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12 Nature-Inspired Creative Writing Prompts

Nature inspires, and so do these creative writing prompts.

Today’s post includes a selection of prompts from my book, 1200 Creative Writing Prompts . Enjoy!

Creative writing prompts are excellent tools for writers who are feeling uninspired or who simply want to tackle a new writing challenge. Today’s creative writing prompts focus on nature.

For centuries, writers have been composing poems that celebrate nature, stories that explore it, and essays that analyze it.

Nature is a huge source of inspiration for all creative people. You can find it heavily featured in film, television, art, and music.

Creative Writing Prompts

You can use these creative writing prompts in any way you choose. Sketch a scene, write a poem, draft a story, or compose an essay. The purpose of these prompts is to inspire you, so take the images they bring to your mind and run with them. And have fun!

A young girl and her mother walk to the edge of a field, kneel down in the grass, and plant a tree.
The protagonist wakes up in a seemingly endless field of wildflowers in full bloom with no idea how he or she got there.
Write a piece using the following image: a smashed flower on the sidewalk.
A family of five from a large, urban city decides to spend their one-week vacation camping.
An elderly couple traveling through the desert spend an evening stargazing and sharing memories of their lives.
A woman is working in her garden when she discovers an unusual egg.
Write a piece using the following image: a clearing deep in the woods where sunlight filters through the overhead lattice of tree leaves.
Some people are hiking in the woods when they are suddenly surrounded by hundreds of butterflies.
A person who lives in a metropolitan apartment connects with nature through the birds that come to the window.
Write a piece using the following image: an owl soaring through the night sky.
A well-to-do family from the city that has lost all their wealth except an old, run-down farmhouse in the country. They are forced to move into it and learn to live humbly.
Two adolescents, a sister and brother, are visiting their relatives’ farm and witness a sow giving birth.

Again, you can use these creative writing prompts to write anything — poems, stories, songs, essays, blog posts, or just sit down and start freewriting.

Go to Source Author: Melissa Donovan

Once….

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Can We Write When We Aren’t Feeling It?

I wrote this essay in a sh*tty ass mood. And I survived… and maybe even learned something. Continue reading on…

A different perspective to look from if you’re going through a lot

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12 Nature-Inspired Creative Writing Prompts

Today’s post includes a selection of prompts from my book, 1200 Creative Writing Prompts . Enjoy!

Creative writing prompts are excellent tools for writers who are feeling uninspired or who simply want to tackle a new writing challenge. Today’s creative writing prompts focus on nature.

For centuries, writers have been composing poems that celebrate nature, stories that explore it, and essays that analyze it.

Nature is a huge source of inspiration for all creative people. You can find it heavily featured in film, television, art, and music.

Creative Writing Prompts

A young girl and her mother walk to the edge of a field, kneel down in the grass, and plant a tree.
The protagonist wakes up in a seemingly endless field of wildflowers in full bloom with no idea how he or she got there.
Write a piece using the following image: a smashed flower on the sidewalk.
A family of five from a large, urban city decides to spend their one-week vacation camping.
An elderly couple traveling through the desert spend an evening stargazing and sharing memories of their lives.
A woman is working in her garden when she discovers an unusual egg.
Write a piece using the following image: a clearing deep in the woods where sunlight filters through the overhead lattice of tree leaves.
Some people are hiking in the woods when they are suddenly surrounded by hundreds of butterflies.
A person who lives in a metropolitan apartment connects with nature through the birds that come to the window.
Write a piece using the following image: an owl soaring through the night sky.
A well-to-do family from the city that has lost all their wealth except an old, run-down farmhouse in the country. They are forced to move into it and learn to live humbly.
Two adolescents, a sister and brother, are visiting their relatives’ farm and witness a sow giving birth.

Again, you can use these creative writing prompts to write anything at — poems, stories, songs, essays, blog posts, or just sit down and start freewriting.

By Melissa Donovan Source: writingforward.com

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Nature Writing Examples

by Lisa Hiton

From the essays of Henry David Thoreau, to the features in National Geographic , nature writing has bridged the gap between scientific articles about environmental issues and personal, poetic reflections on the natural world. This genre has grown since Walden to include nature poetry, ecopoetics, nature reporting, activism, fiction, and beyond. We now even have television shows and films that depict nature as the central figure. No matter the genre, nature writers have a shared awe and curiosity about the world around us—its trees, creatures, elements, storms, and responses to our human impact on it over time.

Whether you want to report on the weather, write poems from the point of view of flowers, or track your journey down a river in your hometown, your passion for nature can manifest in many different written forms. As the world turns and we transition between seasons, we can reflect on our home, planet Earth, with great dedication to description, awe, science, and image.

Journal Examples: Keeping Track of Your Tracks

One of the many lost arts of our modern time is that of journaling. While keeping a journal is a beneficial practice for all, it is especially crucial to nature writers. John A. Murray , author of Writing About Nature: A Creative Guide , begins his study of the nature writing practice with the importance of journaling:

Nature writers may rely on journals more consistently than novelists and poets because of the necessity of describing long-term processes of nature, such as seasonal or environmental changes, in great detail, and of carefully recording outdoor excursions for articles and essays[…] The important thing, it seems to me, is not whether you keep journals, but, rather, whether you have regular mechanisms—extended letters, telephone calls to friends, visits with confidants, daily meditation, free-writing exercises—that enable you to comprehensively process events as they occur. But let us focus in this section on journals, which provide one of the most common means of chronicling and interpreting personal history. The words journal and journey share an identical root and common history. Both came into the English language as a result of the Norman Victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. For the next three hundred years, French was the chief language of government, religion, and learning in England. The French word journie, which meant a day’s work or a day’s travel, was one of the many words that became incorporated into English at the time[…]The journal offers the writer a moment of rest in that journey, a sort of roadside inn along the highway. Here intellect and imagination are alone with the blank page and composition can proceed with an honesty and informality often precluded in more public forms of expression. As a result, several important benefits can accrue: First, by writing with unscrutinized candor and directness on a particular subject, a person can often find ways to write more effectively on the same theme elsewhere. Second, the journal, as a sort of unflinching mirror, can remind the author of the importance of eliminating self-deception and half-truths in thought and writing. Third, the journal can serve as a brainstorming mechanism to explore new topics, modes of thought, or types of writing that otherwise would remain undiscovered or unexamined. Fourth, the journal can provide a means for effecting a catharsis on subjects too personal for publication even among friends and family. (Murray, 1-2)

A dedicated practice of documenting your day, observing what is around you, and creating your own field guide of the world as you encounter it will help strengthen your ability to translate it all to others and help us as a culture learn how to interpret what is happening around us.

