Creating Your Own Path with Shannon Vesely

In this second half of my interview with Shannon Vesely, we take a broader view on writing connections and talk about how to make the most of them. Shannon gives advice on both attending and offering retreats, and we discuss what to do with rejection. Ultimately, Shannon shares her successes and failures as a writer and the importance of creating your own path. 

Show Links:

• Shannon's blog Sanctuaries
• Shannon's book The Way of Things
• Shannon's book Keeping Watch on Soap Creek
• Soaring Gardens Artist Retreat application portal

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Connect with me online:

• On Instagram @writing_connections_podcast or @laura_isa_walker
• On my website: lauraswalker.com
• Through my newsletter

Additional Resources:

Get the latest information about promoting or finding a writing retreat.

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The Writing Connections Team

Our team includes Shauri Thacker as audio engineer, Jordyn Maxfield as social media manager, and Payson Davis as audio intern.

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Transcript

Episode 86: Opener

Laura Walker: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining us for episode 86 of Writing Connections. I'm your host, Laura Walker, and this is the second half of my interview with Shannon Vesely. In the last episode, we talked about how retreats can support our writing and facilitate the freedom to create.

In this episode, we take a broader view on writing connections and talk about how to make the most of them, starting with a question about retreats themselves. 

Ep. 86 - Main Interview  

Laura Walker: Given that particular set of surprises and challenges and this variety of experience you've had with retreats, what advice would you have for writers who are considering either attending a retreat or maybe even running their own retreat?

Shannon Vesely: The more I've thought about it-- and I hope that I'll be able to experience another retreat in the future-- I do like the idea of thinking through the kinds of books that you might take with you as jump starts at times when [00:01:00] you just need to put your own writing aside. And to be very purposeful about choosing what you're going to take but also really thinking about some kind of schedule you can make for yourself, understanding that your schedule's going to be flexible, and if what you thought you were going to work on in the morning rolls over into the afternoon, oh, well, you know, great.

But knowing that, for me, that maybe I had the permission because I decided I was going to work on this in the morning, I could actually stop that and turn my attention to something else so that if it wasn't going well, I wasn't just going to sit there and think, "Oh gosh, I'm not making any headway." So to give yourself permission to maybe look at a different type of project and certainly to take those kinds of breaks like we did to walk, to read, to take a nap, whatever it is you need to do because time is your own and you have a lot of it, which is wonderful.

I know everybody's retreat experience is different. Some people might [00:02:00] balk at the idea of some kind of a schedule. But again, I think if it's a flexible one, and you've just blocked out some time for yourself, you know, different blocks, that to me seems reasonable.

Like I said, you can give yourself permission to, I'll do this and maybe this'll be kind of an end and I'll eat lunch or do this, and then I can turn my attention to this.

And then I think to come with the expectation that you'll be open to having conversations with your fellow retreat participants when it's possible and when you're not interrupting somebody's time or space. Because having those rich conversations certainly enhanced my retreat experience and created friendships that have been lasting. So, I would encourage people to be open to that as well.

As far as hosting retreat, you and I can testify to the fact that we did put in the planning last year, and I think we drew heavily on our own experiences. We had both attended several retreats, so we had a feeling for how those days [00:03:00] normally went, but we also understood, because we were hoping to host one at Soaring Gardens, we knew the physical facility, and we could talk specifically about the benefits and the challenges of that particular facility. We were wise to consult with the retreat director who knew the area well and could talk to us specifically about caterers, about transportation from local airports and bus stations, and, I mean, things that we didn't, you know, we're not locals, we would not know. So depending upon where you put on a retreat, if it's not some place local, drawing on the expertise of the people there, either a site director at the retreat if you're actually using an existing retreat center like we were or making connections with local people that can help you with those kinds of things.

