By Chad Love
A few thoughts on walking and writing advice
I’m a walker. Always have been. I take solitary walks in lonely places for reasons of both exercise and sanity. There is no cure but movement for a restless soul, and If I’m honest, long walks in lonesome country are probably why I am both a bird hunter and a writer. For me the two pursuits are as entwined as honeysuckle in an old chain link fence.
I usually take walks when I need to think about a story, because all writers — professional and otherwise — struggle, and the walks help clear my head.
On these walks I will sometimes stop and sit on an ancient, weathered, fallen tree trunk. I’ve spent many a lunchtime peregrination there trying to conjure words, which is what the swirls and whorls and texture and scars on that old trunk have always reminded me of: Words of time and growth and seasons and beginnings and endings. Taken together, they tell a story.
I will sit there for a long time pondering that log’s story. I do that a lot. Ponder, that is. And lose track of time. I can’t say that I ever gain any actual lightning-bolt clarity from sitting on that old log. But I like sitting there, anyway. We don’t always need results to gain value from something.
I still struggle with words. The right words, anyway. But that’s writing. And life.
Because I’m an editor, and because I’ve been writing for longer than I sometimes care to admit (and longer than some of my fellow employees have been living) people ask my advice about writing all the time. Because bird hunting is — at its heart — a deeply poetic and personal thing, and it stirs the muse within many of us.
I’m not good at writing how-to stories, because half the time I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, anyway. I’m not terribly good at writing where-to stories, either, because if you’ve ever hunted with me you know I get lost — a lot — on both back roads and in my head.
So I usually stick with the why, because I’ve never been shy about showing what shade of heart I’m wearing on my sleeve. And that, I have found, is also the kind of writing most budding outdoor muses are most interested in, and most terrified of.
People ask me advice when they want to write something that explains or describes how they feel in the uplands, and why they feel that way. They want to know how to articulate passion into words, because bird hunting is that most passion-inducing of obsessions, isn’t it?
I have no clue what to tell them. I’m not a teacher and giving good or helpful advice does not come naturally to me, in any area of writing. Or life, for that matter. Both are, quite frankly, damn hard.
But here’s the thing about writing, at least the way I’ve always seen it: Words — good words — are always going to come hard. That’s what makes them good.
They have depth, and texture. They show scars and decay and wounds as well as joy and light and hope. Just like the scars on that old log. Good words are often ugly, and painful. They cry as often as they sing. And that’s why most people won’t write them.
So for all you aspiring outdoor scribes out there who want writing advice, well, here’s the deal: I can’t give you lessons on how to craft a story about the relative merits of the 12-gauge versus the 20 (the 16’s better than both, anyway), I can’t offer up a template on how to analyze and break down an area to efficiently and quickly find birds (Walk to where it looks birdy?), and I certainly have no guidance on building a list of the 10 Best anything (I’ve found that one or two will usually suffice for me).
But if I had one piece of advice to give those looking to write an upland story that comes from a place those other stories do not — a story that is evocation rather than explanation — I can only offer you this, and it’s more confessional observation than advice:
» First, read — a lot. Read voraciously and read widely. And not just hunting and fishing content, and not just what you see on a screen. Words are more than communication. They are art, and you cannot develop your own art without seeing the art of others. And you cannot be a writer without first being a reader.
» Second, take lots of long walks in a lovely, lonesome places (come on, you saw this coming from the title, right?). Such walks in the wild, whatever or wherever that wild may be, does wonders for clearing the rubbish from your head.
» Third (and this may sound trite, and perhaps it is, but it works): Write pretending there’s one person — just one lone reader somewhere out there — who will be moved by your words.
Because there will be. And one may be all you get. Everyone’s a critic and it’s a tough, judgmental world out there (trust me, I’ve heard from some of you...), but that’s OK; one plus you is all the audience you need.
And in the end, that’s why you do it. Reach yourself first. Then reach one person. Do that honestly, and from the heart, and you’ll have yourself an upland story a lot of other people will want to read, too.
Chad Love is a writer, bird hunter and editor of the Quail Forever Journal.