An Autumn Writing Letter From Whale Rock Founding Faculty Patricia Lee Gauch and Gary Schmidt

Dear and Gentle Whale Rock Writers,

It is that time of year when we’re finishing up the routines that summer has brought to us, and thinking about the new rhythms of autumn. There are the cooler temps, the pleasures of good apples, the changing of the trees and the seasonal plants, the sense—at least for northern climates—that winter is coming and we remember that travel may not be as easy, the mudroom needs to be cleaned up and coats and gloves and hats and galoshes (Isn’t that a lovely word?) pulled out from their recesses, and the rhythms of school life re-established for children and grandchildren.

We’re all busy with the change of the season. And that’s good. Routines are healthier when they’re varied, and it’s a good thing to feel the rhythms of the world and to recognize how powerfully they affect us.

In the middle of all that, we’re writing to encourage you to keep on with the writing that you’ve been working on. Perhaps you've been wrestling with language, or with plot, or character, or setting, or with those troublesome middles. You’re doing that because you are writers—that’s one of your major identities. You’re many other things too, but writing is how you have expressed your inner life, the way you have worked out what it means to be a creative human being. You have been given the great gift of being storytellers, and it is such a very human gift, one that deserves to be served. And storytelling is an act of service. It’s one way you work out who you are, and what it is that you are going to give the community and the world.

And yes, fall brings with it so many new things to do—and it’s not hard for us to list good things that we need to attend to other than our writerly gifts. There are real reasons not to write: We need to figure out what’s for supper tonight, we need to pick up this kiddo or that spouse, we need to tend to our friends because we’re social beings, we need to attend to those we know in distress or in loneliness or in discouragement. There are the physical and emotional needs of our families, and there’s the need to stay informed in a world that can’t even figure out what a fact is.

How do we find time to write in all of this? Should we even be doing this writing, given the pressing needs around us? And given the vagaries of the writing market, is it folly to give huge amounts of time and emotional energy to something that may not pay itself back?

These are all real pressures, and all good questions. And it’s true that any of us can find good reasons not to write today.

Write anyway.

Write because it’s who you are. Write because a gift needs to be served and brought into service. Write in gratitude for all that story has done for you. Write in gratitude for the gift you’ve been given and the opportunity to share it with another person who might one day open your book and find not only you, but herself in it. (Remember when that once happened to you?)

Remember that Patti and Gary, and the entire Whale Rock faculty believe in you, in your gift, and in your ability to make good on that gift. So we encourage you to stoke the wood stove, find ways to nurture your writing, grab a cup of good tea, let your dog curl up beneath your desk, then get to a couple of pages each day. Remember, Jack London wrote only 500 words a day, and he published more than any other American writer.

There’s a kiddo out there waiting for your story. That’s why you’ve been given the gift.

So write well, and keep going.

Yours,
Patti and Gary