Kate Meadows's Blog

In a time of uncertainty—for journalism, for truth, even for funding the arts—stories endure because people keep showing up with curiosity, compassion, and commitment to telling them.

That truth was on full display at the 2025 South Dakota Festival of Books, held September 26–28 in Spearfish. The South Dakota Humanities Council describes the festival as “the state’s premier literary event,” celebrating literature “in South Dakota and beyond by connecting the very best regional and national writers with our state’s readers for conversations, presentations, panel discussions, book signings, and special events.”

More than 5,000 book lovers, authors, and publishing professionals filled the small town (population just shy of 14,000) for a weekend that celebrated the written word against all odds.

Five months before the festival, the South Dakota Humanities Council, which organizes the event, lost 74 percent of its funding due to deep cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities. Then, in a twist worthy of a novel, the festival’s main book distributor backed out at the last minute—leaving organizers scrambling.

Enter Henry’s Books, Spearfish’s lone independent bookstore. Opened just a year earlier through a massive crowdfunding effort, Henry’s stepped in, secured every title from the 60-plus featured authors and illustrators, and quite literally saved the festival.

It was a reminder that stories survive only because people see to it that they do.

 

Unresolved

At one session, journalists-turned-authors Dan Jorgensen and Mary Annette Pember explored the crossovers between journalism, narrative, and creative writing. Playing on H.L. Mencken’s line that “the journalist lives a life of kings,” Pember said she liked to think that, as a journalist, she lived “the life of queens.”

As she spoke about researching her mother’s experience at an Indian boarding school in Wisconsin—material that went into her latest book, Medicine River—one word came to me: unresolved.

History is unresolved.

Our stories are unresolved.

So much of our reckoning with hard truths remains unresolved.

Listening to Pember and Jorgensen, I couldn’t help but wonder if either of them would go into journalism today. The world they entered decades ago—the one I once knew—has changed beyond recognition. I remembered myself in those early days, heading out in Little Henry, my blue 1990 Ford Ranger, reporter’s notebook in hand. I’d chase the story, scribbling facts and quotes, then return to the newsroom to type and send my piece to the editor. My first salaried job paid $24,000 a year.

Today, reporters type notes into their phones and sometimes file stories from the driver’s seat before even leaving the scene. The tools have changed, but the motivation—the why behind the work—still matters most.

Pember admitted that “structure was always the stumbling block.” And her reason for writing her latest book felt familiar: “Part of my motivation was trying to understand my family,” she said. Even after publication, she said, she keeps a pen and pad nearby, giving herself permission to remember.

Permission. That word lingered.

Another phrase came to me that morning: consistent curiosity. Maybe that’s what keeps a journalist—or any writer—at the desk, even when the story feels too heavy, too tangled, or too unresolved.

 

Stories Truer Than Facts

Later, in a session called Mending a Divided Nation, psychology professor Tania Israel presented hard statistics about how Americans misperceive one another.

“We perceive Democrats and Republicans to be farther apart than they are,” she said. “We’re not nearly as apart as we think we are.”

She shared some sobering numbers:

Republicans guessed that 38% of Democrats identify as LGB (lesbian, gay or bi-sexual); the reality is 6% of Democrats identify as such.Democrats guessed that 44% of Republicans earn more than $250,000; the reality is 2% earn more than $250,000.Each side assumes 40% of the other condones political violence, when in truth, only 1–2% do.

But here was the hopeful part: 71% of Americans believe it’s possible to find common ground on most issues.

And then Israel said something that resonated with me on a deep level: “People find stories to be more true than facts.”

It was another thread in that same tapestry—curiosity, compassion, and story as the bridge between worlds.

One festival attendee said this about the power of story: “Stories are alive after we let them go. You don’t know who’s going to read them, and you don’t know what kind of effect they’ll have.”

 

The Writer’s Reckoning

The next day, I sat in a dim theater at Black Hills State University, attending yet another talk on researching and writing nonfiction. I’d hoped for some new insight into how to approach my own project about my grandfather’s childhood—his journey from Dust-Bowl-ridden Oklahoma to the far reaches of western Wyoming in the late 1930s.

But as the speakers traded anecdotes about their own research with their own books, I realized: Nothing that they were saying was new to me.

And then it hit me. I was hiding behind “learning.” Behind more classes, more talks, more knowledge. What I wasn’t doing was the one thing that mattered most: writing.

It’s funny how easy it is to give two hours to a talk about writing and not even consider spending those same two hours actually writing.

I jotted this in my journal: A big part of why I’m not writing—or researching—is that I don’t feel I have permission.

Of course, the question then becomes, permission from whom?

And of course, I know the answer: permission from myself.

Maybe that’s the struggle for so many of us. We seek permission when the truth is, stories don’t wait for it. They just need us to show up—curious, compassionate, and committed.

 

The Story That Endures

As I packed up my vendor booth at the end of the weekend, I kept thinking about Henry’s Books—how one independent bookstore rose to meet the moment and, in doing so, reminded us all why we gather around stories in the first place.

Because when we show up for stories, they show up for us.

When we nurture curiosity, we mend what feels broken.

And when the world feels uncertain, stories remind us that the human spirit endures.

For me as a writer, editor, and book coach, weekends like this are a powerful reminder of why we do what we do. Every author I help, every story I edit, is part of this larger human effort—to make sense of what’s unresolved, to stay curious, to keep the flame of story burning.

Because in the end, it isn’t just books that save festivals—it’s people showing up for one another, for story, for truth. And that, I think, is where hope lives.

As I drove home from Spearfish, I thought about how every story I help shepherd into the world—whether my own or someone else’s—is part of this same act of endurance. Writers, editors, readers, booksellers—we all hold a thread of it. What Henry’s Books did for the Festival is what writers do every day: keep stories alive.

That’s the work, and the gift—to keep showing up with curiosity, compassion, and commitment, knowing that even in uncertain times, stories will carry us through.

 

*This post contains affiliate links, and we receive a small commission from each book sale.

The post When Stories Save Us: Notes from the 2025 South Dakota Festival of Books appeared first on Kate Meadows Writing & Editing.

When you imagine a writing retreat, what comes to mind? Maybe it’s the click of keyboards as participants hammer out stories. Maybe it’s hours of quiet focus. Maybe it’s the beauty of a lake or a mountain view outside an enormous picture window.

Or, maybe the term “writing retreat” is new to you.

A writing retreat is a unique opportunity for writers to detach from every-day responsibilities and spend dedicated, uninterrupted time in a designated place, writing. Your sole job at a writing retreat is to write. There are no text messages to answer. There are no meals to plan. There are no kids to pick up from practice. The retreat is a date between you, your story (or story idea) and whatever medium you use to get that story down – a notebook, a laptop, a recording device.

But what does that look like, exactly? How do you organize a retreat, and how do you show up to the work?

The truth is, writing retreats can look a lot of different ways. I’ve structured my own retreats – 3-day solo getaways within 60 miles of my house to get the writing work done. I’ve met a dear writer friend halfway between her town and mine – in a state where neither of us lived – for a weekend of writing and reconnecting. I’ve packed a bag and met a half dozen other writers at a big cabin for two uninterrupted days of writing time and reflection.

What matters when it comes to a writing retreat is the act of stepping away from the daily grind and giving your writing the focused attention it deserves. Here are three types of writing retreats to try:

1. The Solo Retreat

A solo retreat is the classic vision: you, your notebook or laptop, and the freedom of uninterrupted time. Sometimes what you need most is time alone. A solo retreat might be as simple as booking a night at a local hotel, borrowing a friend’s cabin, or even spending a day in a library with your phone turned off.

The gift of the solo retreat is silence. With no distractions, no obligations, and no one else’s schedule to consider, you can sink deeply into your work. A solo retreat also teaches you discipline—learning to sit with your project for long stretches and to trust your own rhythm without external cues.

Many writers find breakthroughs during these solo stretches, when the noise of daily life finally falls away. Many writers return from a solo retreat with not only pages written but also a renewed sense of who they are as a writer. It’s just you and the work—pure and simple.

 

2. The Duo Retreat: Accountability and Companionship

For some writers, solitude feels daunting. That’s where a retreat with a trusted friend or accountability partner can be transformative. You write in parallel—each focused on your own project—but you take breaks together, share meals, and check in on progress. Having another person nearby creates a gentle sense of accountability. When your partner is typing steadily across the table, you’re more likely to stay the course, too.

Duo retreats are especially helpful if you need encouragement but still want focus. They strike a balance between solitude and community, offering companionship without distraction. Many lifelong creative partnerships have grown from this kind of retreat, where encouragement and accountability weave together. When you get stuck, you’ve got a safe sounding board right there. You can bounce ideas off of each other and even read sections of your work out loud for feedback. Writing with a friend is a great way to buck the loneliness of the work and have a little (or a lot of) fun in the process.

 

3. The Community Retreat

Then there’s the magic of a larger retreat—gathering with a group of writers, all committed to moving their projects forward. Community retreats combine quiet writing time with the camaraderie of shared meals, conversations, and (often) inspiring talks. The energy is palpable—everyone is there for the same purpose: to write. You come for the words, but you leave with encouragement, friendship, and a renewed sense that you’re not walking this path alone. Writing may be solitary, but it doesn’t always have to be lonely.

Community retreats are structured to maximize progress while also fostering connection among writers. You’ll usually find a rhythm of inspirational talks, quiet writing blocks, and shared meals. The conversations—around the table, on a walk, over a cup of tea—often spark breakthroughs that no one could have found alone.

Our families and friends might cheer us on, but they don’t always understand what it’s like to wrestle with a sentence for an hour or to be haunted by a character who refuses to speak. At a retreat, though, you find yourself surrounded by people who get it. You don’t have to explain why you’re tired from “just thinking” all morning. No one blinks when you say you’re struggling with chapter three for the twelfth time. Around the table, you hear others voicing the same challenges you thought were yours alone. Suddenly, the weight lifts a little.

 

An Invitation to Write in Community

The greatest gift of a community retreat is belonging. Writing may be a solitary act, but it’s not a lonely one when you know others are walking alongside you. Writers leave community retreats not only with words on the page but with friendships, accountability groups, and a deep sense that they are part of something bigger. If this speaks to you, I’d love to invite you to my upcoming one-day in-person writing retreat at Canyon Lake Resort in Rapid City, SD, on Saturday, November 1.