Writing About Nature: A Creative Guide by John A. Murray : Murray’s book on nature writing offers hopeful writers a look at how nature writers keeps journals, write essays, incorporate figurative language, use description, revise, research, and more.

Botanical Shakespeare: An Illustrated Compendium of All the Flowers, Fruits, Herbs, Trees, Seeds, and Grasses Cited by the World’s Greatest Playwright by Gerit Quealy and Sumie Hasegawa Collins: Helen Mirren’s foreword to the book describes it as “the marriage of Shakespeare’s words about plants and the plants themselves.” This project combines the language of Shakespeare with the details of the botanicals found throughout his works—Quealy and Hasegawa bring us a literary garden ripe with flora and fauna puns and intellectual snark.

What new vision of Shakespeare is provided by approaching his works through the lens of nature writing and botanicals?
Latin and Greek terms and roots continue to be very important in the world of botanicals. What do you learn from that etymology throughout the book? How does it impact symbolism in Shakespeare’s works?
Annotate the book using different colored highlighters. Seek out description in one color, interpretation in another, and you might even look for literary echoes using a third. How do these threads braid together?

The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland by Nan Shepherd : The Living Mountain is Shepherd’s account of exploring the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland. Part of Britain’s Arctic, Shepherd encounters ravenous storms, clear views of the aurora borealis, and deep snows during the summer. She spent hundreds of days exploring the mountains by foot.

These pages were written during the last years of WWII and its aftermath. How does that backdrop inform Shepherd’s interpretation of the landscape?
The book is separated into twelve chapters, each dedicated to a specific part of life in the Cairngorms. How do these divisions guide the writing? Is she able to keep these elements separate from each other? In writing? In experiencing the land?
Many parts of the landscape Shepherd observes would be expected in nature writing—mountains, weather, elements, animals, etc. How does Shepherd use language and tone to write about these things without using stock phrasing or clichéd interpretations?

Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation by Kyo Maclear : Even memoir can be delivered through nature writing as we see in Kyo Maclear’s poetic book, Birds Art Life . The book is an account of a year in her life after her father has passed away. And just as Murray and Thoreau would advise, journaling those days and the symbols in them led to a whole book—one that delicately and profoundly weaves together the nature of life—of living after death—and how art can collide with that nature to get us through the hours.

How does time pass throughout the book? What techniques does Maclear employ to move the reader in and out of time?
How does grief lead Maclear into art? Philosophy? Nature? Objects?
The book is divided into the months of the year. Why does Maclear divide the book this way?
What do you make of the subtitles?

Is time natural? Describe the relationship between humans and time in nature.

So dear writers, take to these pages and take to the trails in nature around you. Journal your way through your days. Use all of your senses to take a journey in nature. Then, journal to make a memory of your time in the world. And give it all away to the rest of us, in words.

Lisa Hiton is an editorial associate at Write the World . She writes two series on our blog: The Write Place where she comments on life as a writer, and Reading like a Writer where she recommends books about writing in different genres. She’s also the interviews editor of Cosmonauts Avenue and the poetry editor of the Adroit Journal .

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Nature writing prompts to spark creativity and connection

A keepsake journal for writing down experiences in nature (Photo by Wendy Ho/NCC staff)

December 21, 2023 | by Wendy Ho

Connecting with nature can come in many forms. For some, it may be taking a walk and listening to the rustling of leaves, or the crunching of snow underfoot. For others, a creative outlet like art, music and rhythmic movement allows them to experience nature more closely.

I like to reflect on how I’ve nurtured my connection with nature through writing. Often, nature happens right under my nose and writing in a journal allows me to savour the moment and find delight every time I reread my work.

Whether it’s encountering a teeny spider on the windowsill or stumbling upon a bee dozing inside a squash’s flower, there is nature’s magic and awe to be found. And the more I think about how and why a moment in nature was meaningful and endearing, the more descriptive my written account is.

Roots of an old American beech tree at Clear Creek Forest (Photo by NCC)

If you’d like to flex your writing muscles and relive your nature experiences in new ways, here are 10 writing prompts to get your creative juices flowing. See how far you get in 10 minutes on any one prompt. Perhaps even consider making this a regular habit as your one-on-one time with nature.

Connecting with nature in a multitude of ways can inspire all of us to act with intention and make a positive impact on nature at every turn we take.

Write a eulogy for a majestic tree that stood for decades.
Compose the first communication transmitted back to Earth after a successful human expedition to another planet.
Finish this sentence: The scent of freshly bloomed flowers reminds me of...
A forest sprite grants you three tiny wishes to interact with nature's wonders. What are they, and how do you use them to connect with the environment around you?
An undercover botanist is about to study your local flora and fauna. Write instructions on how to observe and protect the delicate balance of nature.
Write your life story in five sentences, emphasizing your profound connection with the wilderness and how it has shaped your outlook on life and personal growth.
Complete this sentence: "I really ought to spend more time exploring …."
Find a photo of a serene landscape and write about the sounds of nature, the scent of the air and the unseen wildlife that might inhabit the area beyond the frame.
Pick a place in North America that you've never been to and describe your yearning to move there and immerse yourself in its beautiful landscapes.
If you were given one extra hour today and you weren't allowed to use it for anything you'd normally do (e.g., eat, sleep, scroll on your phone, watch TV etc.), how would you spend that hour connecting with nature?

Posted in: Time for nature

About the Author

Wendy Ho is Nature Conservancy of Canada's digital content manager.