I think we learned a lot by doing it. And there's much more to it than I even thought before we started. But when you start to consider food [00:04:00] and transportation-- and what you might do, because in our case we were hoping for a more guided writing retreat where it was a hybrid of having that independent time and having some communal time for both instruction and writing and reflection. How we would block out the day. what kinds of local experiences maybe we could provide in addition to just being there at the retreat. There were lots of things I think I hadn't thought of until we really began to plan, and I can't say that I would be an expert at planning retreats, but I think going through the process last year taught me a lot, and now I would know the kinds of things that I would need to consider from the get go. Planning a budget, which, we spent time on that. There were just many aspects of that. When you just show up for the retreat, you don't think about that. 

Laura Walker: Absolutely true. And I just, I have to echo the importance, not in the planning of the retreat, but, in attending retreats, [00:05:00] of leaving space for the possibility of relationships to develop. Yes. The friendships that have come out of the retreats that I've attended have been one of the greatest gifts. Even in some ways more lasting than the words that were created at the retreats themselves, is the value of the people that I've been able to add into my life.

Shannon Vesely: Yes. I, I couldn't say that any better because in the years since we've been at Soaring Garden, I consider you to be such a good friend. And much of our friendship has had to be through FaceTime calls, but every time we talk, it's as if I'm right back there at Soaring Gardens, and we're walking the roads together, sharing, and yeah, that is a wonderful part, and I would agree, I think in the end, more lasting, even than the words that I wrote there. I've been very blessed by that as well. 

Laura Walker: What other kinds of writing connections have been important to you in your journey, or your development or experience [00:06:00] as a writer other than retreats? 

Shannon Vesely: Probably the greatest contributor to my whole writing journey has clearly been my dad. Growing up knowing that your dad is both a teacher but a writer and watching him, my entire life and being able to share with him later as we took the same path because I became an English instructor as well, being able to share with him through letters and emails and phone calls and family visits what I was working on, what I was teaching, that had a huge impact on my life as a writer.

And I don't know how to explain this, but I began probably in my thirties to realize that there was this sort of uncanny genetic transfer that happened, I think, from my dad to me, because we would use words in similar ways, unbeknownst to each other, in poems, and I began to realize, wow, what a gift that was because I think it really was something that was happening genetically. Even after his death, looking through his papers [00:07:00] and reading some of the letters that he wrote to my mother as they were dating and then he was in the service and they were first married, some of the ideas that he shared then, I realized, were very much the way that I thought about things, and they were things that I did not know about my dad until I'd read them in those letters after his death. So his presence clearly still is influential in my life as a writer. But for 41 years I taught the best thinkers and writers of all time and having to teach and reteach those people and study not only their ideas, but their craft-- that has probably influenced me as much as anything as well, because I remember my students used to laugh when I would be reading a passage out loud and they would say, "You always do this, Mrs. Vesely. You stop, and you say, wow, that is really good. I wish I'd written that."

And I said, but sometimes, when you hear those words or you read those words, you just know this is about as good as it [00:08:00] gets with language. That has had a huge impact on me. As a reader, I still, you know, read and, now that I have the time to read, I've begun to read a lot of contemporary writers, fiction writers primarily, and have been amazed at the diversity of styles that are out there and that has prompted me to be more experimental, I think sometimes with some of my writing, which I had not been, I think, for a while.

I have friends who will comment, particularly on my blog, and sometimes they do include poems in my blog posts as well, and it's been nice to see people who are not writers, not English teachers, just friends, current friends, friends from the past, friends who will comment on things that move them or touch them. That's been influential to me, too, to look at the kinds of things that not students but just ordinary people respond to and has made me rethink a lot of what I've written and how I've written it sometimes. [00:09:00]

Episode 86: Interlude 

Laura Walker: Whether or not you explicitly springboard off of other people's writing in your own, this act of looking carefully at remarkable writing can open you up, as Shannon claims, to better thinking and writing.

And even if we don't all agree on who the greatest writers and thinkers of all time are, we each have our personal favorites. In her slow novel lab workshop, Nina LaCour pitches the idea of choosing a mentor text: a book you can turn to for guidance on things like structure, pacing, dialogue, chapter openings, cliffhangers... pretty much anything that can be named as a quality of writing can be emulated.