This one-day retreat includes:

Brief inspirational talks about writingLots of quiet writing timeAn optional Pilates sessionOptional 1-1 coachingLunch, snacks, and drinks (or bring your own if you prefer)

Come for the words, but stay for the conversations and the camaraderie. Writing may be done in solitude, but it flourishes in community.

Register here for the one-day in-person writing retreat on Nov. 1.

Regardless of how you step away and write, I promise you will find the time valuable. When it’s you and your words – with no other responsibilities or obligations pulling at you – you will find there is magic. There are insights waiting, and there are quite likely some surprises in that quiet, creative space.

*Have you ever treated yourself to a writing retreat? If so, what did that retreat look like and how did it help you move a writing project forward? Share in the comments or email me to let me know!

 

The post Your Writing Retreat: 3 Ways to Step Away and Write appeared first on Kate Meadows Writing & Editing.

Have you ever thought about writing a memoir? If so, you may have faced this daunting question: Where do I even begin?

This very thing happened at a recent Write-In I hosted. One writer shared that he was trying to tell the story of his life—for his grandchildren. “I’m at that time in my life,” he said, “where this story needs to come out.” The daunting question was: How could he get the story of his life onto the page in any sort of meaningful way?

Most of us don’t walk around with our life story neatly outlined in our minds. Instead, we carry memories like scattered puzzle pieces—some vivid, some blurry, and some we haven’t summoned for years. One way to begin writing your memoir is to gather those pieces and lay them on the table. By bringing your material together—your memories (however cracked, blurry or otherwise imperfect), your experiences, pieces of dialogue, names of influential people in your life—you’re able to see the bigger picture.

But how exactly do you go about gathering that material, especially when the material is all over the place—some of it tangible, some of it intangible?

Gathering material for your memoir can look a lot of different ways. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

1) Mine Your Memories

Start with what you remember. Memories often surface in fragments—an image, a smell, a phrase someone once said. Don’t worry if memories come out of order or without much detail. Just get them down.

Some writers like to use tools to help organize these fragments. One suggestion is to create an Excel spreadsheet—list keywords, key phrases, and memories. Use multiple tabs if helpful, so you can sort ideas in different ways and literally see your story start to take shape.

Others prefer a more tactile approach for capturing these fragments, such as index cards. Jot down one memory or keyword per card and add as much detail about it on the card as you want. You can sort them later. Different colors of index cards can help you track moods or themes: yellow cards for sad memories, white cards for happy ones, and so on.

Try this: Set a timer for ten minutes and write everything you remember about your childhood kitchen, or your first job, or the day you left home. Or, if you’re a list-maker, try this idea from writer Caroline L.: dedicate one page of a yellow legal pad to a single category. One page might be, “Pairs of Shoes.” Another could be, “Houses I’ve Lived In.” Each category is a window into your world, triggering stories you might not have thought of otherwise.

Writers like Maggie Nelson in Bluets and Sarah Ruhl in 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write show how fragments and lists can become powerful storytelling tools. Your scraps of memory don’t need to be polished or chronological to carry weight.

2) Turn to the Archives

Pieces of our lives are recorded in surprising ways—letters, photographs, social media posts, yearbooks. (In high school, I earned the votes for “Most Integrity” among my classmates; my son was recently voted most likely in his class to start his own business.) These tangible artifacts often spark stories we’ve forgotten. A single photograph might remind you of the family road trip where the car broke down, or that purple cotton rag sweater you wore on the first day of high school.

Some memoirs even take their structure from archives—built around photos, lists, or objects. Kate Carroll de Gutes’s Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, for example, uses personal objects as the doorway into story. And Heidi Julavits’s The Folded Clock takes diary entries out of chronological order, showing how memory often circles and folds back on itself. These unconventional approaches remind us that the form of memoir can echo the way memory actually works: nonlinear, layered, textured.

Try this: Pull out an old photo album or scroll through the earliest photos on your phone. Choose one image and write the story around it. Who was there? What happened before and after the picture was taken?

3) Listen to Others

Sometimes, the people around us remember moments we don’t—or they saw them from another angle. Family members, friends, and even colleagues can help you fill in the gaps. Listen not only for the story, but for how they tell it. Conversations can also reveal how your story intersects with theirs, which deepens your perspective.

Try this: Ask a sibling what they remember about a holiday gathering or a family move. Their version may differ from yours, but both perspectives are valuable. Memoir isn’t about perfect recall; it’s about truth as you experienced it. When we hear multiple versions of the same story, we realize just how slippery the truth can be. The point is not to determine whose version of the story is “right;” instead, it’s to reflect on how each way the story is remembered contributes to the overall richness of the story.

If you want to see how this looks on the page, read Elizabeth McCracken’s An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination. The author weaves in voices, echoes, and reflections from others as part of her own story. The result is layered and deeply human.

Spreadsheets. Index cards. Yellow legal pads. Old photo albums. Conversations and pieces of dialogue. However you go about it, the key to writing your memoir is to start gathering the pieces of your story. Don’t worry about order or polish yet. Just collect, collect, collect. The more material you have, the richer your “big-picture” story will be.

You can start gathering material for your memoir right now. Choose one of the “Try this” prompts above, set a timer for 15 minutes, and write. And, if you want to take it a step further, gather your material and join me for a First Draft Bootcamp starting Sept. 29. You can find all the details here.

Happy gathering!

Note: Books mentioned in this blog post contain affiliate links. Kate Meadows Writing & Editing receives a small kickback for any books purchased through the above links. We are happy to support the craft of creative nonfiction and the work of the above-mentioned authors.

The post 3 Ways to Gather Material for Your Memoir appeared first on Kate Meadows Writing & Editing.

Every August 13, the world tips its hat (or maybe its left sleeve) to all the Southpaws out there, on National Left-Handers Day. It’s a playful holiday meant to honor the 10% of the population who do most things with their left hand. That’s right—only one in ten people share this trait, which makes lefties a rare bunch.

Throughout history, left-handers have often been misunderstood. The Latin word sinistra (meaning “left”) also gave us the word sinister. In the Middle Ages, the devil was believed to be left-handed. For centuries, children were scolded or retrained to use their right hand instead. My own father, a lefty, was forced to write with his right hand in school. He grew up in an era where common thought was that left-handedness was a sign of something wrong. Yet, despite the challenges, lefties have left a big mark on the world.

Take the arts, for example. Some of the most celebrated writers put pen to paper with their left hand. Lewis Carroll, the imaginative author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was a lefty. So was Hans Christian Andersen, whose fairy tales continue to charm children and adults alike. In more recent times, modern authors like Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Kurt Vonnegut also wrote from the left side.

But the list doesn’t stop at the written word. Some of the greatest minds in history were left-handed: Albert Einstein—arguably the poster child for brilliance—was also a lefty. Four of the most recent U.S. presidents were lefties: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise, Bill Gates and Prince William are also left-handed.

I (myself a leftie) have touted the mugs and the t-shirts over the years – the ones with pithy sayings like, “Left-handed people are always right,” and “Everyone is born right-handed. Only a few overcome it.” My favorite saying just might be, “Here’s to showing those scissors in elementary school who’s boss.”

Studies about the differences in brain activity between right-handed and left-handed people are all over the place. In 2019, scientists identified DNA differences between lefties and righties. Recently, a large study in the U.K. linked regions of the brain connected to handedness with personality types more prone to mood swings and anxiety. And left-handed people use the right side of their brain more – the hemisphere associated with creativity, music and imagination.

Speaking of creative, Paul McCartney played his guitar left-handed, flipping the instrument upside down in his early days before finding a proper lefty model. Leonardo da Vinci painted, sketched, and scribbled notebooks backwards, forcing readers to hold his journals up to a mirror to decode his genius.

In August, we celebrate the lefties. Being left-handed is a trait I’ve always been proud of – especially because it’s a trait I share with my dad – and both of my kids. In a world where only 10 percent of the population is left-handed, my family unit has always skewed the statistics. I have never been a part of a household where the righties dominated. My mom was the sole righty of the family as I was growing up; now, in my family of four (myself, my husband and two sons) still only one (my husband) is right-handed.

How do you like those genes?!

While historically left-handers may be the minority, they’ve never been short on impact. So, in the spirit of National Left-Handers Day, here’s to the lefties—may your smudged ink, quirky scissors, and backward spiral notebooks never slow you down. We are a unique – and wonderfully creative – force. The world wouldn’t be the same without us!

The post A Salute to the Southpaws: Famous Left-Handers in History appeared first on Kate Meadows Writing & Editing.

UPDATE: While my hometown newspaper, The Pinedale Roundup, was one of eight rural Wyoming newspapers to abruptly shut down on Aug. 6, it is now up and running again (along with the other 7 Wyoming newspapers), thanks to a pair of Wyoming-based newspaper executives who have stepped in with a renewed focus on hyper-local community news. I have so much to say about the value of local community news and its impact on human connectedness – and I intend to explore it in a future blog post – but for now, here is some food for thought on why we need local newspapers, by Green River Star editor Hannah Romero. To Robb and Jen Sieve-Hicks and Rob Mortimore who saved my hometown paper, thank you. You are heroes.

Note: On Aug. 6, 2025, my hometown newspaper, The Pinedale Roundup, abruptly ceased operation. It was one of 8 newspapers in rural Wyoming towns that shut down without warning, after parent company News Media Corporation announced it would cease operations, effective immediately. In honor of the 100-plus-year run of my hometown paper, I am sharing my essay, “Tracing a Community in Conversation,” here. The essay originally appeared in the Ink anthology, published by Hippocampus Books in 2021. Also see my post, “The Case for Community Newspapers,” published on this blog in 2020.