Creative Encounters with the Natural World: Some Prompts for Writing and Visual Art

Our natural environment has been a fertile area of inspiration for writers, artists and all manner of creative folk, ever since ancient humans began to paint on cave walls. Engaging with nature can help us forget our egos, worries and daily frustrations – and encourages our imaginations to inhabit a different world. That said, creativity doesn’t always flow spontaneously. We often need a bit of direction to get started – and this is what prompts are for. Read on for a selection of activity prompts inspired by nature and wildlife…

If you like painting or drawing: Try to sketch or paint a wild animal, insect or plant you have spotted recently. You could try drawing from a reference photo you find online, for example, or just try drawing from memory. Alternatively, draw or paint your favourite creature or plant species, whether or not you have seen it in real life. Draw your ideal garden, complete with your pick of plant and animal species that might live there. Draw or sketch a natural landscape you are inspired by – have you visited it? Or is it one you dream of travelling to? What sort of habitat is it? What lives there? If you like journaling or diary-writing: One thing I enjoy doing is making an ‘art journal’. It’s similar to a combination of a scrapbook and a diary. The beauty of this activity is that you can fill your art journal with all manner of things you create or find. It could include drawings or doodles, cuttings from magazines or newspapers, items you find outdoors, or photographs you’ve taken. As for writing, you could include notes on your day, any thoughts or observations, your sightings of wildlife – or pretty much any topic you feel the urge to write about. The contrast between visual snippets and verbal additions can look very pleasing. If you enjoy making collages: Make a collage using found natural materials you have collected in your garden, or on a walk. You could use leaves, sprigs, twigs, shells, or seed pods.

If you enjoy creative writing : Write a short story or poem about, or from the point of view of, a wild animal. What is a day in their life, like? Write about a journey you have made where you encountered wildlife. Where did you go? What did you find there? Why were you going there? What could you see, hear, touch? Was it rural, urban, or suburban? What were you expecting to notice there? Did it match what you expected?

You could try out ‘free writing’ – an easy way to get into creative writing if you aren’t sure where to begin! You write down whatever words or thoughts flow into your mind, without being too concerned with punctuation, or grammar. Then you’ll find associated words or thoughts continue popping into your head, like a kind of word/idea association. Just keep writing – it doesn’t matter whether your words make any sense. The ‘stream-of-conciousness’ flow from one word, sentence, or idea to the next, is what counts. It can sometimes help to have a shaping theme or starting idea. If you like, choose one of these ideas as a starting point: the landscape, wildlife, artificial vs. organic, the divide between humans and wildlife, or conservation. —

Enjoy your forays into creating! Do share with us what you make.

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Nature-Inspired Poetry Prompts

by Melissa Donovan | Feb 22, 2024 | Poetry Prompts | 31 comments

Poetry prompts inspired by nature.

Throughout the centuries, poets have composed meditations on seasons, landscapes, and constellations. Vegetation and animals have been the subjects of countless poems, and even when poetry is not centered around nature, it often makes references to it. In poetry, nature can function as a backdrop, or it can hold center stage.

Why are so many poets compelled to write about nature? Consider the closing stanza from “Crossings” by Ravi Shankar:

Suspended in this ephemeral moment after leaving a forest, before entering a field, the nature of reality is revealed. (Source: poets.org )

Poetry Prompts

Poetry prompts are a great way to start a writing session when you’re feeling uninspired or when you simply want to try something new. Maybe you’ve never written a poem before. Maybe you’ve never written about nature. Maybe you’ve never tackled a writing exercise. Whatever your reason, these poetry prompts are meant to provide loose guidelines for kick-starting your creativity and get you pushing your pen across the page.

Below you’ll find a list of words that relate to nature. These words are your poetry prompts. You can use these prompts in several different ways: You can choose a single word and build a poem around it as a topic. You can choose a handful of words (about five would be good) and use those words to kick off different lines or verses. Or you can challenge yourself to write a single poem with all of the words included in it.

As you read through the list and choose which words will act as prompts for your poem, relax. Engage your imagination and visualize different images that these words might describe. Build actions with them. String them together with words from your own vocabulary. Put them in lines and verses. And make a poem.

lava
droplet
gazelle
bloom
nest

snake
moon
chirp
field
stream

grasshopper
hiss
seed
fur
forest

sunlight
energy
metamorphosis
prey
birth

Do you ever use poetry prompts? What was your experience? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment. And keep writing!

31 Comments

Thank you for making lava your first word. 🙂

Mr. Shankar is so right. Where I am, there are areas where you just step off the paved road, walk a few feet and, yes, “the quality of air alters, an eclipse lifts.” I kid you not! Escape!

The forest takes center stage then and in my wanna-be novel.

LOL, I’m not sure where lava came from, but once that word popped into my head, I tried going for unexpected words–not words like flowers , birds , and bees . Also, I was aiming for words that could function as various parts of speech ( snake can be a noun or a verb). I lived on Maui for a few months many years ago, and I know what you mean. The air is different when you’re beyond the city or the suburbs. It’s beautiful, refreshing, healthy, and inspiring.

Good morning. I was recently published in the spring print edition of The Avocet. This amazed me because up until I began promoting poets I never realized how much I used poetry in my every-day life. Wind, rain, fire, earth, ocean rocks, cliffs and mountains inspire me. But I don’t write so much about what they look like, because I’m totally blind. Instead I focus on warmth, hard, frozen, dank, salty, and other descriptions. I love this post and came upon it quite by accident. Or, was it? Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for your kind words, Patty, and congratulations on getting published! That’s wonderful. Keep writing!

The first thing that popped into my head while I was reading the list was “The lava snake mooned the grasshopper.” I’m not sure where to go from there, except to cut down on my sugar intake.

Ha! That’s so awesome! I think your sugar intake is just fine 😉

Well, maybe. But I’m pretty sure the grape flavored licorice was a mistake.

Well, I have to admit — it doesn’t sound very tasty.

This isn’t new, but the snake word reminded me of it.

A silent ribbon gently flows from where my garden usually grows. Winding through the now dead rows back to hiding, sliding, it goes.

I like this because it could be a snake or a stream — it could be a stream snaking through the garden or a snake streaming through the garden. Love the wordplay, Mikel!

I love prompts, they help me clear my thoughts.

Thanks, Betty. I agree that prompts are helpful for clearing the mind!

Oops…had time to write but not to proof read, apparently. Here we go again:

Stalking November

Death arrived in a white room, under stethoscope and fluorescent light. Sunlight failing, hope failed. I carried his body home to rest and wait.

Morning bloomed despite the darkness. In the forest I cut roots and dug earth. Made room for fur and bone.