And if you can pinpoint examples of that quality from writers you love, you can learn to practice those qualities and they can help you grow. This is something I've been able to experience across genres as I've made connections with other writers.

Some of these are connections that exist only on the page, with writers like Algernon Blackwood, one of the greatest scary story writers of all [00:10:00] time. Other connections are more aspirational, writers like Maggie Smith or Maya Shanker, who I can imagine myself someday connecting with in the real world. And still others are writers I've been able to meet and interact with extensively, like my brilliant poet friends from Southern Utah, or the science writer Florence Williams, who's mentored me on a literary as well as a life level. And like Shannon talks about next, these connections have very much helped me be a better writer and human. 

Episode 86: Main Interview

Shannon Vesely: I admit that a lot of my creative nonfiction, I tend to often springboard off of quotes and passages from people that I have read that I just think, “that is just remarkable,” you know, “that's a remarkable insight,” or it's not only a remarkable insight, but it's remarkable in the way those words work together to create something of beauty.

And so I do a lot of springboarding off of those kinds of passages or quotes. I used to tell my [00:11:00] student writers, when you're doing something like that, commenting on, elaborating on, something that good, if you're open to it, it tends to make you a much better thinker and writer.

Over the years, I can see the growth in myself as a writer because I've been willing to look very carefully at really good pieces of writing and, think, yes, I really like this idea and what do I think about it? How could I elaborate on that? How could I make connections in my own life, and how could I make connections for people who maybe would never read this but can hopefully see the value and the thinking. So those are some of the major influences.

I've been invited to read poetry at some events. I've been a judge at some poetry writing events. I've held some creative writing workshops for children over the years.

I did one for a mixed group last year and had some people who were my age and some girls who were like [00:12:00] age eight and 11, and we were all together in one group, so I've been really inspired by just how the ages can come together and how we could share together as a group of writers.

All of those things continue to shape me as a writer and encourage me in sometimes new ways that I hadn't thought of before. 

Laura Walker: It sounds like a kind of mentorship that you're talking about, right? Yes. Finding literary mentors in the writers who have come before you, or even contemporary writers who you've read and studied, and then also finding opportunities to expose other people and or mentor other sorts of budding writers in the experience of the written word. 

Shannon Vesely: Yes. And I'm sure you know, as a teacher yourself, you can attest to when you teach something in a setting like that, it just becomes something that you know that much more deeply, that much more invested in.

Laura Walker: Regardless of how the students, whether they're formal students [00:13:00] or not, respond to it.

Shannon Vesely: Exactly.

Laura Walker: Which brings me actually to: one of the things that I want to explore on this podcast is the role of rejection or maybe even outright failure as writers. And I'm wondering if you can speak to that topic.

Shannon Vesely: Yes. I realize that, not only did I have years where I didn't have the time to write, but even if I'd had the time to write, I certainly would not have had the time, nor do I think I would've had the energy to be sending things out for publication. Because it… it does take time.

And now, when you are publishing or you're trying to publish in a lot of these places, it also takes some money if you want to submit. So I probably wouldn't have been at a point at that point in my life to do as much of that.

Since my opening good luck in getting accepted into these writing retreats, I've applied for many over the years and been rejected. I have tried repeatedly [00:14:00] with a couple journals to send poems in and have never been successful.

I was walking one day-- and I remember this moment because it was one of those moments where I was walking and I thought, you know, I think I would just write even if no one ever really read it. And I thought at the time, that sounds corny, but it was probably one of the truest things, truest confessions I'd made as a writer where I finally looked at this and it's not that I won't continue to try to publish or continue to try to apply for residencies. But I also became much more at peace with, if it doesn't happen, if they don't accept it, if I don't get chosen as a recipient for a writing retreat, then I will make my own retreat. I will find my own time. I will continue to write.