Tracing a Community in Conversation

When pioneer C. Watt Brandon made the long journey west from Minneapolis to the Green River Valley in remote western Wyoming in 1904, he likely was not thinking about what constitutes news. Instead, I imagine he was thinking of how he could establish a regular and civilized system of communication in cold and rugged country that was still wild and untamed. His uncle, John F. Patterson, was doggedly trying to start a town on a churning mountain creek 110 miles from the nearest railroad. Patterson had already approached two ranchers in the valley with a business proposal: If they would each donate five acres of their land for a new town site, he would build and stock a general store near the water. They would name their town Pinedale. Patterson vowed to give parcels of land to anyone who wanted to start a business in this hardscrabble place. He convinced his nephew to leave his newspaper job in the city and journey 1,100 miles west to start a newspaper.

A newspaper, Patterson reasoned, was a critical component to defining a town. The printed word was a way to connect the ranchers and homesteaders who were scattered like chaff across the high country. Moreover, a newspaper was a mouthpiece, touting the open land, wide sky and unimpeded promise of a place that begged for citizens to make it come alive. Brandon arrived in the spring and set out to find subscribers. If he could nail down 500 subscriptions at $2 a year each, the enterprise stood a chance. He forded streams in high water on horseback and crossed miles of hard, virgin terrain to meet with potential patrons.

After visiting what he claimed was every home within 50 miles of Pinedale, Brandon had acquired enough subscriptions to make a go at a newspaper. Smitten with the great cattle country and sure of its future, he drove a sheep wagon 110 miles south to Rock Springs, where he picked up a printing press. The press was so heavy it took him and his team of horses 5 days to travel back to Pinedale. At times, Brandon had to unload parts of the machine and carry them himself up steep embankments.

The inaugural issue of the Pinedale Roundup was hardly impressive when it rolled off the press on Sept. 8, 1904. Even with his beast of a printing press up and running, Brandon still did not have all the paper or printing materials for the six-column newspaper he had envisioned. He asked that his readers be indulgent and not expect too much. He promised to say all the good things he could about Pinedale.

“All seem to realize that a newspaper may do much towards settling up this country and bringing its many resources before a people who are looking for just such homes as we have to give, and may also succeed in interesting capital to bring improvements which we greatly need,” he wrote in his debut editorial.

Page one was black with newsprint and few headlines. Two ads flanked the right column, along with 3 local cattle brands. Dr. W.A. Hocker, Physician and Surgeon in Kemmerer 100 miles south, advertised that calls in the country would be promptly attended to. The news was divided by area: Merna (”Supt. Anderson of the Forest Reserves has been seen in these parts lately”); Big Piney (”All are pleased with the abundant hay crop this year”); Valley Roundup (”P.V. Sommers passed thru [sic] Pinedale recently en route to Pacific Spring, where he expects to recover some of the horses stolen from his camp near the Black Butte during July … Mr. Fred S. Boyce, who has been on the sick list for some time the past summer is again on duty, rather thin and pale but still in the ring”). In the Cora section, Brandon mused: “A friend of mine asked me the other day the name of the joint on the left hindleg of a cat, the joint the cat usually sits on. I was unable to reply. Will some kind reader inform the editor so I may know in the future.”

Readers would know who was cutting hay when, who the horse wranglers were and who was cooking the meals for the cowboys. They would know what day Howard Fueguet and his friend from Philadelphia were heading into the mountains for their six-week mountain sheep hunt and who their guide was. These were the happenings of a town in the progress of being made. This was the news, unfussy and colloquial and meandering.

 

*****

 

I was fifteen in the spring of 1999 when my parents first suggested I call the managing editor of the Pinedale Roundup and ask for a summer job. I laughed. Me, an emotional, academic-nerd teenager, working for my hometown newspaper? But I was also giddy. What if I could tell stories about this place where I was born and raised – and be paid for it?

You are a beautiful writer, they said. (I glowed inside but chalked up that comment to solid parental bias.) You know a lot of people in Sublette County. You know stories are out there, and you can be the one to help tell them, they said.

I wasn’t thinking about news as much as I was romanticizing the art of storytelling. I thought about the people I knew in my hometown, the connections that my dad always made as the second-generation owner of his dad’s namesake, Bucky’s Repair, a small engine repair and retail shop. Sun-beaten old ranchers and snowmobilers high on the mountain-fresh air and jaw-dropping off-trail rides came into the shop every day spouting stories of beaten paths, wrecked machines and personal glory. I thought about the places that held sweet memories for me: the wood patch and Beaver Hill, Halfmoon Lake, Elkhart Park, the Mesa. Could I, through writing newspaper stories, invite readers to not just appreciate, but love, this place and its people? Pinedale was quickly becoming a melting pot of outsiders. Long-time ranchers and thick-skinned cowboys who were born and raised in this country often clashed with the newer, greener in-town residents who hailed from places like central Texas and northern California.

I pondered the looming possibility of scoring a job at the newspaper. What teenager would just jump on the phone and ask to speak with the managing editor of her hometown paper, let alone hope a job would come of it? I imagined the job of a newspaper reporter demanded more importance and more life experience than that. Yet (my mom reminded me), what was the worst that could happen?

“The editor would tell you they don’t have any openings at this time,” Mom said.

“No,” I said. “She would laugh and tell me they don’t have any openings at this time.”

The managing editor was the wife of my high school English teacher. That pricked me with another sliver of insecurity. He was by far my favorite teacher in the high school, and I had an “A” in his class. What would he think if he found out I called his wife and asked for a job?

“He might think that’s pretty cool,” my dad said, a thought I hadn’t considered.

Finally, I summoned my nerves, called the Roundup, and asked to speak to the editor. She met with me in her office the following week, and by the end of our conversation, I had a job at minimum wage writing a weekly community profile piece for a new section of the newspaper we had invented on the spot: Neighbors.

That name, Neighbors, carried with it a wholesome, simple and appeasing connotation. I knew how stories used to be in the newspaper: They acknowledged family connections and spun a web of local activity. (Pinedale citizens were somewhat surprised Tuesday at lunch hour to see a fine young cow moose come trotting down the road east of town very much unconcerned and leap over the fence into the J.F. Patterson field and make her way across the pasture toward Pine creek [sic]. J.C. Reynolds who happened to be coming into town in his Buick at the time was able to get a very good view of the animal which appeared to be about a two-year-old and at one time was within 40 feet of her. Many about town secured their first view of a moose.) They offered aimless wisdom and advice. (An old housekeeper who has been the victim in her day of almost every kind of accident that can happen to a housekeeper says that whenever a kettle of jam or preserves is scorched set it immediately in a pan of cold water to restore the flavor.) By its very name, Neighbors would aim to honor and preserve those connections.

In my first week of work as an intern reporter at the Roundup, I made a list of the community characters I wanted to interview. I was indulging myself, I knew: I had mostly free reign over this brand new section of the newspaper, and I wanted to show my hometown the lively past and present of the people who made it tick. I started with people I knew well: my third grade teacher, the dog catcher, the owner of the local hardware store who pedaled around town on a recumbent bike. Then, I cracked open the white pages and read the names page-by-page. With a pencil I starred the names that were either legendary or vaguely familiar to me. There was Don Kendall, the first CEO of PepsiCo who owned the famed Kendall Ranch. There was Scott Grossman, a barrel chested expert billiard player with a shock of black hair. Dad said I should talk to Chris Nichols, who had lived in Sublette County forever and had more stories than I would know what to do with. Jeanne Raney was a speech pathologist who worked at my old elementary school. I didn’t know exactly what a speech pathologist did, and I wanted to find out.

My first newspaper story ran on June 17, 1999, about Pinedale’s valedictorian for that year. He was a genius – I couldn’t fathom talking to someone so smart, let alone interview him. My heart thudded in my chest as I paced the Roundup office the day he was to come for the interview. My editor told me to calm down. We both spoke English, didn’t we? Start there and ask him how he’s doing, she said.

Every once in a while, my dad came home from the shop with a name or a story. Through his grapevine I interviewed a single woman who built her own log cabin using only hand tools, the last Pearl Harbor survivor in the county, and James Baker, the former Secretary of State under George H.W. Bush who had a ranch somewhere east of town. When an ersatz mountain man wandered into town via U.S. Highway 191, I tracked him down at the rodeo grounds. I sat in his canvas tent while he told me about his summers of trekking the high country from California to Wyoming with a horse and a knapsack, doing his best to imitate the mountain men of the 1800s despite his aching back. I interviewed wrinkled couples on patterned sofas in dark living rooms, scratching out their secrets to a half century of marriage. Each of the people I talked to handed me offerings of wisdom. Some knew what those offerings were before we even shook hands. Others opened doors to me tentatively and asked, “Why me? I have nothing interesting to say.” The more I interviewed and wrote, the bigger I realized my role as a reporter was. I came to see that I was the conduit who could move people’s unrefined fragments of thought into a wider community conversation. There was gleaming power in that – not only in offering their stories to a wider world, but also in helping them realize they had something worth sharing.

“A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself,” Arthur Miller once said.

I hoped that each of my stories in the Roundup were an invitation for the community to talk to itself.

 

*****

 

By January 1905, the Pinedale Roundup was anchored with ads (LAND! LAND! LAND! IRRIGABLE LAND. BEST ON EARTH. On the easiest terms you ever heard of!) and pulsing with loosely reported, unadorned stories. One bore the headline, “LEAVING THE CITY: Tired of the Trials of City Life Many Are [Heading] to the Country.” It read:

Back to the ranch is now the dream of thousands of people who begin to realize that the city doesn’t hold all of life that is worth having. Ten or fifteen years ago all the talk and tendency was of and to the city. Every city boy was determined to stay in the city, and every country boy of energy and ability had made up his mind to go to the city in search of fortune. Now city boys plan to live in the country, and thousands and thousands of men and women, grown tired of the narrowness city life means to the less fortunate, are hoping and planning for the day when they may leave the smoke and grime and imprisoning walls of the city behind and seek the country with its open spaces, its pure air and its freedom.

 

Another story in the same issue reported that Mr. W.E. Enos, the owner of the company building the telephone line between Daniel and Pinedale, purchased 325 head of yearling steers for his ranch on the Green River, at an average of $1.50 per head. In Daniel, Christmas dinners were given at the homes of D.F. Harrison, Dr. Montrose and Ira Dodge. Other friendly faces from nearby parts were recognized in Daniel.

“Come again,” the paper insists, “the latch string is out.”

