I sat at the dining room table with my seven-year-old son, helping him complete a worksheet on reading comprehension. His task was to answer questions about the plot and details of one of Arnold Lobel’s Frog & Toad stories. 

Thinking of those answers came easy to him — he has loved books and movies since he was tiny. Every night, he helps me make up a story about characters based on his stuffed animals and favorite literary and film heroes. The result is that he has a good sense of how stories work. He would read a question, mull it over, then tell me what he thought. 

Yet, writing those answers down was hard work. I watched him labor, sounding out the syllables, placing his finger between each word to space them just so, shaping the letters. He worked through mistakes and frustration, using his eraser often and looking to me with his mouth pinched when he couldn’t spell a word he felt he should know. 

My role was to simply to help him hold onto his previously formed ideas while he struggled through the steps of constructing each sentence. If he got lost between one word and the next, I would repeat back to him what he had already figured out, what he had spoken to me moments before. I could see the larger shape when he could not.

He finished the worksheet, took it back to school, and earned a sticker for putting in extra effort. He was satisfied, motivated to do more optional worksheets for the rest of the Frog & Toad adventures. In other words, he’s tucked away that experience and has moved on.

But I am lingering still, thinking about how difficult it can be to write even when we know the story we want to tell. How hard it is to find the right words, to marshal them into the correct order. How challenging it is to stick with it when we begin to forget why we started to begin with.

Which is why I decided to start working with a writing coach and developmental editor to help me finish the latest (and, hopefully, the last) revision of my novel. She is talented and smart and has a brilliant eye for story. She is helping me rediscover the big picture as I roll up my sleeves and begin the scene-by-scene and sentence-by-sentence work. 

Sometimes that is what we need most, someone else to sit at the table with us, to hold space for the ideas we can only find inside ourselves, to repeat them back to us when we get lost.

An Update and a Request:

• Due to the demanding nature of the revision process for my novel, I have decided to start sending out my newsletter posts once a month instead of twice a month. I look forward to continuing to share my writing and my creative journey with you!
• A friend of mine was recently in a major car wreck near Laramie. She was seriously injured and is recovering, but she will not be able to return to her work as a horse trainer for some time. If you would like to help her and her family out during this difficult time, please visit their GoFundMe page. Thank you for considering!

The last month has been a hard one for my family — my father, Ken Stebner, passed away on November 10th. I am trying to learn the lessons grief has to teach me, but my creative energy has taken a big hit. To honor my father, I want to share with you his obituary, which my brother, Dan, and I wrote together.

Kenneth Edward Stebner, 1944-2023

Kenneth (Ken) Edward Stebner, 79, of Rawlins passed away on November 10^th, 2023 in Laramie. Ken was born in Laramie on April 5^th, 1944 to Charlie and Mary Stebner. He led a life defined by deep connection to family, enduring friendships, and rich experiences.

He grew up in Laramie, sharing many adventures with his older brother, Ron Stebner, his younger sister, Marilyn Stebner Kite, and many close friends. After graduating from Laramie High School in 1962, he went on to earn a B.A. in History from the University of Wyoming in 1968. He took full advantage of the college experience, enjoying his time as a Sigma Chi and founding member of the Turtles. He served his country as a member of the Army during Vietnam. Upon his return from his tour of duty, he used his G.I. Bill benefits to attend law school with his sister, Marilyn, wishing to continue serving the citizens of the state of Wyoming. He began his career in law in 1975 at legal services on the Wind River Indian Reservation and went on serve as a Deputy County Attorney in Sheridan County. After a brief stint in private practice, he was appointed to the bench as a justice of the peace in Carbon County in 1982 and began a distinguished career in the state judiciary, serving as a county court judge and then as a district court judge for the Second Judicial District, which includes Carbon and Albany Counties, until his retirement in 2004. 

Throughout his life, Ken’s heart always belonged to Wyoming’s wild places, especially the Snowy Range, the Red Desert, and the Wind Rivers. He met Karey Huff, his wife of 46 years, in Fremont County, where they began a life filled with adventures hunting, fishing, and backpacking. Ken and Karey raised their two children, Dan and Ann, in Rawlins and in those same beloved wilds. They continued to share his legacy with their own families, with Ann marrying Rob Steele in 2009 and Dan marrying Stacy Sewell in 2015. Ken was grateful to spend time in the country with them and, later, with his three grandchildren, Stebner (Ann & Rob) and Bess and Charlie (Dan & Stacy). His family survives him and will honor his memory by “going to the hills,” as he always put it.

A celebration-of-life service will be held at a later date.