Bringing him there, we spoke his name under moonlight and flashlight. Walked home empty, looking back too often.

Today, Sarah wakes me in tears, his absence snakes into us in dreams.

At the back door, only grasshoppers and leaves. In his earthen nest, he is beyond last goodbyes. There are none.

The birds have become bold. They chirp his absence to one another. Cracking seeds without pity.

Beautiful, Stacy. Thank you for sharing your poem here.

Thanks for giving me creative outlet for missing Max, our cat. I was excited to see that when my seven-year-old read this, it made sense to her. I think I just may be a writer 😉

You’re welcome. I’m glad you found a beneficial outlet for your bereavement. Keep writing! Sounds to me like you are a writer indeed.

This is a beautiful poem! 🙂

I wrote a response to this in my blog: http://beespoetry.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/springtime-in-a-field/

two blue eyes, droplet-sized blink open, and look up at me as the kitten attempts to stand. Realizing he cannot, he drags his tiny body toward his mother, who awaits the newborn and his siblings to feed; I reach out with gentle hands and pick up the struggling kitten, depositing him next to his mother as the rest of the litter feeds on mother’s milk.

That’s lovely, Andrea! It makes me miss the days when my cat was a little kitten.

Another dawn and the sky begins to appear The streaks of light force the lingering darkness to disappear; A quaint chirp from an unknown nest breaks the calm and greets the morn.

The sun reaches high above the horizon And shows-off its lava-like rays, Field of flowers in full bloom dance to a gentle breeze.

A gazelle ambles along searching for a source of water; The gurgling sound reaches the ear of the thirsty creature.

The steady stream with silvery waters hurtles along, And on and on draining into a mighty river, A life-source for any, and a home for many, It happily plays its part with sweet harmony.

The dusk arrives and pulls the curtains down, And it’s time for the moon to mesmerize; The hiss of the hunter and the squeak of its prey All plays out under her mystical gaze .

Thank you for sharing this lovely poem, Peter.

Thanks,Melissa for the wonderful poetry-prompts. It really helps when the muse is away,which is most of the time in my case.

You’re welcome, Peter!

March Blossoms

Tree limbs sport strange buds Lovely bright blue flower blooms Windblown shopping bags

I love the contrast of the shopping bags. Nice!

I do sometimes write poetry prompts and I have produced some interesting poems that way. Nice post.

Thanks, Robbie.

I came up with this

Change takes place Through metamorphosis into identity A seed ready to expand In the dark forest there is a shift of light Pinpointing warmth The snake prepares sly, still,poised To envelope its prey Gazelle speeds with elegant energy Sleek and quick alert to danger.

Thank you for sharing your poem! Lovely.

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Written by Emily Harstone October 12th, 2020

13 Literary Journals that Focus on Nature and the Environment

Most literary journals, unless they have a very focused mission, or are genre journals, are open to publishing poems, prose, and nonfiction featuring nature. Most writers that focus on the natural world do not have an issue finding homes for their work in general interest literary journals.

Still, there are a number of journals that focus on publishing writing that focuses on the environment.

It’s important to note that most journals that only publish poems that focus on the natural world are currently preoccupied with ecopoetics , which, according to the Poetry Foundation, is a “multidisciplinary approach that includes thinking and writing on poetics, science, and theory as well as emphasizing innovative approaches common to conceptual poetry”.

Of course there is overlap between the ecopoetics and nature poetry, just like there’s an overlap between journals that publish nature writing and those that focus on environmental change. Below I’ve collected a list of journals that publish one or both.

Not all of the journals are currently open to submissions but the majority of the journals are.

The Hopper Magazine

This is an environmental literary journal published by Green Writers Press. The Hopper looks for a number of very specific things in the writing they publish, which includes poetry and prose, including work that “Offers new and different articulations of the human experience in nature. Specifically, nature writing that is psychologically honest about the environmental crisis and the impacts of mechanical modernity” and work that “Explores place as both the cultural and physical landscapes of an author’s region.” Read their full submission guidelines with care.

This wonderful online journals focus is on how place shapes identity, imagination, and understanding. A lot of what they publish focuses on nature, but not all of it.

This respected and well paying journal publishes fiction, essays, and poetry, about the Pacific Northwest but only by authors based in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia.

Minding Nature

This journal publishes a wide variety of work on humans’ interactions with the environment as a whole, including works of ecopoetics.

A literary journal focused on re-imagining place. They publish prose and poetry. They charge for online submissions, but postal submissions within the US are fee-free.

Orion Magazine

Orion Magazine brings ideas, writers, photographers, and artists together, focused on nature, the environment, and culture, addressing environmental and societal issues. They generally have an additional theme for most issues. They are only open for pitches on a theme till October 15th, and are not currently open to fiction, general nonfiction, or poetry.

Hawk & Handsaw: The Journal of Creative Sustainability

Focused more on the environmental and sustainable side of things, Hawk & Handsaw publishes visual art, poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction.

Green Briar Review

An online literary journey that focuses on the natural world, and often on the changing of the seasons, they publish nonfiction, cultural essays, reviews, fiction, and poetry, and photography/art. They read a limited number of fee-free submissions during their reading periods.

Split Rock Review

They are an online publication that publishes “poetry, short creative nonfiction, short fiction, comics, graphic stories, hybrids, visual poetry, photography, and art that explore place, environment, and the relationship between humans and the natural world”. They read a limited number of fee-free submissions during their reading periods.

They bill themselves as the literary journal of the environmental crisis. They publish poetry and essays.

Words for the Wild

This UK-based publisher of poetry and fiction often has an additional theme for online issues and anthologies, some focus more on ecopoetics, others more on nature.

Terrain An online journal that publishes fiction, poetry, and a variety of nonfiction, focusing on nature and the environment.

The Wayfarer

They focus on publishing contemplative voices. Not all that they publish focuses on nature and the environment, but much of what they publish, does intersect with these themes. They publish poetry and essays.

Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions , Submit, Publish, Repeat , and The 2020 Guide to Manuscript Publishers.

She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish.

You can follow her on Facebook here .

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Disabled Poets Prize

Deptford literature festival, nature nurtures, early career bursaries, criptic x spread the word, lewisham, borough of literature, a pocket guide to nature writing.