From the Burns section, Billie Todd, Alex Price, Shorty Nolan and Jack Frazier returned from the Pinedale dance O.K., and Mrs. Poole was visiting with her mother on Horse Creek. Christmas raffle prizes included a hair bridle, a mounted elk head, a Japanese muffler, a mounted antelope head and a shot gun. A silk quilt handmade for a needy woman failed to draw enough raffle tickets.

“Many are out of their money and few were made happy,” the report reads.

Townsend & Hall of Daniel, Wyo., sought General Merchandise – Dry goods, Boots and Shoes. Prices Reasonable. The Fremont Saloon in Pinedale carried a full line of High Grade Whiskies and Cigars. Nice Cool Beer was Always on Draught [sic] in Rock Springs.

Articles in a June 1905 issue announced that 10,000 trout were planted in Burnt Lake, 25-by-100-foot town lots were on sale for $25.00 and the first tourist of the season had arrived in Pinedale.

“B.F. R. berts [sic] killed a wolf down near Sand Springs recently. We hear that a great many of these enemies of cattle are seen,” one report reads. Another says, “H.E. Allen started Wednesday with a load of beef to Rock Springs. He will return with freight for the New Fork store.”

The news in August 1907 was that a 1900-pound Gale 27 Horse Power became the first automobile on the streets of Pinedale, making the 110-mile trip from Rock Springs in seven hours.

The Pinedale Roundup, with its subscription cost of $2.00 per year, was avidly chronicling a town’s early progress.

 

*****

 

In February 2001, less than two years after I whetted my storytelling chops with that first interview, the Pinedale Roundup was bought out by its rival, the owner of the Sublette County Journal. Rob Shaul, a bold and innovative entrepreneur with family in the area, had started the Journal in 1996, intending to bring a fresh perspective of local history and hard-hitting news to the county. The Journal was a fierce competitor of the Roundup, having branded itself as The Newspaper of the Green River Valley. My grandpa, who grew up on the Beaver Creeks west of town (his news area would have been “Beaver” in those early Roundup editions) was a regular contributor to the Journal. He wrote “Bucky’s Stories,” colorful and unrestrained musings of his life navigating the implacable mountain terrain. Eventually, I would come to prize those stories for what they represented: not just larger-than-life chronicles of my family, but also annals of the type of grit and determination required to thrive in a desolate, wild place. But back then, I had no use for the Journal, nor my grandpa’s stories. The Journal was nothing more than a power trip for a trailblazer who wanted to flex his own mental muscles.

The sale of the Roundup came fast. One day I was finishing a story on the high school Nordic ski team, and the next day I was given a box and told to pack up my stuff. Rob Shaul swept in with the force of a bull, touting his minion staff and big ideas. When the dust settled, nearly all the faces at the Roundup were new. I hated every one of them.

But the arms race to win over the community with the most accurate and attentive local newspaper was far from over. Four women who comprised the core of the former Roundup Staff – a designer, a sales lead, a photographer and a reporter – banded together to form a new publishing company and under it, a new newspaper. Two months after the turbulent Roundup takeover, on April 5, 2001, the inaugural issue of the Sublette Examiner hit local newsstands with a quiet determination. Front-page headlines reported that Sublette County was the second-fastest-growing county in the state, and that the Rural Health Care District would hire three EMTs. The Wyoming Game and Fish underestimated the amount of rangeland the county’s mule deer herds used in the winter. An ad on page three announced the 20th “Aniel Daniel” Chili Cook-off at the historic Daniel Schoolhouse 11 miles west of town. At the bottom of the editorial page, which announced Rhonda Swain as Editor, Cat Urbigkit as Reporter, Deanne Swain as ad designer and Delsa Allen as photographer, was the Abraham Lincoln quote: “To sin by silence, when one should protest, makes cowards out of men.”

Below the names of the four big players, my name was listed as an intern, along with two of my classmates – a photography intern, Tara, and a design intern, Tiffany, Rhonda Swain’s daughter.

In her debut editorial, Rhonda Swain called for community involvement to make the Sublette Examiner a true community newspaper. The community page, “Wyoming Winds,” published the Senior Menu and congratulated the Big Piney Middle School wrestling team, the Rustlers, for running “roughshod” to sweep almost every category at the District History Day competition. A photo of Gene Bryson, winner of the Fremont Lake Fish Derby, compared the size of his 21-pound lake trout to his two-year old granddaughter. The trout, of course, is bigger.

The short-lived “Neighbors” column of the Roundup became “Personalities” for the Examiner. My first article profiled eighth grade volleyball and track coach Jennifer Proud. The story is full of clichés: Proud has “a fiery spirit,” remembers her “first taste of competition” and is “constantly on her toes.” But that didn’t matter. I felt like I was part of something big – a community uprising, in a sense. I knew well that the pen was mightier than the sword.

The launch of the Sublette Examiner a seamless transition on the surface and a roiling act of rebellion beneath. Conversations around ongoing hot topics populated the early pages. In a letter to the editor in Issue 2, Vol. 1, Richard Winckler wrote, “If the [new] bike and walking path don’t go through, one of these days someone is going to be driving along, not paying enough attention to the road, and clobber Chuck Vitt and his pooch walking, or Ken Konicek jogging, or Mike Lewis bicycling, or one of a bunch of other folks whose names I do not recall at the moment.” Another letter by Samuel Taylor begins, “Are you really trying to tell me that you believe these drilling rigs and their drilling operations have some kind of effect on stress in deer? I’m tired of hearing it.”

The annual Pinedale Boat Club Barrel Guesses took up half of page 10. Guesses for when the barrel on the still-frozen Fremont Lake would reach the shore range from 4:10 p.m. on March 20 to 4:30 p.m. on June 10. The winner, like always, would take home a cash prize.

On page 11, a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin read, “If you scatter thorns, don’t go barefoot.”

According to the classifieds, you could buy a 1700 square-foot custom cedar home for $235,000.

 

*****

 

In 1908, C. Watt Brandon traded in his Pinedale Roundup for a good chunk of land and a tobacco pouch full of elk teeth offered by Billy Wells, well known in the Green River Valley as one of the first dude ranchers in Wyoming. Elk teeth was as good as money in the early 1900s, because they contained ivory.

“I have taken an interest in my work, and that which has been news has been treated as such,” Brandon wrote in an editorial on Jan. 1, announcing the sale. “… but at the same time there have been many occurrences and doings, which would have been considered news by many, but the publication of anything in connection therewith would have caused much unpleasantness and sorrow possibly in homes. Many of these things we have refrained from making news of.”

Brandon moved south to start a new newspaper in Kemmerer, Wyo, another lonely town he saw in need of stirring up promise. He never lived on the Wells ranch. “One good paper can do much to advance the interests and resources of this country and through the local columns keep the people of the various communities in touch with each other,” he wrote in his farewell editorial to Pinedale.

After four years, Wells would sell the newspaper to Charles F. Patterson, the son of the town’s founder, John F. Patterson. Charles Patterson used the newspaper to advocate for the town’s incorporation and wide scale improvement. “A thousand bucks a year should make Pinedale a swell place to live,” Patterson wrote in an August 30, 1911, editorial. “Possibly we could have enough out of that thousand a year, to in time give us a system of water works, a street lighting system … Let’s get the town ‘wise heads’ together and debate the matter.”

 

 

I graduated from Pinedale High School in 2002 and left Wyoming to pursue a degree in English at a liberal arts school halfway across the country. My college years unfolded less than two hours from Brandon’s former news post in Minneapolis. On July 31, 2006, both the Pinedale Roundup and the Sublette Examiner were sold to Wyoming Newspapers, Inc. According to the Examiner article, News Media Corporation Chief Executive Officer John Tompkins made the Examiner partners “an offer they couldn’t refuse, including a pledge to work with the community to continue to grow this community newspaper.” With the acquisition of the Pinedale Roundup and the Sublette Examiner, Wyoming Newspapers, Inc. owned 11 newspapers across the state.

Both local newspapers still go to press each week: The Examiner is published on Fridays, still its hallmark Lincoln quote: To sin by silence, when one should protest, makes cowards out of men. The Roundup comes out on Tuesdays. Both operate under one staff, in an old wood building on the west end of town that once housed the Pinedale Bible church. The building itself is for sale.

Volume 19, Issue 16 of the Sublette Examiner cost $1. In it, you’ll read that the Bondurant BBQ’s secret beans recipe calls for 25 pounds of bacon and 7 pounds of dry beans. The mushroom harvest in the Bridger Teton National Forest will be extended. Harvesters are allowed to gather 3 gallons without a permit and for no fee. A permit is required for commercial harvesters, costs $300 and is good for 14 days.

At 7:54 p.m. on June 25, a rancher moving 300 head of cattle called to ask for traffic control for the following morning. On June 26 just before 11 p.m., a caller reported an injured moose on the highway that needed to be put down. An injured hawk was seen south of town on June 27. On June 28, a herd of antelope ran in front of a driver on Paradis Road and one got all wrapped up in the fence, but finally got free. Later that day, the paper reported, “a caller said a steer’s head was stuck at the fairgrounds.”

“That paper is about as fat as it ever gets anymore,” my mom said. Volume 19, Issue 16 is 16 pages. The Roundup is usually less, with mostly the same stories.

In July, my dad (now retired from Bucky’s), husband, two boys and I spent five days in the Wind River Mountains on a pack trip that was every bit as wild as I imagined it would be.

“This would have been news 100 years ago,” my dad said as we swatted mosquitoes and stared at the blue-tongued campfire one night. It’s not news now, of course, and I don’t blame anyone for that. No one is interested anymore in who is in town visiting with whom, or what the garden club talked about at its monthly meeting. We all have bigger fish to fry. What might be newsworthy about our trip is that our seasoned guide sees less and less kids in this rugged wilderness country. Why is it that fewer and fewer families are choosing to spend their vacation time outdoors in hard-to-navigate, slimly populated places?

To me, the role of a local newspaper has always been about conversation. But it’s also been about quenching curiosity. A good reporter will ask the questions that everyone is asking. But then, she will keep asking questions, because answers lead her like breadcrumbs down the path of a good story.

