I am very excited to share that I won this year’s Wyoming Arts Council Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Writing Award for an excerpt of my novel, Land Until the Sky Comes Down. One of many of the awards and fellowships the Wyoming Arts Council (WAC) offers to support the creative arts in the state, this award is given to the best the best poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or script written by a woman writer. You can read more about this award and other creative writing fellowships on the WAC website. (You may have to scroll down a bit for the profile on the Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award.)

I have applied for this award as well as the Neltje Blanchan Memorial Writing Award (for the best poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or script informed by a relationship with the natural world) multiple times in the past, and winning this year is a true honor. I know the caliber of applicants each year is high, and it pleases me to be part of a statewide community of artists and writers with such diverse and impressive talent. I greatly appreciate the work WAC does to cultivate and promote creativity in Wyoming.

The news that I had won the Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award came at a good time for me — as I continue to submit my manuscript to agents and wait to hear back, I needed the reminder that often it takes more than one go to be successful. Though this is a value my husband and I work to instill in our son, it is easy to take it for granted in my impatience and excitement to get my novel out into the world. 

In the meantime, I am stoking my creativity with as much time outside as possible now that we are getting some warmer spring weather. I’ve been riding my horse and taking the dogs for long walks at the Pilot Hill trail network east of Laramie. Here are a few pictures that provide tangible proof that spring is indeed coming to the high plains!

One of the biggest events of the year for my family occurred this spring — my brother, Dan Stebner, was appointed as the Wyoming Ninth Judicial District Circuit Court Judge in Riverton. He asked me to speak at his robing ceremony, which was last week, and I am so proud and pleased for him that I wanted to share my words about him here. I owe Danny many things — he is an outstanding big brother and great friend — and I can add yet another entry to the list: I have been experiencing some writer’s block since finishing my first novel and sending it to agents, and having an assignment with a deadline got me writing again. I enjoyed writing this speech, and though I was nervous to present it in front of the Wyoming Supreme Court, Governor Gordon, and many other esteemed guests, I enjoyed delivering it.

Below is the text of the speech, or, you can watch the robing ceremony here. My portion starts at 20:20 mark, but all of the speakers were excellent, and it was an honor to be included among them.

Justices, Governor, esteemed guests, all – it is my honor to address you today as we celebrate my brother’s appointment as the Circuit Judge for the Ninth Judicial District. I could not be happier for him nor prouder of him, but I have to admit up front that I simply can’t bring myself to call him Judge Stebner. To me, he’ll always be Danny.

When he asked me to speak, I was flattered, surprised, and little panicked. One of my first thoughts was that it should be our father addressing all of you today on behalf of our family, and I know we all wish he was here. Unfortunately, his health precluded that from happening. And so, over the last few days, I have reflected on what I might tell that would shed light on Danny’s character and what makes him so well suited to this profession.

I could tell you about how we wrote and illustrated stories when we were little, how my stories were always about fast, wild horses and his were about a talking gerbil who became an attorney and then a judge. I could tell you about how Danny has always been certain of his place in the world, has always loved Wyoming so much that he hesitated to pick me up from the Denver airport when I was in graduate school because doing so would break his eighteen-month streak of not leaving the state even though he lived in Laramie, a mere 2 hours from DIA. I could tell you about how, after he did pick me up, we joined our parents and friends at our family’s camp in the Red Desert and how I listened to his passionate, articulate discussion of constitutional law around the campfire.

And that’s it, that campfire. For when I think of my brother, I think of Wyoming’s wild country. You see, though Danny and I were born in Rawlins, we both came of age in the Red Desert and the Wind Rivers. As often as they could, our parents, Ken and Karey, took us camping and backpacking, and many of our formative experiences unfolded in that big country. This is a tradition we have both continued with our own families — as many of you know, Danny, Stacy, Bess, and Charlie spend more nights in the spring, summer, and fall at our family’s cabin near the Sweetwater than they do in town.

And when I think about being with my brother in the wilderness, I see him most clearly walking ahead of me over Windy Ridge. Our parents started backpacking in the Winds in the 1970s, and they discovered many beautiful spots that they later shared with us. The fastest route to and from one of those camps is over Windy Ridge. If you are especially motivated, you can walk out from our camp and back to the truck in one day. And I do mean one day – it is over 15 miles, with a two-thousand, three-hundred-foot elevation gain in the first two-mile stretch, and if done well, it easily takes 10 hours of steady walking with only a handful of thirty minute breaks. Those of you who know our father and mother will recognize that they think this sort of thing is normal.

So, Danny and I grew up believing this is what most families did for vacation, and we have walked over Windy Ridge together many times. Danny walks faster than I do, and the image of the back of his pack is indelibly etched in my mind.

