Visit the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Read one of Shakespeare's plays.
Memorize a Mary Oliver poem.
Recite a poem from memory in a bar.
Sit on a bench reading in Central Park.
Organize your home library by author.
Finish something you once abandoned.
Go visit Louise Erdrich’s bookstore in Minneapolis.
Erect a Little Free Library in your neighborhood.
Visit a graveyard and find ten names that could easily be characters in your stories.
Read a Tennessee Williams play.
Go hear a reading by George Saunders.
Buy a book that Peter Matthiessen signed.
Go to a book festival.
Take a workshop with a writer you never heard of.
Write one flash essay and submit it somewhere.
Find a vintage typewriter store and go visit.
Organize your fiction books by color.
Read an Agatha Christie mystery.
Tour William Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Mississippi.
Thank a teacher who encouraged your writing.
Read a William Gay novel.
Leave a pencil at Willa Cather’s grave.
Visit a box that belonged to a famous writer at an archive. Open it.
Walk the streets of Key West, Florida.
Visit the Pat Conroy Center in Beaufort, South Carolina.
Read The Lords of Discipline.
Meditate in Henry David Thoreau’s cabin.
Visit Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.
Visit Emily Dickinson’s homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Eat an ice-cream cone on the steps of the Monroeville, Alabama courthouse.
Walk the grounds of Flannery O’Connor’s Andalusia when the hurricane lilies are blooming.
Make the “Buttermilk Pie” recipe in Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. (I wrote that.)
Attend a reading at Powell’s Bookstore in Portland.
Go to a writing conference.
Read a Louis L’Amour western.
Get a day pass to the Boston Athenaeum and write a poem while you’re there.
Buy and use a Blackwing pencil.
Wearing purple, visit the church Alice Walker attended as a child, Eatonton, Georgia.
Find a tree growing out of cement in Brooklyn.
Eavesdrop in a cafe and steal one perfect line.
Write on a mountaintop.
Join a writing group.
Read something at an Open Mic event.
Completely fill at least one notebook.
Finish at least one entire manuscript.
Try writing every day at the same time for at least a month.
Eat an orange on the grounds of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings homestead, Cross Creek, Florida.
Name a child Zora. Or Harper. Or Wendell.
Burn a book you thoroughly dislike.
Give a book to a Little Free Library.
Organize a house reading for writer friends.
Erect a Poetry Box or Poetry Pole in your front yard.
Visit The Strand in New York City.
Tour the American Writers Museum, Chicago, Illinois.
Take a selfie with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza at the monument to Miguel de Cervantes in the Plaza de España, Madrid, Spain.
Drink a Death in the Afternoon cocktail.
Read Howard Zinn’s Artists in Times of War while visiting the White House.
Look for your favorite writer’s work at the New York Public Library.
Write in three or more genres.
Ask your local library to stock your favorite book, if they don’t already.
Recite the opening lines of Canterbury Tales on a train.
Write a letter to a living writer you admire.
Read The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd while hiking a Scottish trail.
Apply to Yaddo.
Walk the coastline in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Walk the Robert Frost Poetry Trail near Ripton, Vermont.
Write in a barn.
Write barefoot.
Read while walking the beach.
Watch the movie Paterson.
Organize a bookshelf of your top books, starting on the left with your favorite book of all time.
Volunteer to read to children.
Keep a list of your favorite words.
Start a list of action verbs from a novel you love.
Write a sonnet.
Subscribe to a Substack written by a literary writer.
Keep a Commonplace Book of quotes you love.
Rent a cabin in the woods and write there alone for a week.
Read Like Water for Chocolate and make a chocolate dish from scratch.
Keep a dream notebook.
Frame your first acceptance letter.
Wallpaper your bathroom with rejection letters.
Find a child who may not have a book in their home and give them five.
Snag a bookmark from Parnassus Books, owned by Ann Patchett, Nashville, Tennessee.
Leave a note in a library book you love.
Leave $10 in a library book you enjoyed.
Braid some sweetgrass in honor of Robin Kimmerer.
Organize a poetry walk in your town.
Eat a mango while reading The House on Mango Street.
Take a hike in the Yaak Valley of Montana.
Write a book using a pen name.
Write down a family story before it’s gone.
Visit Lorine Niedecker’s cabin in Wisconsin.