For my hometown newspapers, I envision a restoration of old stories, both for entertainment and for historic preservation of place and time. Brandon founded the Pinedale Roundup and the same time a town itself was being founded. That meant that a community and a way to get to the community were occurring side-by-side.

“We no longer imagine the newspaper as a city or the city as a newspaper,” Richard Rodriguez said in an interview with Harper’s Magazine in 2009.

But places still ask questions, and people long to understand their connections to a place.

It used to be that a local newspaper was a civic need. Is it still?

It used to be that a newspaper was the strongest indicator of a community’s survival and progress. Is it still?

“A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself,” said Arthur Miller. I would like to think that a good newspaper is a community talking to itself.

Now, whenever I come home, the pale colors of the high country, the shadowy, jagged sweep of mountains and the big bright sky stir up a restless nostalgia inside me. Place prompts questions: How long has the Corral Bar on Main Street been for sale, and why are the current owners selling? Who in Sublette County has any dream of taking over that bar, the long-thriving business that takes in whipped cowboys and biker tourists and 20-somethings, slick with oil from the field and barely above the drinking age?

I want to believe that community news matters still. I want to believe that reporters and editors, photographers and publishers, are genuinely and fiercely interested in the power of story, and the way that stories and communication bring people together. I was, and still am, an idealist.

What conversations are taking place now?

I will always believe in the power of story. Stories connect people. Through them, we realize we are more alike than we are different. Of that, I am sure.

The post Tracing a Community in Conversation (a personal essay celebrating my beloved hometown newspaper, which abruptly shut down on Aug. 6, 2025 – and then was brought back to life) appeared first on Kate Meadows Writing & Editing.

Note: On Aug. 6, 2025, my hometown newspaper, The Pinedale Roundup, abruptly ceased operation. It was one of 8 newspapers in rural Wyoming towns that shut down without warning, after parent company News Media Corporation announced it would cease operations, effective immediately. In honor of the 100-plus-year run of my hometown paper, I am sharing my essay, “Tracing a Community in Conversation,” here. The essay originally appeared in the Ink anthology, published by Hippocampus Books in 2021. Also see my post, “The Case for Community Newspapers,” published on this blog in 2020.

Tracing a Community in Conversation

When pioneer C. Watt Brandon made the long journey west from Minneapolis to the Green River Valley in remote western Wyoming in 1904, he likely was not thinking about what constitutes news. Instead, I imagine he was thinking of how he could establish a regular and civilized system of communication in cold and rugged country that was still wild and untamed. His uncle, John F. Patterson, was doggedly trying to start a town on a churning mountain creek 110 miles from the nearest railroad. Patterson had already approached two ranchers in the valley with a business proposal: If they would each donate five acres of their land for a new town site, he would build and stock a general store near the water. They would name their town Pinedale. Patterson vowed to give parcels of land to anyone who wanted to start a business in this hardscrabble place. He convinced his nephew to leave his newspaper job in the city and journey 1,100 miles west to start a newspaper.

A newspaper, Patterson reasoned, was a critical component to defining a town. The printed word was a way to connect the ranchers and homesteaders who were scattered like chaff across the high country. Moreover, a newspaper was a mouthpiece, touting the open land, wide sky and unimpeded promise of a place that begged for citizens to make it come alive. Brandon arrived in the spring and set out to find subscribers. If he could nail down 500 subscriptions at $2 a year each, the enterprise stood a chance. He forded streams in high water on horseback and crossed miles of hard, virgin terrain to meet with potential patrons.

After visiting what he claimed was every home within 50 miles of Pinedale, Brandon had acquired enough subscriptions to make a go at a newspaper. Smitten with the great cattle country and sure of its future, he drove a sheep wagon 110 miles south to Rock Springs, where he picked up a printing press. The press was so heavy it took him and his team of horses 5 days to travel back to Pinedale. At times, Brandon had to unload parts of the machine and carry them himself up steep embankments.

The inaugural issue of the Pinedale Roundup was hardly impressive when it rolled off the press on Sept. 8, 1904. Even with his beast of a printing press up and running, Brandon still did not have all the paper or printing materials for the six-column newspaper he had envisioned. He asked that his readers be indulgent and not expect too much. He promised to say all the good things he could about Pinedale.

“All seem to realize that a newspaper may do much towards settling up this country and bringing its many resources before a people who are looking for just such homes as we have to give, and may also succeed in interesting capital to bring improvements which we greatly need,” he wrote in his debut editorial.

Page one was black with newsprint and few headlines. Two ads flanked the right column, along with 3 local cattle brands. Dr. W.A. Hocker, Physician and Surgeon in Kemmerer 100 miles south, advertised that calls in the country would be promptly attended to. The news was divided by area: Merna (”Supt. Anderson of the Forest Reserves has been seen in these parts lately”); Big Piney (”All are pleased with the abundant hay crop this year”); Valley Roundup (”P.V. Sommers passed thru [sic] Pinedale recently en route to Pacific Spring, where he expects to recover some of the horses stolen from his camp near the Black Butte during July … Mr. Fred S. Boyce, who has been on the sick list for some time the past summer is again on duty, rather thin and pale but still in the ring”). In the Cora section, Brandon mused: “A friend of mine asked me the other day the name of the joint on the left hindleg of a cat, the joint the cat usually sits on. I was unable to reply. Will some kind reader inform the editor so I may know in the future.”

Readers would know who was cutting hay when, who the horse wranglers were and who was cooking the meals for the cowboys. They would know what day Howard Fueguet and his friend from Philadelphia were heading into the mountains for their six-week mountain sheep hunt and who their guide was. These were the happenings of a town in the progress of being made. This was the news, unfussy and colloquial and meandering.

 

*****

 

I was fifteen in the spring of 1999 when my parents first suggested I call the managing editor of the Pinedale Roundup and ask for a summer job. I laughed. Me, an emotional, academic-nerd teenager, working for my hometown newspaper? But I was also giddy. What if I could tell stories about this place where I was born and raised – and be paid for it?

You are a beautiful writer, they said. (I glowed inside but chalked up that comment to solid parental bias.) You know a lot of people in Sublette County. You know stories are out there, and you can be the one to help tell them, they said.

I wasn’t thinking about news as much as I was romanticizing the art of storytelling. I thought about the people I knew in my hometown, the connections that my dad always made as the second-generation owner of his dad’s namesake, Bucky’s Repair, a small engine repair and retail shop. Sun-beaten old ranchers and snowmobilers high on the mountain-fresh air and jaw-dropping off-trail rides came into the shop every day spouting stories of beaten paths, wrecked machines and personal glory. I thought about the places that held sweet memories for me: the wood patch and Beaver Hill, Halfmoon Lake, Elkhart Park, the Mesa. Could I, through writing newspaper stories, invite readers to not just appreciate, but love, this place and its people? Pinedale was quickly becoming a melting pot of outsiders. Long-time ranchers and thick-skinned cowboys who were born and raised in this country often clashed with the newer, greener in-town residents who hailed from places like central Texas and northern California.

I pondered the looming possibility of scoring a job at the newspaper. What teenager would just jump on the phone and ask to speak with the managing editor of her hometown paper, let alone hope a job would come of it? I imagined the job of a newspaper reporter demanded more importance and more life experience than that. Yet (my mom reminded me), what was the worst that could happen?

“The editor would tell you they don’t have any openings at this time,” Mom said.

“No,” I said. “She would laugh and tell me they don’t have any openings at this time.”

The managing editor was the wife of my high school English teacher. That pricked me with another sliver of insecurity. He was by far my favorite teacher in the high school, and I had an “A” in his class. What would he think if he found out I called his wife and asked for a job?

“He might think that’s pretty cool,” my dad said, a thought I hadn’t considered.

Finally, I summoned my nerves, called the Roundup, and asked to speak to the editor. She met with me in her office the following week, and by the end of our conversation, I had a job at minimum wage writing a weekly community profile piece for a new section of the newspaper we had invented on the spot: Neighbors.

That name, Neighbors, carried with it a wholesome, simple and appeasing connotation. I knew how stories used to be in the newspaper: They acknowledged family connections and spun a web of local activity. (Pinedale citizens were somewhat surprised Tuesday at lunch hour to see a fine young cow moose come trotting down the road east of town very much unconcerned and leap over the fence into the J.F. Patterson field and make her way across the pasture toward Pine creek [sic]. J.C. Reynolds who happened to be coming into town in his Buick at the time was able to get a very good view of the animal which appeared to be about a two-year-old and at one time was within 40 feet of her. Many about town secured their first view of a moose.) They offered aimless wisdom and advice. (An old housekeeper who has been the victim in her day of almost every kind of accident that can happen to a housekeeper says that whenever a kettle of jam or preserves is scorched set it immediately in a pan of cold water to restore the flavor.) By its very name, Neighbors would aim to honor and preserve those connections.

In my first week of work as an intern reporter at the Roundup, I made a list of the community characters I wanted to interview. I was indulging myself, I knew: I had mostly free reign over this brand new section of the newspaper, and I wanted to show my hometown the lively past and present of the people who made it tick. I started with people I knew well: my third grade teacher, the dog catcher, the owner of the local hardware store who pedaled around town on a recumbent bike. Then, I cracked open the white pages and read the names page-by-page. With a pencil I starred the names that were either legendary or vaguely familiar to me. There was Don Kendall, the first CEO of PepsiCo who owned the famed Kendall Ranch. There was Scott Grossman, a barrel chested expert billiard player with a shock of black hair. Dad said I should talk to Chris Nichols, who had lived in Sublette County forever and had more stories than I would know what to do with. Jeanne Raney was a speech pathologist who worked at my old elementary school. I didn’t know exactly what a speech pathologist did, and I wanted to find out.

My first newspaper story ran on June 17, 1999, about Pinedale’s valedictorian for that year. He was a genius – I couldn’t fathom talking to someone so smart, let alone interview him. My heart thudded in my chest as I paced the Roundup office the day he was to come for the interview. My editor told me to calm down. We both spoke English, didn’t we? Start there and ask him how he’s doing, she said.