In many of these, when you're trying to publish, you don't exactly know why you've failed. You get the rejection, but it's not like when you're the teacher giving feedback to a student. You don't know, [00:15:00] you know? You can look at what they published and look at what you've submitted and try to infer, well, they probably didn't take it because... but you really don't know.

I've had other writers say, you just have to be persistent and you have to be sometimes more savvy about where you're submitting and find places that really probably are closer to the kind of poetry that you're writing so that you're not submitting something that's so outta the realm of what they would normally publish.

But sometimes, I'll be honest, I've thought I had found those places, but they haven't accepted my work, so I don't know. You have to honestly ask yourself, and I'm old enough now to ask myself, okay, I can see some of the styles that they're publishing. In order to get published here, would I change my style? Would I try to mimic that more to be accepted?

I got to the point where I honestly said no, because I think, first of all, I think I would do it very badly. I wouldn't want to be inauthentic to [00:16:00] the voice I've worked hard to develop, and so if that's not something they're interested in, I'll just keep trying to find a place.

I think most writers will say, you write, hopefully, for an audience; you want other people. So you can't say it's not discouraging at times, but I think I felt less discouraged, and maybe it's because of my age and because I've waited so long to have this time where I'm just grateful for the fact that I can write that I will just keep trying and I don't feel as compelled to spend a lot of time just trying to push myself out there.

I would rather spend more of my time creating than trying to promote what I've already created. 

Laura Walker: Amen to that. 

Shannon Vesely: That's probably why I'm okay with some of the rejections and failures I've gotten. And I'll keep trying. 

Laura Walker: Because what else is there to do? If you do seek that audience, then yeah, you exactly, have to keep trying.

We are just about out of time, so before we [00:17:00] wrap up, thank you so much for this conversation. This has been lovely to connect with you and then also just to hear your perspective on all of these experiences you've had in and out of the world of retreats as a writer.

Before we end, I just want to ask: where can people find you and your writing, online or in the real world? 

Shannon Vesely: I have the two books out, Keeping Watch on Soap Creek and The Way of Things, and they are both available on Amazon right now. And my blog is my name, Shannon S. Vesely, V-E-S-E-L-Y, .com. I mostly publish nonfiction on my blog, but occasionally I include some poetry in there too.

And I want to thank you, Laura, for having me. This has been wonderful. 

Laura Walker: You are so welcome. It's been a great treat. Thank you so much, Shannon.

Poem Reading: "Fawn, at Six Feet"

Laura Walker: And as an additional treat for listeners, I've asked Shannon to share with us one of the poems from her latest collection. [00:18:00]

Shannon Vesely: Fawn, at Six Feet.

A rosebud of ache 

bruises the dawn as you call 

to your mother.

Six feet from me, alone,

you stand your ground, 

a silver tremor running along 

your back. 

And neither of us moves. 

Our shallow breathing worries the air 

between us, and the distance 

can't find its voice. 

The pansies at our feet have fallen 

over the edge of the terrace,

and their violet heads drowse 

on the grass below. 

But we don't see them. 

We have eyes only for each other. 

Will you close the gap, 

gentling your busy tail, 

quieting the injured bird who lives 

in your throat? 

I imagine it so. 

For then I'd take you in my arms 

as the maple of your longing 

runs clear and sweet into the day.

I'd breathe my finest words into your ear: 

"all will be well." 

And when your mother stands–

expectant–in the clearing beyond the gate, [00:19:00]

I'd set you right again 

and point your lovely ache towards home. 

Episode 86: Outro 

Laura Walker: I love this poem in part because I can remember its inception: the moment at Soaring Gardens when Shannon told us about seeing a fawn on the back deck one morning. And as a reminder, Soaring Gardens is accepting applications until Feb. 1 for their summer/fall season. And speaking of seasons, I have an exciting lineup of guests for the remainder of this podcast season one that I both do and don't want to reveal.

For now, I'll just say check back in next month for my interview with the poet Chelsea DesAutels. Thank you so much for tuning in. [00:19:41]