In this glorious Pocket Guide, Kerri ní Dochartaigh highlights the value of Nature writing, whilst sharing her personal tips, resources and opportunities on how you can get inspired to write.

What do we really mean when we talk about ‘nature writing’? And what do we even mean when we talk about ‘nature’?

Nature writing , like pockets , is a politicised thing – embroidered with different threads; depending on your race , class , gender , (dis)ability, wealth or place in this world. Is there space here for you? Do you feel safe? There has never been a more important time to make safe space: for every single thing on this earth. The writing, then, will just do its own thing, you see. It will come and go as it pleases, like a moth to a big aul’ light.

How about a wee browse through these background reads , and then we might, in the words of Edwyn Collins , (the most inspiring nature punk on earth): ‘Rip it up and start again’?… (What is nature writing if not the constant riotous act of starting again? Of learning, again, to listen and to look, to draw close and keep our distance, to break and to weep; to get back up and love the world afresh?) In this NY Times piece three and a half decades ago, David Rains Wallace wrote ‘NATURE writing is a historically recent literary genre, and, in a quiet way, one of the most revolutionary.’

We’re ready for this revolution but who is going to lead it?

For far too long we have allowed a very particular voice, from a very particular background, with a very particular outlook – dominate bookshop displays, library shelves, reading lists, bestseller rankings and our own homes. This, the idea that there has only ever been one nature story, is wildly incorrect. Other standpoints, other views, other stories, other voices: have always been there. In ‘Heart Berries’ Terese Marie Mailhot summarises: ‘So, where are we? Where we have always been. Where are you?’

To write about nature with truth and integrity means to ask questions about the past and the future – who, where and what have been mistreated – and how do we make that stop, through how we approach this genre? I only want to be a part of any gathering where every single one of us is there as an equal.

So, who is doing the important work in this area? Where should you go to read more? Where should you send your fledgling words?

Let’s start with The Willowherb Review because I think they are incredible. Their aim is ‘to provide a digital platform to celebrate and bolster nature writing by emerging and established writers of colour’, and already their writers have seen prize nominations and awards (all links on the site). Most importantly of all the writing is cracking; beautiful, raw and necessary. Jessica J Lee, the editor, has a no nonsense approach to the genre that I deeply admire. If you are a nature writer of colour, check out their website for submission dates.

Jessica has also organised a reading group, Allies in the Landscape , a fantastic support for nature writers and anyone wanting to widen their reading in the genre.

The folks at Caught by the River do stellar work for those who love the natural world across a plethora of genres. If you are in need of inspiration, or events to go to when we can, start here. You will not be let down. They read everything they’re sent but are a busy crew so – as with submitting anywhere, patience is kindness.

More folks with big hearts and brilliant writing are The Clearing .

The art of nature writing itself can be a children’s story, a poem, a list, a eulogy, a translation – it can be fiction or non – written or other – short or long; it is anything that takes our world and makes it sing. The best nature writing, for me, speaks of transformation – anything from a fiercely hungry caterpillar, through to strong women swimming themselves to safe places – making lists of yellow things for their sick fathers – moulding grief through sowing seeds: the best nature writers might not even call themselves that at all. Some books I have recently loved are: ‘ Trace’ by Lauret Savoy, ‘Braiding Sweet Grass’ by Robin Wall Kimmerer Elizabeth J Burnett’s ‘ The Grassling’ , ‘ Bulbul Calling’ by Pratyusha, Seán Hewitt’s ‘ Tongues of Fire’ , Jessica J Lee’s ‘ Two Trees Make a Forest’ , ‘The Promise’ by Nicola Davies and ‘ The Diary of a Young Naturalist’ by Dara McAnulty. I return over and over to writers like Amy Liptrot, Kathleen Jamie, Annie Dillard, Robert McFarlane and others but I am constantly trying to find new voices, approaches and stories – new to me, not new in their existence, of course: it’s important to make that distinction in a genre such as this.

The important thing, needed now more than ever, is that they each take their place in this symphony of hope.

There is room, here, on these mountains and beaches, in these gardens and fields, in these bodies of water – in ASDA parking lots and unsafe spaces – on the streets, and in every place both ‘wild’ and not (both outer and inner) – for you and your story.

From me to you, here a few exercises I return to over and over as a means to get started…

Choose something – a moth, the colour blue, a tree, a wren, a pebble, the waves on the beach – and write about it as if the reader will have never before seen or heard of it. Really stay with the description for as long as you can, and try to get down to what it really is: its thingness. Make your description almost like a love letter in how much care you take with it, and the depth of your words. Another interesting take on this is to write yourself as the thing – to really imagine, say, going through all the stages of the cycle from caterpillar to moth – or the ebb and flow you would experience as a particular body of water etc.

Journal – at least three free-flow pages without thinking about them or rereading – every single day. This one really helps to get me out of my normal flow of thought, and does something to my brain that welcomes experiences, creatures and thoughts that are conducive to nature writing. It really doesn’t matter if I am not writing about nature in these pages, really that is not the point, I think it’s in the act of carving out space and time – bringing awareness to the act. The space in which I write these can be a cafe, on a train, or at home, and still I find myself in a wild place, one that is on the inside not the outside.

The thing that most helps me to write about the natural world is actually being in it – walking, swimming, running, laying, laughing, crying – just allowing myself to be outside as much as I can seems to be the best way for me to try to write about the world we share.

Once you feel more confident, you might be interested in entering your writing into a prize or sharing it online (an incredible amount of links can also be found in the hyperlinked pages too) and I can share only a fraction but here are a few that sing to me:

https://nanshepherdprize.com This prize is changing the landscape of this genre. Every single section on the site is invaluable.

https://www.thenaturelibrary.com

Christina Riley has put such a wonderful thing together here. Have a browse / follow.

https://www.lonewomeninflashesofwilderness.com/about

Clare Archibald’s inspiring, inclusive site is really making ripples in this area.

https://beachbooks.blog/about/ A gorgeous, generous sea library full of joy.

https://www.elementumjournal.com Submissions are closed for this journal but there is lots of fine work to peruse.

https://www.elsewhere-journal.com This is a superb journal of place, and submission are open.