Every once in a while, my dad came home from the shop with a name or a story. Through his grapevine I interviewed a single woman who built her own log cabin using only hand tools, the last Pearl Harbor survivor in the county, and James Baker, the former Secretary of State under George H.W. Bush who had a ranch somewhere east of town. When an ersatz mountain man wandered into town via U.S. Highway 191, I tracked him down at the rodeo grounds. I sat in his canvas tent while he told me about his summers of trekking the high country from California to Wyoming with a horse and a knapsack, doing his best to imitate the mountain men of the 1800s despite his aching back. I interviewed wrinkled couples on patterned sofas in dark living rooms, scratching out their secrets to a half century of marriage. Each of the people I talked to handed me offerings of wisdom. Some knew what those offerings were before we even shook hands. Others opened doors to me tentatively and asked, “Why me? I have nothing interesting to say.” The more I interviewed and wrote, the bigger I realized my role as a reporter was. I came to see that I was the conduit who could move people’s unrefined fragments of thought into a wider community conversation. There was gleaming power in that – not only in offering their stories to a wider world, but also in helping them realize they had something worth sharing.

“A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself,” Arthur Miller once said.

I hoped that each of my stories in the Roundup were an invitation for the community to talk to itself.

 

*****

 

By January 1905, the Pinedale Roundup was anchored with ads (LAND! LAND! LAND! IRRIGABLE LAND. BEST ON EARTH. On the easiest terms you ever heard of!) and pulsing with loosely reported, unadorned stories. One bore the headline, “LEAVING THE CITY: Tired of the Trials of City Life Many Are [Heading] to the Country.” It read:

Back to the ranch is now the dream of thousands of people who begin to realize that the city doesn’t hold all of life that is worth having. Ten or fifteen years ago all the talk and tendency was of and to the city. Every city boy was determined to stay in the city, and every country boy of energy and ability had made up his mind to go to the city in search of fortune. Now city boys plan to live in the country, and thousands and thousands of men and women, grown tired of the narrowness city life means to the less fortunate, are hoping and planning for the day when they may leave the smoke and grime and imprisoning walls of the city behind and seek the country with its open spaces, its pure air and its freedom.

 

Another story in the same issue reported that Mr. W.E. Enos, the owner of the company building the telephone line between Daniel and Pinedale, purchased 325 head of yearling steers for his ranch on the Green River, at an average of $1.50 per head. In Daniel, Christmas dinners were given at the homes of D.F. Harrison, Dr. Montrose and Ira Dodge. Other friendly faces from nearby parts were recognized in Daniel.

“Come again,” the paper insists, “the latch string is out.”

From the Burns section, Billie Todd, Alex Price, Shorty Nolan and Jack Frazier returned from the Pinedale dance O.K., and Mrs. Poole was visiting with her mother on Horse Creek. Christmas raffle prizes included a hair bridle, a mounted elk head, a Japanese muffler, a mounted antelope head and a shot gun. A silk quilt handmade for a needy woman failed to draw enough raffle tickets.

“Many are out of their money and few were made happy,” the report reads.

Townsend & Hall of Daniel, Wyo., sought General Merchandise – Dry goods, Boots and Shoes. Prices Reasonable. The Fremont Saloon in Pinedale carried a full line of High Grade Whiskies and Cigars. Nice Cool Beer was Always on Draught [sic] in Rock Springs.

Articles in a June 1905 issue announced that 10,000 trout were planted in Burnt Lake, 25-by-100-foot town lots were on sale for $25.00 and the first tourist of the season had arrived in Pinedale.

“B.F. R. berts [sic] killed a wolf down near Sand Springs recently. We hear that a great many of these enemies of cattle are seen,” one report reads. Another says, “H.E. Allen started Wednesday with a load of beef to Rock Springs. He will return with freight for the New Fork store.”

The news in August 1907 was that a 1900-pound Gale 27 Horse Power became the first automobile on the streets of Pinedale, making the 110-mile trip from Rock Springs in seven hours.

The Pinedale Roundup, with its subscription cost of $2.00 per year, was avidly chronicling a town’s early progress.

 

*****

 

In February 2001, less than two years after I whetted my storytelling chops with that first interview, the Pinedale Roundup was bought out by its rival, the owner of the Sublette County Journal. Rob Shaul, a bold and innovative entrepreneur with family in the area, had started the Journal in 1996, intending to bring a fresh perspective of local history and hard-hitting news to the county. The Journal was a fierce competitor of the Roundup, having branded itself as The Newspaper of the Green River Valley. My grandpa, who grew up on the Beaver Creeks west of town (his news area would have been “Beaver” in those early Roundup editions) was a regular contributor to the Journal. He wrote “Bucky’s Stories,” colorful and unrestrained musings of his life navigating the implacable mountain terrain. Eventually, I would come to prize those stories for what they represented: not just larger-than-life chronicles of my family, but also annals of the type of grit and determination required to thrive in a desolate, wild place. But back then, I had no use for the Journal, nor my grandpa’s stories. The Journal was nothing more than a power trip for a trailblazer who wanted to flex his own mental muscles.

The sale of the Roundup came fast. One day I was finishing a story on the high school Nordic ski team, and the next day I was given a box and told to pack up my stuff. Rob Shaul swept in with the force of a bull, touting his minion staff and big ideas. When the dust settled, nearly all the faces at the Roundup were new. I hated every one of them.

But the arms race to win over the community with the most accurate and attentive local newspaper was far from over. Four women who comprised the core of the former Roundup Staff – a designer, a sales lead, a photographer and a reporter – banded together to form a new publishing company and under it, a new newspaper. Two months after the turbulent Roundup takeover, on April 5, 2001, the inaugural issue of the Sublette Examiner hit local newsstands with a quiet determination. Front-page headlines reported that Sublette County was the second-fastest-growing county in the state, and that the Rural Health Care District would hire three EMTs. The Wyoming Game and Fish underestimated the amount of rangeland the county’s mule deer herds used in the winter. An ad on page three announced the 20th “Aniel Daniel” Chili Cook-off at the historic Daniel Schoolhouse 11 miles west of town. At the bottom of the editorial page, which announced Rhonda Swain as Editor, Cat Urbigkit as Reporter, Deanne Swain as ad designer and Delsa Allen as photographer, was the Abraham Lincoln quote: “To sin by silence, when one should protest, makes cowards out of men.”

Below the names of the four big players, my name was listed as an intern, along with two of my classmates – a photography intern, Tara, and a design intern, Tiffany, Rhonda Swain’s daughter.

In her debut editorial, Rhonda Swain called for community involvement to make the Sublette Examiner a true community newspaper. The community page, “Wyoming Winds,” published the Senior Menu and congratulated the Big Piney Middle School wrestling team, the Rustlers, for running “roughshod” to sweep almost every category at the District History Day competition. A photo of Gene Bryson, winner of the Fremont Lake Fish Derby, compared the size of his 21-pound lake trout to his two-year old granddaughter. The trout, of course, is bigger.

The short-lived “Neighbors” column of the Roundup became “Personalities” for the Examiner. My first article profiled eighth grade volleyball and track coach Jennifer Proud. The story is full of clichés: Proud has “a fiery spirit,” remembers her “first taste of competition” and is “constantly on her toes.” But that didn’t matter. I felt like I was part of something big – a community uprising, in a sense. I knew well that the pen was mightier than the sword.

The launch of the Sublette Examiner a seamless transition on the surface and a roiling act of rebellion beneath. Conversations around ongoing hot topics populated the early pages. In a letter to the editor in Issue 2, Vol. 1, Richard Winckler wrote, “If the [new] bike and walking path don’t go through, one of these days someone is going to be driving along, not paying enough attention to the road, and clobber Chuck Vitt and his pooch walking, or Ken Konicek jogging, or Mike Lewis bicycling, or one of a bunch of other folks whose names I do not recall at the moment.” Another letter by Samuel Taylor begins, “Are you really trying to tell me that you believe these drilling rigs and their drilling operations have some kind of effect on stress in deer? I’m tired of hearing it.”

The annual Pinedale Boat Club Barrel Guesses took up half of page 10. Guesses for when the barrel on the still-frozen Fremont Lake would reach the shore range from 4:10 p.m. on March 20 to 4:30 p.m. on June 10. The winner, like always, would take home a cash prize.

On page 11, a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin read, “If you scatter thorns, don’t go barefoot.”

According to the classifieds, you could buy a 1700 square-foot custom cedar home for $235,000.

 

*****

 

In 1908, C. Watt Brandon traded in his Pinedale Roundup for a good chunk of land and a tobacco pouch full of elk teeth offered by Billy Wells, well known in the Green River Valley as one of the first dude ranchers in Wyoming. Elk teeth was as good as money in the early 1900s, because they contained ivory.

“I have taken an interest in my work, and that which has been news has been treated as such,” Brandon wrote in an editorial on Jan. 1, announcing the sale. “… but at the same time there have been many occurrences and doings, which would have been considered news by many, but the publication of anything in connection therewith would have caused much unpleasantness and sorrow possibly in homes. Many of these things we have refrained from making news of.”

Brandon moved south to start a new newspaper in Kemmerer, Wyo, another lonely town he saw in need of stirring up promise. He never lived on the Wells ranch. “One good paper can do much to advance the interests and resources of this country and through the local columns keep the people of the various communities in touch with each other,” he wrote in his farewell editorial to Pinedale.

After four years, Wells would sell the newspaper to Charles F. Patterson, the son of the town’s founder, John F. Patterson. Charles Patterson used the newspaper to advocate for the town’s incorporation and wide scale improvement. “A thousand bucks a year should make Pinedale a swell place to live,” Patterson wrote in an August 30, 1911, editorial. “Possibly we could have enough out of that thousand a year, to in time give us a system of water works, a street lighting system … Let’s get the town ‘wise heads’ together and debate the matter.”

 

 

I graduated from Pinedale High School in 2002 and left Wyoming to pursue a degree in English at a liberal arts school halfway across the country. My college years unfolded less than two hours from Brandon’s former news post in Minneapolis. On July 31, 2006, both the Pinedale Roundup and the Sublette Examiner were sold to Wyoming Newspapers, Inc. According to the Examiner article, News Media Corporation Chief Executive Officer John Tompkins made the Examiner partners “an offer they couldn’t refuse, including a pledge to work with the community to continue to grow this community newspaper.” With the acquisition of the Pinedale Roundup and the Sublette Examiner, Wyoming Newspapers, Inc. owned 11 newspapers across the state.

