Page Lambert: All Things Literary & All Things Natural

The Spring Equinox is a time of earthly balance , when day and night are everywhere the same—a good time to envision the rest of the year with clarity and focus. My creative life is out of balance right now —I know this. Whenever I’m not spending enough time engaged in the creative process of writing my brain gets cob-webby and I get cranky. Half-formed thoughts congeal and cloud my vision. Writing requires introspection . Yet the business of writing requires extroversion, reaching out to the world at large. When I expend too much energy with the business of writing, and not enough time with the creative act of writing stories, I find myself longing to be back at Jentel, where nothing mattered but the writing. In 2003, I was awarded a month-long residency at Jentel. The award included a $400 stipend, a private writing studio, a private bedroom, and a fabulous community kitchen and living area that I shared with the other five residents: another writer, and four visual artists. On

Have you ever been hiking in the woods and come across canine scat and wondered coyote or dog ? Or found deep imprints in the snow and wondered just how fresh are these mountain lion tracks ? No? Well then, have you ever been browsing the books at your favorite bookstore and wondered What made this publisher buy this book? What kind of query letter did this author write? Would this agent be interested in my manuscript Guidebooks are indispensible whether we’re navigating our way through the jungles of publishing, or wondering about the creature that might be lurking in the bushes just a few feet ahead of us. If we want to get published, we have to study the business. If we want to write about the natural world, we have to pay homage to the experts by bowing to their years of field experience and reading their field guides. A year ago, wildlife biologists spent days studying possible signs of gray wolves on the High Lonesome Ranch in northwestern Colorado (read “Prodigal Dogs”