided together? That’s definitely a story I want to read.
What are your strands? I’d love to hear about what you’re trying to get done and what you’re braiding together in the comments.
Upcoming Deadlines
Wild Women Story Contest | Submit by 3/8
The Awesome Foundation Grant: Conservation and Climate | Apply by 3/28
The American Library in Paris Visiting Fellowship | Apply by 4/1
Orion Environmental Writers’ Workshop | NOW OPEN | Deadline: May 1
For more information on upcoming deadlines for fellowships, grants, and more, check out The Big List of Deadlines for Nonfiction Writers.
Events + Education
How to Break a Heart: Creating emotional resonance in your writing | A free webinar to subscribers of Joy Sullivan’s Substack, Necessary Salt, which I highly recommend. “In this 90 minute workshop, we’ll learn how to make a reader deeply connect with our writing. Together, we’ll explore the transformative techniques that unlock heartbreak, joy, and shared empathy in our readers.”
Granta’s Writing Nature Workshop | An 8-week online course that examines the roots and possibilities of nature writing in its broadest sense. You’ll develop a 3,000-word piece of nature writing. Through a combination of lectures, podcasts, short written assignments, guest talks and group Zooms, you’ll trace the evolution of the genre from pastoral traditions to poetic memoirs, and draw out tools for our own writing practices. | Starts on April 8
Writing Rhizomatically: A Nonfiction Writing Workshop with Holly Haworth | Application window: March 15-31. “This course will be process-oriented and generative. Writers will have an ample amount of class time to generate material, share thoughts and ideas. We will read some published works with rhizomatic structures. Your instructor will invite plants, their rhizomes and roots, into the class for inspiration, and you will develop a draft of an essay throughout the course.” 6 classes on Zoom. $600. | May 21–July 2
IIJ’s Business of Freelancing Course | Over 8 weeks of live, interactive classes, you’ll develop a customized business plan and path to financial and emotional sustainability. Each week’s hour-long class will teach tools, resources and strategies for setting and achieving your goals as an independent journalist. | $189 if you register by March 11 | Starts March 26
In the Weeds
Words (and links!) I’m tangled in this week…
Because I will read everything
writes for her layered, deeply personal, yet widely applicable lens on the world:“Why did I feel I was owed a stable wilderness, a certain snapshot of the earth? If I first believed it was a product of simple nostalgia, I now think it was a problem of visualizing time. As global warming warps what is familiar on our planet, we must confront not only immense ecological change, but the scales we have inherited to conceptualize it.” — Erica Berry for Emergence Magazine
I found this article through
’s Substack issue titled, So you want to write a personal essay? which is also worth a read, especially if you are a reporter or science journalist looking to get a little more personal with your subject matter.“In college, studying environmental science, I learned I grew up in the shadow of two industries — oil and agriculture. The prairies, wetlands, and oak savannas that once covered my home had been plowed under and replaced by corn and soy, subsidized by the federal government. Corn is grown so intensively that yields increase by two bushels per acre each year. The side effects include carbon emissions, topsoil depletion, and fertilizer and pesticide runoff into the former meandering streams, now ditches, in which I once played and caught crawdads. All this pollution may contribute to Iowa’s rising cancer rates.” — Christian Elliot for Undark
On the work of doing something we love. It can be a grind AND it can be the most fulfilling thing…
“But be honest with yourself: Do you want that thing—a dream, a goal, a commitment—as much as you say you do? So many of the conditions and the solaces of contemporary life, whether that’s burnout or the stultifying surface-level remedies meant to treat it, are designed to keep you exhausted, to kill any intellectual curiosity, to pacify and placate. It’s too easy to fall placidly into those rhythms, just as it’s too easy to fool others and yourself into believing that if something is meant to be, it will be. But this elides what it actually takes—and costs—to make it happen.” — The Truth About Writer’s Block by
I’ve got a couple of things in the works for this newsletter that I’m super excited to share soon. A sneak peek: One is about being a nonfiction writer attempting fiction for the first time and another is about a paid opportunity to write about a place you really care about. More soon!
Thanks for being here.
Stay inspired,
Britany
This is so not the point of your post but that pic of you and your daughter is absurdly sweet and I need those kitty leggings for my son!
Beautiful!