Both local newspapers still go to press each week: The Examiner is published on Fridays, still its hallmark Lincoln quote: To sin by silence, when one should protest, makes cowards out of men. The Roundup comes out on Tuesdays. Both operate under one staff, in an old wood building on the west end of town that once housed the Pinedale Bible church. The building itself is for sale.

Volume 19, Issue 16 of the Sublette Examiner cost $1. In it, you’ll read that the Bondurant BBQ’s secret beans recipe calls for 25 pounds of bacon and 7 pounds of dry beans. The mushroom harvest in the Bridger Teton National Forest will be extended. Harvesters are allowed to gather 3 gallons without a permit and for no fee. A permit is required for commercial harvesters, costs $300 and is good for 14 days.

At 7:54 p.m. on June 25, a rancher moving 300 head of cattle called to ask for traffic control for the following morning. On June 26 just before 11 p.m., a caller reported an injured moose on the highway that needed to be put down. An injured hawk was seen south of town on June 27. On June 28, a herd of antelope ran in front of a driver on Paradis Road and one got all wrapped up in the fence, but finally got free. Later that day, the paper reported, “a caller said a steer’s head was stuck at the fairgrounds.”

“That paper is about as fat as it ever gets anymore,” my mom said. Volume 19, Issue 16 is 16 pages. The Roundup is usually less, with mostly the same stories.

In July, my dad (now retired from Bucky’s), husband, two boys and I spent five days in the Wind River Mountains on a pack trip that was every bit as wild as I imagined it would be.

“This would have been news 100 years ago,” my dad said as we swatted mosquitoes and stared at the blue-tongued campfire one night. It’s not news now, of course, and I don’t blame anyone for that. No one is interested anymore in who is in town visiting with whom, or what the garden club talked about at its monthly meeting. We all have bigger fish to fry. What might be newsworthy about our trip is that our seasoned guide sees less and less kids in this rugged wilderness country. Why is it that fewer and fewer families are choosing to spend their vacation time outdoors in hard-to-navigate, slimly populated places?

To me, the role of a local newspaper has always been about conversation. But it’s also been about quenching curiosity. A good reporter will ask the questions that everyone is asking. But then, she will keep asking questions, because answers lead her like breadcrumbs down the path of a good story.

For my hometown newspapers, I envision a restoration of old stories, both for entertainment and for historic preservation of place and time. Brandon founded the Pinedale Roundup and the same time a town itself was being founded. That meant that a community and a way to get to the community were occurring side-by-side.

“We no longer imagine the newspaper as a city or the city as a newspaper,” Richard Rodriguez said in an interview with Harper’s Magazine in 2009.

But places still ask questions, and people long to understand their connections to a place.

It used to be that a local newspaper was a civic need. Is it still?

It used to be that a newspaper was the strongest indicator of a community’s survival and progress. Is it still?

“A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself,” said Arthur Miller. I would like to think that a good newspaper is a community talking to itself.

Now, whenever I come home, the pale colors of the high country, the shadowy, jagged sweep of mountains and the big bright sky stir up a restless nostalgia inside me. Place prompts questions: How long has the Corral Bar on Main Street been for sale, and why are the current owners selling? Who in Sublette County has any dream of taking over that bar, the long-thriving business that takes in whipped cowboys and biker tourists and 20-somethings, slick with oil from the field and barely above the drinking age?

I want to believe that community news matters still. I want to believe that reporters and editors, photographers and publishers, are genuinely and fiercely interested in the power of story, and the way that stories and communication bring people together. I was, and still am, an idealist.

What conversations are taking place now?

I will always believe in the power of story. Stories connect people. Through them, we realize we are more alike than we are different. Of that, I am sure.

The post Tracing a Community in Conversation (a personal essay celebrating my beloved hometown newspaper, which abruptly shut down on Aug. 6, 2025) appeared first on Kate Meadows Writing & Editing.

Do you have what it takes to be a writer?

Every writer asks this of themselves at one point or another. The answer depends, of course, on how you define what it means to be a writer in the first place.

When you say you’re a writer, what does that mean, exactly? Does it mean you write in your journal every day? Does it mean you’re working on some short stories? Does it mean you have published a book?

In truth, our definition of “writer” tends to shift over time. Maybe you felt you became a writer the moment you fell in love with words—the way they tell stories, carry emotions, and make meaning. Or maybe you’re the kind of writer who builds with words the way a mason lays stone, capturing a brand’s message or crafting a powerful narrative from raw experience.

Given this shape-shifting identity we call “writer,” is there anything consistent about the people who pursue it?

I believe there is. And it’s not the number of publications, degrees, or accolades. It’s the qualities we carry and cultivate along the way—the ones that keep us coming back to the page. In my experience—as a writer, and as someone who’s had the privilege of walking alongside many other writers—I’ve seen 4 traits rise to the surface time and again.

Think you’re a writer? Here are 4 traits that you must have (and they’re not what you think):

1. Naiveté

A writer is supposed to smart and witty, right? Have you heard the sage advice, “Write what you know?”

It isn’t bad advice. But it’s also not the end of the road.

What I really mean when I say “naiveté” is a hunger for asking questions – a drive to always want to know more.

Imagine a writer who believes she already knows it all. Her characters may become predictable. Her observations might fall flat. Her stories are tired before they begin.

But a writer who brings a sense of wonder and curiosity—who stays open to the unknown—invites something richer into the work.

Naiveté, in the best sense, keeps us exploring. It lets us write with childlike fascination, with openness to discovery. Even if you’ve seen the world and lived through its trials, there’s a kind of sacred naiveté you can choose to keep—one that asks, “What if I don’t know yet? What might I find if I stay open?”

Ask yourself:

How would a child view this experience?Am I shutting down too soon, assuming I already know how this ends?2. Audaciousness

Some of your best writing may come from the moments you decided to be brave. To say what others might shy away from. To follow the idea that gave you butterflies.

As a writer, you are also a risk-taker. There is no way around it. When we write, we take risks. Some of those risks are putting ourselves out there, being misunderstood, or telling a truth that is particularly difficult.

Audaciousness is the trait that lets you chase a wild idea, even when it doesn’t make sense on paper. Intrepid boldness is what spurs you try something new—a different voice, a different medium, a new genre. Audacity gives you permission to speak up and tell the truth, even when it feels risky.

Ask yourself:

Does this writing give me a little thrill or jolt of energy?Am I allowing myself to be bold—not just in writing, but in life?3. Self-Motivation

There’s nothing fancy about this trait: Self-motivation is what gets you in the chair. It’s the characteristic that reminds you: To be a writer, you have to write.

Let’s be honest—there are always other things that seem more urgent. The laundry. The meeting. The scroll through your phone. But writing doesn’t happen by accident. It requires intention.

That doesn’t mean discipline has to feel like punishment. Sometimes, motivation looks like planning ahead or giving yourself small rewards. Sometimes it means saying no to distractions or setting gentle boundaries with people you love.

Ask yourself:

Where have I been unrealistic about how I’m spending my time?Is writing showing up in both the things I want to do and the things I’m actually doing?4. A Willingness to Be Confronted

Writing will challenge you. It might stir up old wounds or force you to wrestle with hard truths. You might face resistance from others—from readers, critics, family—and even from yourself.

But confrontation isn’t the enemy. It can be the refining fire that makes your work stronger. Think feedback that sharpens your sentences. Think the struggle that clarifies your message. Even the blank page is a kind of confrontation—and you get to decide how you’ll respond.

Ask yourself:

Do I value feedback for my writing? Do I trust the source of the feedback?How can this confrontation—however uncomfortable—help me grow as a writer?

Being a writer isn’t a fixed identity. It’s a living, breathing practice. It’s a discipline and an art that reflects both your inner world and the world around you. Writing is a form of inquiry and interpretation—a way to find meaning in the friction between life’s questions.

And in the middle of it all, it’s these four traits—naiveté, audaciousness, self-motivation, and a willingness to be confronted—that keep you steady. These four traits will keep you honest. And, they will keep you showing up to the page, day after day.

Which of these traits resonates most with you today? Which one feels like it’s asking you to grow?

The post 4 Traits Every Writer Must Have appeared first on Kate Meadows Writing & Editing.

Today, my grandmother, Elgene Lund, turns 101.

Let that number settle in for a moment. One hundred and one.

Elgene was born on May 23, 1924, in Chisago City, Minnesota, into a world very different from the one we know today. Her family didn’t have much—money was scarce, life was hard—but she grew up surrounded by the strength of community and the quiet resolve that comes from living through lean years.

Even as a child, she felt a pull to care for others. Nursing wasn’t just a career for her—it was a calling. She has lived her life in service of that call, always tending to others, always thinking about what someone else might need. That hasn’t changed, even now, at 101. Caregiving is simply in her bones. Even when she is the one being cared for – so much thanks to my aunt who is her fulltime caregiver – her mind is on others. Who has a birthday coming up? Who needs a meal? What holiday cards do we need to be thinking about? (Yes, she mails greeting cards for every holiday.)

She and my grandfather – the late Professor Doniver Lund – raised four children in a modest home on the corner of Jefferson and 7th in St. Peter, Minnesota. She worked as a school nurse at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter for many years – the same college where her husband, my grandfather, taught history. Her house was an anchor in the tightest-knit neighborhood I know, Valley View. When my mom and her siblings were growing up, Valley View was a place where kids always played outside, where every mom had a Band-Aid and a chocolate chip cookie, where impromptu picnics in a neighbor’s backyard were a regular occurrence.

Everything about the house at 705 Valley View Road was just as Grandma wanted it – or would be just as she wanted it, as soon as she could find the time to get out a paintbrush, convince her husband to wash the windows or needle one of her children to pull the weeds. Her house was full of warmth, hard work, and a little (okay, a lot of) Scandinavian stubbornness—the same qualities that define Elgene herself. Aside from summer forays to distant places like Spearfish, SD, and Orange, NJ, where my grandfather taught summer classes, my grandma has never lived outside Minnesota.

I suspect Minnesota has never quite been the same without her imprint.