My brother is fond of saying that you never remember the trips where everything goes perfectly – he usually says this when we’re stuck in a bad crossing or standing around a campfire in the backcountry in a five-day downpour. But I remember with clarity a trip over Windy Ridge that did go perfectly, or at least as perfectly as a 10-hour hike can go. Our parents left camp a day before Danny and I did, opting to take a different way out that they could split up with an overnight. So, it was just the two of us walking over Windy Ridge.

Most of the trip is above timber line, over rocky ground and through multiple boulder fields. It requires attentive route-finding – there is no trail. One saddle in particular is especially tricky to navigate – if you get too high, you end up stuck in the boulders. If you get too low, you get stuck in the boulders. Pick the wrong route through the middle, you get stuck in the boulders. These rocks are huge slabs and chunks of granite – if you’re on a good path, you can walk across them and take small hops between them. But if you get sucked off course, you find yourself scrabbling around in scree fields and having to crawl down into the pits between the boulders, which are favorite haunts of rather large, black spiders. You can spend hours trying to get across this boulder field if things go awry.

What I remember best is this – my brother deliberating on our parents’ stories and our own previous trips through this saddle, the topo map spread between us, and the landscape and moment before us. That we discussed all of this, the precedent and the current facts, that we used that information to chart a course through the boulders. That my brother made decisions based on history and advice but not rigidly beholden to it, that, as we walked, he adjusted our path as the circumstances dictated.

It was the smoothest route I have ever taken through that patch of boulders, the fastest we have ever traversed that saddle. I will always remember that sterling trek over Windy Ridge. It wasn’t easy – it never is. Yet, the sun was bright, the eponymous wind was still, and my brother walked before me, studying the country and waiting for me to catch up when it was time to ponder what line we would take.

Danny, I know that your time in Wyoming’s wild places will serve you well in this new adventure. You will bring the same thoughtful, careful consideration to your judicial decisions that you do to choosing backpacking routes. You will treat those who appear before you with the same compassion and fairness you bring to your companions in the country, listening carefully to what they have to say. You will bring to bear both your intelligence and your sense of humor. You will respect the law as you respect the mountains and desert, as something you are a part of but not in control of. The Wyoming legal community and Wyoming at large are lucky to have you serve in this role, just as I am lucky to call you my brother and my friend.

And when you need to get away from the pressures of your job, you know I’ll be ready to go to the hills with you, just like our parents showed us how to do.

Every November is National Novel Writing Novel Month, or NaNoWrMo. The goal of the event is to write a 50,000 word novel in four weeks. I feel like I just completed the opposite of that, which was to cut 77,000 words from my novel in five weeks. Using the strategies I wrote about last month was effective, and I got the novel to under 100,000 words. That makes it a 350 page manuscript, double-spaced in Word in Times New Roman font.

Now I am headed back into sending the novel to agents and waiting to hear what they think. This is perhaps the hardest part of the writing game for me. Writing new material sometime comes easily, but even when it doesn’t, it is an active process. Cutting the novel back so substantially involved questioning every chapter, scene, page, sentence, and word I’ve written over the last ten years, and that was challenging. But it was focused and tangible. Waiting, on the other hand, involves letting things go, letting them be, and admitting that I have no more control over the outcome. 

I think this is a tricky practice for all of us, no matter the specific application. We apply for jobs and then have to wait. We go to medical appointments and get labs drawn and then have to wait. We send that email or text, make that phone call, leave that message, and then have to wait. We schedule that vacation and then have to wait. And waiting can feel like slowly going mad, if we keep thinking about the potential results. 

So, what I’m trying to figure out is how to let waiting be a process of becoming, of drawing inward and trying to recommit to the present moment. I am working on a second novel, and though the brainstorming and planning is slower than I would like, I am curious to see where it takes me. I am trying to let it show me the way into it. 

I am riding my horse in the indoor arena at the barn where I keep her and waiting for spring, trying to concentrate each time on the exercises we practice, to see how much progress we can make during this fallow period rather than longing for rides in the hills. I am smelling woodsmoke on the wind and trying to appreciate the taste of cold on my tongue instead of counting the days until a true thaw. 

So it feels right to me, then, to be sending my first novel to agents at this time of year, when we can almost imagine that winter will indeed end but before we can feel spring in our bones. What comes next is a new season.

After receiving feedback from a couple of key reviewers, I have decided to shorten my novel considerably before submitting to more agents. Thus, my current project is to cut about 77,000 words in hopes of hitting a length closer to recommended industry standards for literary and upmarket fiction. When all is said and done, I hope the book will be just under 100,000 words.