The Moth Nature Writing prize , The Rialto Nature Poetry Competition and others are great to look at too. There are courses, schemes and more online but I think the most important place to start is by looking and listening, reading and caring; by loving the world and by writing it down in any way you can.

For me, any time any of us looks and listens to the non-human beings we share this earth with – when we pause in humility to acknowledge the interconnectedness of us all – the threads tying us to each other; invisible often, but so strong – we are playing a part in making this a safer, fairer earth. To go one step further, and to write about this connection, to name, explore, celebrate and honour – whether we choose a swan or a stone, a moth or a lough, the wild sea or our gut flora; things nearby or faraway, the known or unknown – we are shining light on one of the most important truths of this earth: our need to be alive, and to remain connected to every other living thing. There is power in trying to find traces of ourselves in the nonhuman, as well as acknowledging our difference. In searching for the beat of something unnameable; the simple act of being alive, at the same time, as each other, and in the same way as even the smallest insect.

Nature Writing holds the hope, for me, of reminding us how to treat everyone and everything on the earth. The best nature writing shines light on places we need to see; on beings we need to learn to accept as our equal. It is only a proper telling of the earth if we can tread gently on the land and the non-human as well as human while we do it. If we can speak honestly of the places and the past – if we can find a way to write it where every single one of us is heard; where each one of us, and our stories, are kept safe.

Kerri ní Dochartaigh is from the North West of Ireland but now lives in the very middle. She writes about nature, literature and place for The Irish Times, The Dublin Review of Books, Caught By The River and others. Her first book, Thin Places , is out with Canongate in January 2021. @kerri_ni @whooperswan

Published 7 July 2020

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Nonfiction Books » Nature » Nature Writing

Amy liptrot chooses the best of nature writing.

The Outrun by Amy Liptrot

Amy Liptrot , whose bestselling memoir The Outrun won the 2016 Wainwright Prize for nature writing, talks to Five Books about her favourite writing about landscape—and how her immersion in island life helped her recover from alcoholism.

Interview by Cal Flyn , Deputy Editor

Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell

The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard

Findings by Kathleen Jamie

Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life by George Monbiot

The Orkney Book of Birds by Tim Dean and Tracy Hall

Amy Liptrot chooses the best of Nature Writing - Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell

1 Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell

2 the drowned world by j. g. ballard, 3 findings by kathleen jamie, 4 feral: rewilding the land, the sea, and human life by george monbiot, 5 the orkney book of birds by tim dean and tracy hall.

Y our bestselling first book, The Outrun, follows your story of recovery from alcoholism in Orkney, it’s a blend of memoir and nature writing: a very visceral sort of nature writing. The phrase ‘the nature cure’ springs to mind—is that something you believe in?

This time in the wee house on the island was where I had the space to figure out what was going on with myself, how I’d ended up with an alcohol problem and in rehab and all that but also what helped me out of that was getting to know the island, the people and the culture and the coastline and the birds and the changes of the sea. I think often what I found most rewarding was not just, you know, going out for a walk, but time when I was actually in the landscape either immersing myself physically, by swimming in the sea, through the winter, or doing something like building the drystone walls. Going back to the same place as it changes through the seasons and physically linking myself to the land in some sort of way could be more rewarding and I could gain a deeper understanding of the place, and myself.

“I was doing more and better writing than I had done when I was pissed…that was helping me to keep sober”

While all that stuff has helped me—learning about the birds, connecting myself to something bigger than just me—while I am interested in that, what I’m specifically interested in is writing about the birds, and the place, and the fact that I had struck upon a great new source of material and was doing more and better writing than I had done when I was pissed…that was helping me to keep sober. So I was writing about the place and getting sober but that writing itself was keeping me sober and helping me with my recovery as well.

When you read other people writing about nature, or wild swimming, or other focuses of your own work, what do you look for, what do you admire?

I suppose I look for people that have more knowledge than me, who’ve done their research or…it’s a combination of both first-hand experience, often expressed in an unusual or poetic way, but I think that has to be combined with background research.

I also like it when somebody describes something that I have seen myself, but they’re able to do it in a better way than what I could have come up with—that recognition, I’ve seen that too! That’s true! And I’m glad that someone else has noticed it, or that they’ve corroborated my experience. That can be satisfying.

That reminds me of why I like reading film reviews, I often prefer to read them after I’ve seen the film, to get that sense of ‘yes! That’s it, that’s why that worked.’ Once I remember seeing you tweet that you’d learned as much from music criticism as you had from other nature books, do you still feel that?

Yes. I was actually a little nervous about doing this interview because there are lots of experts in the particular field of ecological writing, which I’m certainly not. Growing up I wasn’t a keen young ornithologist, or naturalist, although I was a keen reader but the books that I read as a kid were, you know, about boarding schools and babysitters and stuff far away from Orkney. Then, when I was a teenager and a student, I liked cities and rock’n’roll and angst, and I started writing a little for the music and style press.

“I was a keen reader but the books that I read as a kid were about boarding schools and babysitters”

Speaking of fringe characters, maybe that brings us to your first book choice: Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water. Maxwell himself was a rather complicated character, but his book was just so captivating and gorgeous.

It’s a cult book that I had been aware of but never read, until my mum recommended it to me recently. I’ve actually read a kind of spin off book about it, Island of Dreams, by Dan Boothby, a chap who lived more recently on the island under the Skye bridge which Maxwell had owned. I did an event with him last year. So I was aware of the captivation Maxwell had held over a generation of young naturalists, often kind of loner type men, I think.

Particularly the first half of the book is just wonderful. He’s this aristocrat that just manages to acquire the lease on this lighthouse keeper’s house, and the sense of place that he evokes…he’s a brilliant writer. I got that recognition I mentioned before, of things that I myself have experienced in Orkney. He talks about the eider ducks and their mating calls: I’ve heard that! Or just the effects of the wind and the sea on the west coast of Scotland. That really struck something deep in me.

You can just imagine it—he’s very good with physical detail and how they descend the hill to the house, which is surrounded on three sides by sea, the ‘ring of bright water’.

It has a wonderful sense of freedom, perhaps because he’s doing something that people dream of. Living alongside an otter—laying aside whether or not someone should try to have an otter as a pet—it’s the dream isn’t it?