My grandma is tough as nails. Stubborn as nails, too. We almost lost her two years ago to an infection. But, when a palliative care nurse showed up in her hospital room, she snapped awake and said, “What is she doing here? I not ready to die!”

Two years later, we celebrate her – and her tremendous mark OVER the centurion line.

You don’t make it to 101 without a little grit—and Grandma has it in spades.

Just think of what she has lived through:
— She was five when the stock market crashed in 1929.
— She was a teenager during World War II.
— She witnessed the invention of the television, the moon landing, and the first heart transplant. The first commercial microwave was introduced when she was 21.
— Tupperware came on the scene in 1946. The very idea of food storage changed during her adulthood.
— She raised her children before disposable diapers were common.
— She saw civil rights marches, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the dawn of the internet.
— She lived through rotary phones, landlines, flip phones, and now video calls with great-grandchildren.
— She’s seen 19 presidents, the evolution of women’s rights, and the world change faster than anyone could have predicted.

And through it all, she has remained: deeply compassionate and quietly mighty.

At 101, she is not just a witness to history—she is living history. She is the thread that ties our family’s past to our present, the one we look to when we want to remember where we come from and what really matters.

Your story matters, too.

As I celebrate my grandmother today, I can’t help but think about all the untold stories we carry—memories, lessons, turning points. The ordinary moments that shaped us. The people who made us who we are.

If you’ve ever felt the urge to write your story, or even just wondered where to begin, I’d love to invite you to join me for a one-hour webinar:

Telling Our Life Stories

Saturday, May 31 |

9–10 a.m. MT / 11 a.m.–Noon ET

Click here to register

Stories are all around us. We hear them. We read them. We tell them.

What stories fill your family? What stories are important to preserve? What stories do you want – need – to live on?

In Telling Our Life Stories, we’ll explore the power of story, learn how to preserve and share memories of the past, and reflect on why our stories matter. You’ll leave with tools, inspiration, and a game plan to begin bringing your story to life.

Because one day—if we’re lucky—someone might write about us the way I get to write about my Grandma Elgene.

Register for Telling Our Life Stories

Happy birthday, Grandma. Today, we celebrate YOU – the amazing, mighty, determined woman you are, and the heart that has touched countless others in ways you know and ways you can’t even imagine. You, at 101, are an inspiration.

 

The post 101 Years of Elgene: A Birthday Tribute to My Grandma appeared first on Kate Meadows Writing & Editing.

Recently, I shared a survey link with my newsletter subscribers, to get a feel for how or whether people value accountability to their writing craft. Would anyone be interested in being part of a writing accountability group? Is a virtual community built around group coaching and quiet writing time something people would be willing to pay for?

I have hosted a free hour-long Write-In on Zoom twice a month for almost two years now. Nearly 100 people have signed up to receive reminders of these free writing events, and a few of us gather at every session. There are the familiar faces, and often, people hop on for the first time, eager to see what an hour of dedicated writing time might produce for them. Everyone shares a specific writing goal for the session, and then I set a timer and we write for a solid 45-50 minutes. At the end, we reconvene and writers have an opportunity to share any insights that came out of their writing session.

A few things I’ve heard at recent write-ins:

“It’s amazing how fast the words can go down,” one writer said.

“I’m going to just hop in here and work on this with the moral support of you all,” said another.

A third writer recently showed up to a write-in with the goal of beginning to write her father’s obituary. It was a colossal task she didn’t necessarily feel up to doing. But with the built-in structure and accountability of the hour-long write-in, she knew writing at this specific time and place would be beneficial to that task.

Once our hour of writing was up, she said, “If it hadn’t have been for this [write-in], I wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have taken the time to gather my thoughts, wouldn’t have put down a timeline, wouldn’t have taken the time to write. Thank you.”

If an informal, hour-long session once or twice a month can pack such a punch, what could a more regular and more robust writing accountability group look like? Loosely, I envisioned a weekly or semi-weekly gathering on Zoom, for 90 minutes of group coaching and writing. Group coaching means we would reserve the first 15 minutes and the last 15 minutes of each session to talk about our writing, share our goals and struggles, troubleshoot specific problems in one another’s drafts. Writing means we would put the proverbial pen to paper and spend a dedicated quiet hour, writing. The writing time would be individual, but we’d all be working on our own writing at the same time.

Would anyone be interested in such a group? Would anyone be willing to invest in quality, structured writing time, combined with coaching to help them gain clarity and direction in their stories?

Well … maybe.

The results of the survey suggested that, for the most part, people love the idea of free things they can have access to often, with no real strings attached.

Forty-six percent of those who responded said they would prefer weekly writing and coaching sessions.Sixty-two percent would pay up to $12 per month for such an offering.Thirty-one percent would not be willing to pay at all.Only one respondent would be willing to pay more than $20 per month for regularly scheduled, ongoing coaching and writing sessions.

I share this not as an admonition but rather as an intriguing look into how people think about and value their writing time.

For almost five years I ran a free online writing community that encouraged members to share their writing goals, network with other writers and join in conversations around our writing. More than 400 people joined the community. Few of them interacted with one another or participated in any of the online events or questions after joining.

The lesson, to me, was, when something is free, you have nothing to lose. When you have nothing to lose, you have no skin in the game – no real drive or motivation to show up or contribute.

What is your writing – your creative time and your creative work – worth to you? Where do you want your writing to go? How far do you want to take it? Is that goal something you can confidently achieve on your own, with no outside accountability or motivation or encouragement? Is it a goal that already benefits from accountability and encouragement from a loving circle you have created?

How to you consistently show up to the page to do the creative work?

It’s one of the questions I am asked most often.

I totally get it. Writing can be a lonely endeavor. Often, when you’re the one writing a book, penning a short story or trying to get an essay down, no one else is looking over your shoulder. No one is checking in on you, asking you how the project is going or what you accomplished on said project today. If you don’t show up to work on it, no one but you will notice.

Sometimes, that lack of accountability is enough to ask ourselves why our work matters anyway. Who cares about what we have to say?

Hope Clark, one of my heroes in the writing world, addressed this challenge in one of her weekly newsletters a few years ago. She said: “You have to love to write. It has to be something you’d do regardless of sales. It’s a hunger. It’s not about tropes and trends; it’s about what burns inside you that needs to show up on paper. It’s about storytelling.”

Do you love to write? Are you one of those people who can’t NOT write?

How do YOU consistently show up?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to drop me a line at kate@katemeadows.com, or schedule a free 20-minute Discovery Call here.

For more on Write-Ins and establishing a regular writing practice, check out these blog posts:

What IS a Write-In?

6 Benefits of Group Write-Ins

Should You Write Every Day?

 

 

The post What is Accountability Worth to You? appeared first on Kate Meadows Writing & Editing.

For almost two years now, I’ve been hosting community write-ins twice a month, and the experience has been nothing short of inspiring. Over time, I’ve watched writers of all levels make incredible strides in their projects. The breakthroughs they’ve had—whether it’s pushing through writer’s block, achieving a personal word count goal, or simply finding their creative flow—have been nothing short of remarkable. The feedback I’ve received from participants reflects not only the power of these group sessions but also the sense of connection and motivation that comes from writing alongside others.

(Never heard of the term “write-in?” Sometimes they’re referred to as “co-writes.” For more on what this event actually IS, see my post, What IS a Write-In?)

In this post, I want to share some of the key benefits of group write-ins and why they’ve become such an essential part of many writers’ routines.

Accountability Boost – Writing in a group helps keep you on track. It’s so easy to put off writing when no one’s watching, but when you know others are expecting you to show up, it’s a whole different story. Whether it’s a set start and end time or simply knowing that others are writing too, that gentle pressure can be the nudge you need to stay consistent. It’s easier to show up, because you trust others will be there, too, for the same reason: to get some writing done.Built-in Motivation – There’s something contagious about seeing other people deep in their writing flow. Even when you’re feeling sluggish or uninspired, being surrounded by others working hard can spark your own creativity. It’s that sense of “if they can do it, so can I.” Plus, there’s often that little adrenaline rush when you hit a word count goal alongside others, making the process feel like a collective achievement.A Sense of Community – Anyone who’s followed me online for a while knows that I am not shy about admitting that writing is lonely work. Writing is often a solitary endeavor, but when you join a group write-in, you’re immediately part of something bigger. The camaraderie and understanding you share with fellow writers – just by showing up – can add tremendous value to your writing practice. Writers get the struggles and the triumphs of the slippery creative process, in turn helping you feel supported and less isolated. It’s a reminder that you’re not in this alone, and support can keep you going through tough writing days.Idea Generation – While group write-ins may focus on individual work, the time spent together can still be a great opportunity for brainstorming and sharing ideas. You might not directly collaborate on your projects, but just chatting with others before or after the session can give you the fresh perspective you need. Maybe someone shares a strategy for tackling a plot hole, or someone else’s writing sparks an idea for your own story that you hadn’t considered. Write-ins are also wonderful opportunities to share resources with one another.Structured Writing Time – One of the hardest things about writing is simply carving out the time to do it. Group write-ins offer dedicated time to focus on your project, free from the usual distractions. Knowing that you’ve set aside a chunk of time to just write creates structure in an otherwise chaotic schedule. It’s like a mini writing retreat within your regular routine, where the only focus is getting words on the page. “This was a perfect time box for me,” said one writer who attended one of my recent write-ins. “I got the assignment done I wanted, and I did it faster than I would have if I were writing on my own.”Less Pressure, More Progress – Group write-ins encourage quantity over quality, which can be a huge relief for writers who (like me) struggle with perfectionism. The goal isn’t to write perfect prose; it’s about getting your ideas out. There’s freedom in knowing that no one is expecting a polished draft right away. This mindset helps silence your inner critic, allowing you to push forward and make real progress rather than getting stuck on small details.

I host two free write-ins a month, on the first Wednesday at 11 a.m. MT and the third Thursday at 2 p.m. MT. Get on the list to receive regular reminders about upcoming write-ins here.

Are you part of a community write-in or have you participated in a write-in before? If so, I’d love to hear about your experience. Drop me a line or share in the comments.

The post 6 Benefits of Group Write-Ins appeared first on Kate Meadows Writing & Editing.