When I shared this goal with a friend, saying that I needed to make the novel shorter, he asked, “Does it need to be shorter or simply more precise?” What a wonderful question. I’ve used it as a guide as I decide what to cut and what to keep. Does a scene move the story forward in a precise way? Does a description cut to the core of a landscape or character? Can I say the same thing with one word instead of ten?

I have identified a good handful of scenes that I could cut without really affecting the main arc of the story, and so I pulled those out wholesale even when it pained me to do so. But by and large, I have made most cuts by evaluating the precision of the line-by-line writing. After reviewing whether every scene is truly serving the story, I have tried to cut each chapter by one third. I do the math, set a target word count, and start asking myself if every scene, every paragraph, every line, and every word is earning its keep. I have cut over 60,000 words so far, and most of them have pained me. To ease the sting, I cut and paste longer passages into a “notes” file for each chapter. Then all that (I think) beautiful but nonessential (probably) writing doesn’t get totally deleted. It’s mostly a mind game, but it helps. And if I need to, I can always go back and find a sentence or paragraph to reintroduce.

Additionally, I’ve discovered a few “easy” cuts. Initially, I wasn’t using contractions in the main narrative, choosing to write out “will not,” “do not,” “is not,” etc. Doing a find and replace search of those common contractions cut nearly 2,000 words from the novel. I also tend to describe things through the point of view of a character when I could simply state what is happening. For example, “She watched the horses stamp in the dusty corral” becomes “The horses stamped in the dusty corral.” And in that same example, chances are that I can cut “dusty” because I’ve probably already described the corral in some way in another sentence. Taking a close look at descriptive action (“he paused,” “he walked to the door,”) and choosing one detail or action instead of listening three or four has also yielded a high number of deleted words.

Ultimately, I hope that cutting the story down makes it more marketable and gives it a better chance of making it to readers. I also believe that the novel will be better—easier to read and more tightly paced—as a result. I am learning a lot about my own writing style through this revision. I’m a maximalist and will likely always “over-write” my drafts, which means I will need to be committed to precision in each subsequent rewrite and edit. Have I spent some time wishing I’d done this work a year ago, and certainly before I sent to my first round of agents? You bet. But agonizing about the past is extraneous and unproductive work, so I’m cutting it out and moving the story forward.

When people ask me what I’m writing, I usually fumble around a little bit and give a vague answer. But I don’t want to do that here — I want to tell you what I’m really working on and where I am in the process.

Right now, I am getting ready to submit my first novel to agents, and it is an exciting and scary time in my writing career. The novel’s working title is Land Until the Sky Comes Down, which comes from the last line of James Galvin’s poem “Utah Ghost Town.” It is the story of two brothers bound and broken by tradition and ritual, the passionate and lyrical woman they both come to love, and how the three of them struggle to hold onto each other and themselves as they reimagine their own places in a family defined by Wyoming’s hard, beautiful country.

I have been working on the book in earnest since 2012, though the idea originated with a dream I had in 2009. It has been a constant companion for over ten years, and I am both elated and frightened to move onto this next stage. I have gone through it one last time to check grammar and spelling, and now it is ready to go out into the world. Finding an agent is the next step towards publishing it since I have decided to go the traditional publishing route. (I am intrigued by self-publishing but believe this book, a literary, place-based novel, will do better through traditional channels.)

Several people have asked me how I’ve decided which agents to submit to. My process was relatively simple — I went to my bookshelf and pulled down all my favorite books that are in a similar genre to Land. Then I mined the acknowledgements and the authors’ websites to find out who represents them. Because I admire these authors and their writing, I believe that their agents and I would also work well together.

I have read several places that it is best not to submit to agents between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, and so I am drafting my query emails and getting them ready to go. On January 17^th, I’ll officially hit send and Land will take a huge leap on its journey. My great hope is that, after I find an agent and a publisher, the book will reach you and make a positive impact in your life, whether it simply entertains you, makes you feel less alone, or leaves you contemplating your own love of place and sense of belonging.

Here are those links to a few things that have caught my attention and which you might find interesting as well:

• I just read Celeste Ng’s compelling and beautifully written novel Everything I Never Told You. Her use of multiple perspectives is masterful: https://www.celesteng.com/everything-i-never-told-you.
• I love Gregor Barnett’s song “Don’t Go Throwing Roses on My Grave”: https://open.spotify.com/album/6CNGmca27f0qYpHWxWbxwU.
• I’ve been enjoying the interviews on Linda Siversten’s the Beautiful Writer’s podcast: https://www.beautifulwriterspodcast.com/.