In lieu of flowers or gifts to the family, memorial donations can be made to a fund in his honor:

The Judge Kenneth Stebner Memorial Fund
University of Wyoming Foundation
Marian H. Rochelle Gateway Center
222 South 22nd Street
Laramie, WY 82070

As I’ve worked on revising my novel, I’ve been turning to visual art and poetry to exercise generative creativity. Visual art results in more concrete progress than what I’m seeing on my novel right now and lets different parts of my mind work. The focus on line-by-line writing and the weight of each word required when writing poetry helps hone my focus before I turn to revising the novel. I’ve got some poems in progress that I look forward to sharing, but my most complete project right now is my latest “micro art” piece, a colored pencil sketch of my horse, Scout. I get some of my best perspective on life while looking through her ears.

Here’s wishing you a happy Thanksgiving and many outlets for your own passions and creativity!

The seed of my current novel came to me in the form of a dream in the fall of 2009. My husband, Rob, and I had just moved to Moscow, Idaho so I could attend the MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Idaho, and we were driving back to visit family. It was late—we left after he got off of work—and I fell asleep in the car. The dream was like watching a movie, like I’d walked in during the middle of a film. A barn was burning. Someone was trapped inside. I wasn’t in the dream, nor was anyone I knew, but it felt real and clear and stunning. I started taking notes and brainstorming that night when we arrived at  Rob’s parent’s house. For the next three years, I worked on the novel here and there, but it took a backseat to the essays and coursework I was completing for my MFA—I was studying non-fiction and didn’t think I could dive into writing a novel while also honing that craft. After graduating in 2012, I began to work on the novel in earnest.

Which means I have been working on this manuscript for over a decade, a fact that floors me. I have pages of notes and outlines, pages of cut material, pages of rewrites. Sometimes, I wonder if this is even the same book that I started all those years ago. For instance, that burning barn? It’s not even in the current iteration. I have heard that the human body regenerates all of its cells every seven to ten years, which would mean that I am not the same person I was when I started, that my novel and I have both “turned over” at about the same rate.

The truth about cell regeneration is more complicated than the cocktail party factoid that claims “every seven years, you replace all your cells.” Some cells, like skin cells, regenerate every few weeks, while others, like skeletal muscle cells, take more like fifteen years. Some cells, like spinal cord cells, never regenerate. And, of course, as we age the rate of cellular regeneration slows. 

But this complexity actually makes the comparison to my novel and its many revisions more apt. Some sentences have been removed and replaced, as have some paragraphs, scenes, chapters, and even whole characters. Others have changed in some way but still retain fundamental characteristics. The overarching structure remains, and my three main characters still resemble their younger versions, just like I do. 

Like all of us, a decade has brought a great deal of change my way, including starting a career, shifting careers, birthing my son and raising him, buying and renovating a house, selling that one and buying a new one, and so on. But I still value the same things, mainly connection with loved ones and the sense of verity I find most profoundly in Wyoming’s wild places. 

And, at its core, that’s what my novel is about, at least to me. Which is what I’ve been trying to capture on all the pages I’ve written trying to find its truest shape. I do think I’m close. I will not spend another decade working on this book—it is time to regenerate what needs turned over, then let what I have learned carry me forward into new projects. Ones that will grow and change as I do but which I hope will always reflect my own deepest core, the part of me that will remain even after all the cells that compose me have gone on.

After receiving some generous feedback from an agent whom I queried, I have decided to circle back and do another major revision of my novel before moving forward with more queries. Their comments brought to light some aspects of the story and character development that I believe I can address to strengthen the manuscript. I hope to finish this revision in four to six months. Therefore, this is where I am spending most of my writing time these days.

So, where do I start with such a revision? To give you a glimpse of my process, I recorded a short video of my “revision wall.” Hope you find it interesting!

Lately, I’ve found it challenging to get started on my writing each day. It isn’t that I don’t want to write; it is that there are so many other things taking up brain space that I find it hard to transition into creativity. It is a challenge to put aside my to-do list. I don’t love cleaning and making phone calls and answering email, but it usually feels urgent even if it isn’t. Besides, it feels really good to cross those items off that list.  I’m also working a side job doing yard-work, and the progress on weeding and landscaping projects is immediately evident and therefore rewarding. Add in the rest of life (raising a 6 year old, wanting to spend time with family and friends, looking for opportunities to have real conversations with my husband), and I sometimes feel like I can’t pull my mind into the focus required of creative work.

Things like meditation and breathing definitely help, but the technique I’ve found most helpful lately is practicing “micro art.” The idea came to me from life-coach Martha Beck. On her podcast, in Episode 120: Microdosing Joy, she discusses the ideas in a book called Your Brain on Art, which posits that taking 20 minutes per day to enjoy practicing your favorite art (even humming counts!) can change your brain patterns, reduce anxiety, and generally improve your overall well-being. 