Yes, he’s retreated to this isolated place, where—although he gets a lot of help from people—he’s sort of alone, in the natural world, which is very appealing. As I think I discovered myself when I wrote about being on Papay, readers seem to relate to that, and it has a relationship to another book I thought about choosing, Walden, the archetype of this lone person in a small place in the countryside.

“The book is very of its time, it wouldn’t get published or written today”

But like Henry David Thoreau, Maxwell is…Well, the book can be read as a psychological portrait of a somewhat damaged person, actually. He’s from this privileged background and has, perhaps, problems with other human beings. That makes this lifestyle—and as it happens in the second half of the book, the relationship he has with his pet otters—attractive to him. It’s a weird portrait really. He’s brilliant, and funny, on the behaviour of the otters and how they differ from other kinds of pets. They’re not meant to be pets really. The book is very of its time, it wouldn’t get published or written today, I don’t think—someone taking wild animals from the Middle East and attempting to tame them with all the chaos that it causes and taking on local lads to help him out. But there’s something very idealistic about this world that he creates.

There’s a wonderful section when he takes the otter on the sleeper train and puts him in the sink, where he splashes around merrily.

Yes and the guard comes in in the morning and the otter’s actually in bed next to him, lying on its back with its hands over the cover and the guard says, ‘Would that be tea for one or two, sir?’

He’s a special and unusual guy who’d probably have been infuriating to deal with. He gets live eels sent up daily from London for the otters at great expense, huge amounts of money are spent on his outlandish plans—but you’re rooting for him, really, to be able to carry this off.

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The rural idyll Maxwell creates is so different to the world of your second book, JG Ballard’s The Drowned World. Here, instead of a paean to the pristine environment, it’s set in a post-apocalyptic catastrophe. What made you pick this?

Well, I think it’s a good example of using the natural world in fiction, and dystopian fiction, and I like the way that it uses the natural world, animals, and they are threatening and dangerous and strange rather than a source of solace or escape. They are the opposite. It was ahead of its time, it could almost be seen as a novel about climate change: ‘de-evolution’ is the word used.

Ballard is a master of the surreal but revealing detail, often using plants and animals. I remember one section in High Rise, a bit that stuck with me, was a seagull picking a diamante from a pair of sunglasses abandoned at the top of a building. And in The Drowned World, he has what was London, now flooded, and all these hotels now silted up where only the top floors are still accessible. And when it’s drained there are all these sea creatures—giant anemones and starfish and kelp—in Leicester Square, and dinghies stranded on traffic islands. This idea of the familiar being made strange and awful is part of what creates his distinctive, and highly influential, atmosphere.

The main character is almost perversely attracted to this new, ruined, world.

Kerans, the main character, the biologist—when the other people are retreating further towards the poles where it’s cooler, he’s going deeper in towards the equator…into the heart of darkness…A lot of Ballard’s books are about dark psychological stuff. But I can relate to being attracted to some of the more brutal elements of nature. I chose to go and live on a small Orkney island during winters rather than summers, when most people would choose the opposite. The big winds and the wild seas that sometimes cause damage are appealing to me, in their power and inhospitability.

Is there something in you that is drawing you back there? Or was it a time of your life when you needed it, when it suited you?

Absolutely. In Orkney, you were working for the RSPB looking for corncrakes. Kathleen Jamie, in your third book, Findings, has an essay about corncrakes. Was that something you came across before, or after?

Good question! I was writing a series of columns for Caught by the River, a nature writing website, and I think I’d already done the first four and my friend Morag said to me, ‘Have you read any Kathleen Jamie?’ and directed me towards Findings, which I just gulped up. It was interesting to discover that she was operating in some of the same territory that I was trying to—in an extremely skillful and much more developed way. And a little bit of me was like: ‘Damn you Jamie! Back off!’

“I spent two summers being out every night, looking and listening for corncrakes”

But I’ve gone back and looked at this book recently, and realised how influential she has been on me—just by showing what can be done with the nature essay. I think she’s wonderful. She’s a poet, which you can just see in her work, in her tight descriptions. She describes the weather in Orkney as there being ‘frequent scraps of rainbow,’ which is just right. So yes, it wasn’t like I read Jamie’s stuff and thought I’d go and do something similar, but during the writing of The Outrun, I came across her near the beginning.

The first time I came across your writing was an essay for Aeon , “The Corncrake Wife”. Perhaps it’s the quest element, the idea of these corncrakes being so tricky to find, that makes them so compelling to read about.

Yes—I spent two summers being out every night, looking and listening for corncrakes, and I only ever saw one of them. They almost became a sort of phantom, or symbol, or a way of allowing me to see the island as much as find the bird. There’s a lot of mythology and theory associated with them. It was something that I randomly applied for, got the job, and working for the RSPB opened a lot of doors for me. That was the beginning of my deeper interest in the natural world and realising, through writing and also through reading people like Jamie, that it was something that I could write about.

I’ve given this book to a number of people and recommended it to more. She’s a poet, but she’s also a realist—she talks about details of modern-day Scottish life, the people that she meets, and a little bit about her own daily life: she has to be back to pick the kids up from school, things like that. And she’s just really smart, in terms of the research that she does and sometimes, not in a too heavy handed way, but the way she relates it to wider ecological issues.

“They almost became a sort of phantom, or symbol, or a way of allowing me to see the island as much as find the bird”

The title essay, “Findings”, is about beach-combing and the things that she finds. I like how she describes, on the same poetic level, the gannet skull that she finds but also the unusual plastic objects she finds washed up, which is obviously about the pollution of the seas. Her tone is really well judged and her beautiful, clear-eyed descriptions show the reality of what’s going on on the coastlines.

And a very different style to George Monbiot, next, with Feral. Is it accurate to describe him as a polemicist? He comes from a very different direction.

This is a bold and radical book, which introduced me to several new ideas and changed the way I look at the countryside in quite a challenging way. As you say, it’s different to Jamie in that he’s unafraid of stating his opinions. The book broadly is about this idea of ‘re-wilding,’ which was a new idea to me. A really exciting one, I found it. All the stuff about the return of large predators and the effects that the loss of the top predators has had on the landscape was really eye-opening, and also—particularly as a sheep-farmer’s daughter—it was quite difficult to read some of his opinions. Because he hates sheep. Or rather, he hates the effect that sheep have had on the uplands of this country.