Like Snoopy, start a story with “It was a dark and stormy night.”
Join Goodreads. Set a goal for 2026.
Take a Magical Craft writing course with me. (Fall 2026!)
See a famous writer’s handwritten draft in person.
Write in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel, Memphis, Tennessee.
Call yourself a writer and mean it.
What wild and weird literary must-dos would you add?
🌀 A scheduled poet got ill and couldn’t teach during the Ecopoetry Summit in January. I rescheduled her workshop for yesterday, but at the last minute, she had to bow out. Rather than cancel, I pulled together poetry exercises. Eleven of us used the hour to write poetry. We did a bit of sharing along the way. I was brought to my knees by the quality of the work coming out of folks. All recordings for the Ecopoetry Summit are now in the Google Drive.
🌀 As of last night, I have completely fulfilled the Kickstarter for Journey in Place.
🌀 Speaking of Kickstarters, we’ll be running one for the anthology of DNA surprises. This has turned into a potent, gripping book of true stories of revised families. Hilary Vidalakis, co-editor, and I are really happy to bring it to you. You are going to very much enjoy this book. The book is now in the design phase. Hopefully, I can have a Kickstarter link for you soon.
🌀 I will be publishing Spiral-Bound for two more weeks only. I discussed this in last week’s newsletter, in case you missed it. Since my first post was March 21, 2023, Tuesday, March 24 will be my final post. The archives will remain available. I have ended the option already to become a paying subscriber. If you are one, you have the choice to cancel your subscription and receive a refund. Likely, Substack will prorate it. Thank you so much for your support. I’m grieving the end of this newsletter, because (on the down-low), it was my favorite. I love hanging with writers and writing for writers. However, eliminating one deadline per week will free up time for a deeper, more permanent, more world-changing project.
🌀 I invite you sincerely and lovingly to subscribe to Trackless Wild—the newsletter where my own writing lives—if you aren’t there already. Thank you, thank you. In the future, when I post writing-related material, it will show up there.
🌀 This coming Saturday I’ll be speaking in Columbus, Georgia, at the botanical garden’s Naturalist Day. If you’re anywhere near Columbus, I’ll be hoping to see you.
🌀 Later this month, I’ll be traveling to Oxford, Mississippi to give the Ann Abadie Lecture at the Oxford Conference for the Book. It’s a huge deal, both to me and to all who knew Ann. The organizers and I decided to make a special bookmark with a place challenge on it. This week, I got that designed. It’s at the printer.
🌀 I recommend the Oxford Conference. All events are free. And, isn’t wandering around Oxford, MS, on your list of 100 Writerly Things to Do Before You Die?
🌀 You may have heard that the great Sterling College in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont is closing its doors. My good friend Carol Dickson has taught there for years. Next month, I will be speaking one final time, online, to her final class. You may have attended the iconic Wildbranch Writing Workshop at Sterling. Losing it as a college option is a troubling sign of the times.
🌀 Good luck doing your taxes. I hope you had enough writing income in 2025 to report to the IRS. If so, your subscription here is tax-deductible. Remember, as you’re paying taxes, all the great things that taxes bring us. They give us our national parks, for example. Think, as you pay, I am supporting Great Smoky Mountain National Park!
🌀 This one is important. If you are learning to market your work; are developing an online presence; are running an online business or a business with an online component; or want to be more visible in a digital world, I highly recommend Captolia Eaton’s upcoming course, Witch and Famous. It was life-changing for me. Everything you want to know about it can be found at The Digital Witch. A few things to keep in mind:
1) The course is not cheap. ($1,111)
2) You can pay on time.
3) You pay once, but you can retake the course as long as Captolia offers it, usually once per year.
4) This will be my third time through.
5) If you are uncomfortable with alternative spiritualities, this may not be the course for you.
6) Captolia is awesome with mindset work as well as all things digital marketing. She’s well-trained, up-to-date, experienced, and always uplifting and encouraging.
7) The code JANISSE gets you 11 percent off the course.
8) You need to register by March 15.
9) If you have any qualms or questions, I will give you my completely honest opinion on the course. Be in touch.
10) I attribute Captolia with resetting my nervous system and allowing me to do the online work that I do. That reset moved my income above six figures. I don’t promise the same results for you. I’m letting you know what worked for me.
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