To be honest, 20 minutes sounded like a lot to me. I usually set aside a precious hour and half to two hours daily to focus on my writing, and I’m always anxious to get started. So, I’ve been opening my writing sessions with just 5-10 minutes of micro art. I grab a sketchbook, a pencil, and some colored pencils or even a box of my son’s crayons, then work on a sketch while listening to a few favorite songs. Sometimes, I get in my micro art practice by drawing and coloring with my son, which double-dips on creative joy and meaningful time with him. And for the days when I’m not feeling particularly artistic, I just ordered an adult coloring book featuring horses. (I’ll admit, the coloring book feels like cheating, but it will make it easier to continue this practice even on “meh” days.) 

I’ve only been practicing micro art for about a month, but I’ve found that I feel calmer and more open after about ten minutes, and I’m far more ready to dive into my writing if I take the time to “prime the pump” in this way. It also takes the sting out of the blank page — by the time I open Word or Scrivener, I’ve already been filling white space with images and color. Sometimes, I start thinking, “You know, I really should sign up for a water color class or something.” Maybe I will, eventually. But right now, 10 minutes of micro art a day is working wonders on opening the door to creativity, and that brings me back to joy every time. Really, who could ask for more?

Every year as July burns away and August blazes in, as the low country begins to burnish to gold and brown, it is time to go to the mountains. And so, my husband, Rob, and I are gathering our gear and mulling over maps, set to carry on the tradition of an annual backpacking pilgrimage into the Wind Rivers that my parents started in the 1970s.

The trips are too hard and too far for young children, and so my brother and I didn’t join them until we were ten or so. But the cycle of preparation has been part of my life since I was born, the weeks of planning routes and dehydrating food and winnowing down clothing and cookware leading up to the trip. And this process has me thinking — one of the things I love about backpacking is the minimalism and utility it demands. 

Sometimes (frequently), I wish I could graft the simplicity of backpacking onto my daily life. But I’ve never really figured out the balance. We do need to return calls and emails and maintain our homes, and, in polite society, we should probably own more than two pairs of underwear and wash our clothes before the “truly filthy” stage. So, what hacks or tidbits of wisdom do translate beyond the backcountry? 

Maybe this: the simplicity of backpacking is earned through necessity.  When you carry everything you need on your back, you are forced to make some hard choices about what to take and what to leave. It is not as if I don’t make decisions about what to wear or what to eat or what cookware to take — it is that I make those choices once, in advance, and very deliberately. Therefore, if I want to incorporate some of the minimalism of backpacking into my daily life, I also need to incorporate the precision and foresight required of such an undertaking. This is of course easier said than done, but it is a practice I believe I’ll try. But before I clean out my closet or start making intentional meal plans at the beginning of each week, you’ll have to excuse me — I have to get to the mountains, where I’ll be extremely busy not being busy.

I am excited to share that in the last two weeks, I’ve received several requests from agents for the full manuscript of my novel! 

This means these agents are genuinely interested in my work. For the initial query, most agents ask for a query letter, which is a little like a cover letter for a job application, and a few sample pages. Most request five to ten pages or a chapter or two, though some ask only for the query letter. If they like these preliminary materials, they will ask for a “full” (the complete manuscript) or a “partial” (a longer portion of the manuscript, but not the full thing) so that they can further assess whether the writer and project are a good fit for them.

For me, perhaps the most challenging part about querying is that you often don’t receive any response at all to your initial query — agents receive such a high volume of submissions that they simply can’t respond to every one. Therefore, if you don’t hear anything after a certain amount of time (I’ve heard everything from two to six weeks), you can generally assume that the “no response” is a rejection. 

In my limited experience, most agents seem to prefer email correspondence to snail mail. So, I’ve been spending a lot of time the last few months sending emails and then…just waiting. It is an odd feeling to send out submissions and hear nothing back — I can get too into my head and start thinking, What if it didn’t really go through? Are these messages actually landing in an inbox somewhere? Have I waited long enough to assume a rejection?

Thus, getting responses from agents — any response — is pretty exciting. And getting interested responses is even better. Like my husband said, the process is sort of like fishing. If you’re casting over and over again and not getting any strikes, you begin to feel like there might not be any fish in the water at all. And then you start to wonder why on earth you’re waving your line all over the place. But if you get a nibble, even if it is only a little bump, the whole endeavor becomes much more exhilarating — There are fish in here! I’ve got the right fly on my line after all! 

Which is where I’m at right now with querying — I haven’t landed anything yet, but I know my query letter and sample pages are working. And so I’ll keep casting away, waiting for the big strike. Until then, I’ll also try to enjoy where I am. Admittedly, it is harder to find joy in the process of sending emails than in the act of fishing, but I do enjoy researching agents, learning about who they are and what sort of books and clients they represent and why they got into the business to begin with. My “to read” list has grown exponentially as I’ve perused client lists and encountered titles that spark my interest. It is wonderful to be immersed in the literary world this way. 

Perhaps that is the most important thing I’m learning from this part of the journey — often, standing on the bank of a beautiful river or lake and watching how the light fractures off the water, being out in the world with the sun and wind on your face, is the best reason to go fishing.