He describes sheep farming as ‘having done more damage to the living systems of this country than either climate change or industrial pollution.’

Yes! Which is a really radical idea. But I think he might be right.

How does that feel, coming from a sheep-farming family?

Well, I guess there might be some differences between the Scottish islands and the uplands of Wales, in that they weren’t really wooded places in the first place. But I think I’m open to looking at the way that agriculture is very protected, sometimes, and it’s difficult to criticise. Perhaps we should be looking at new ways of using the land, and diversifying what landowners and farmers do.

My dad is an organic farmer, which is slightly less intensive and slightly more varied, and has a lower impact on the land, but after reading Monbiot, I do look out, even in Orkney, and see the ‘green deserts’ he describes, the monocultures of grassland for beef.

“After reading Monbiot, I do look out even in Orkney and see the ‘green deserts’ he describes”

However, I put Monbiot in a category with two American writers I love, Naomi Klein and Rebecca Solnit, in that he’s an outspoken writer on conservation and the environment, but he does offer some mitigations and some ways forward: in his ideas about re-wilding, and talking about localisation and how landowners can diversify or be more creative about how the land is used and the species that can possibly be introduced. So while it is very challenging and difficult, there are also some exciting ideas and suggested ways forward that could provide some blueprint.

He uses very emotive language, phrases like ‘sheep-wrecked’—do you think that is necessary to shock people, almost, to make people look afresh at landscapes, the way you described?

Let’s move on to your last book, the illustrated Orkney Book of Birds. You say you’ve learnt a great deal from this book. Why would you recommend it?

I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, just to people who are in or visiting Orkney. It’s a little masterpiece of local knowledge and research, presented extremely readably. It’s a guidebook, and over the last few years, as a novice birdwatcher in Orkney, it’s the nature book I return to the most. Unlike the Collins bird guide, it only includes the species found in Orkney, which is different to what you find in other places, and includes lovely details such as the Orcadian dialect names for all the different birds: puffins are ‘tammie norries’, and lapwings are ‘teeicks’.

“In Orkney, puffins are ‘tammie norries’, and lapwings are ‘teeicks”

It also includes their specific local locations, the different islands or habitats they are found on, their numbers and how they have increased or declined over the years, looking at data from local surveys. Then it often has specific, almost poetic, facts, like how there was a starling roost on the Kirkwall lifeboat, or that most farms in Orkney tend to have a pair of pied wagtails. It really helped me to appreciate my local patch. The birds I’m now most knowledgable on are the seabirds and the farmland birds that you get in Orkney.

And as well as the text, which is fabulously researched and written by Tim Dean, there are also the illustrations by Tracy Hall, which are beautiful. What I particularly like is that they are shown in their specific Orkney locations where they are found, you can see identifiable buildings and coastlines. I think the corncrakes are on the island of Egilsay, which has been a place that has encouraged them. I love this book.

Having moved to Yorkshire, do you feel you’ve had to learn a whole new population of birds and wildlife?

Well, I’m just starting off! I was out for a walk yesterday and I saw some grey wagtails, a bird we don’t get in Orkney. There are so many species down here that you don’t get in Orkney. I hear tawny owls, hooting at night, which feels very exotic to me, as the only owls we have in Orkney are the short-eared owls, which are silent. So I’ve been learning a new landscape. But I can’t help comparing it—I keep saying ‘oh, we don’t get that at home!’ I do feel like Orkney is my heartland, my local patch, and I can see myself returning there at some point. I’m just having an interlude here in Yorkshire. The islands are really…particularly the curlews and oystercatchers and the gannets and the tysties [black guillemots] are the birds that speak most to my heart, that I grew up with and got to know deeply over the years that I lived there.

It’s something that is dyed in you, almost. What you said there reminded me of Nan Shepard, and the way she was always going in and out of the same hills over years and decades, how rich those layers of experience can become. It’s all imbued with this history of yourself.

Yes. Although I said that I wasn’t a birdwatcher when I was a kid, I grew up on a farm so I was aware of the birds, and knew their names and their calls were already in me. I think it was there all along, I just avoided admitting it for a long time. So it’s been very rewarding to study it all and write about it more closely.

April 13, 2017

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Amy Liptrot

Amy Liptrot's first book, The Outrun was a Sunday Times bestselling title and winner of the 2016 Wainwright Prize for nature writing. It was also shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize, for the Saltire Non-Fiction Book of the Year, and was recently announced as in the running for narrative non-fiction book of the year at the British Book Awards.

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15 April 2024

How to Write Engaging Non-Fiction: Nature Writing

nature writing - Photo by Geran de Klerk on Unsplash

Nature writing is a type of non-fiction writing in which the beauty of the natural world is observed and described, often as a way of exploring human emotion and experience. The landscapes and natural habitats that are examined in nature writing vary hugely, as does the human emotion or journey that is often probed. As such, nature writing is a broad, dynamic, and fertile genre, full of many different kinds of books.

The varying styles of nature writing

Nature writers might choose to examine what the natural world means to them personally, reflecting on their own relationship with, and memories of a particular place, like an unknown and hidden beach in the South West of England.

They might take a more focused and factual approach examining individual flora and fauna and their importance, like the importance of bees and the role they play in balancing our ecosystem.

Nature writers might also analyse the social and cultural history of a place, and provide a commentary on and chart the change and decline of a landscape or habitat from an environmental point of view.

For books that focus on a particular landscape, there are no limits as to what types of landscapes deserve attention. Nature writing can be about cliffs, lakes, rivers, deserts, gardens, meadows, oceans, remote islands, and underwater worlds. It can be a study of the slices of nature within cities and urban spaces, whether focusing on parks or plants that we find cropping up in pavements.

Nature writing can focus on developments in agriculture, new farming techniques, the rearing of animals and the sowing of crops. It doesn’t have to be focused around locations and landscapes — it can be about the fauna and flora of a whole region, or just one animal, or even a single tree. But the two things that tend to unify all kinds of nature writing, are that the writing conveys a very clear sense of place and that the natural world is explored in terms of our relationship with it.

What attracts readers to nature writing?

Readers are attracted to this genre for different reasons and take away different learnings or feelings, dictated by the particular focus of the book. For example, nature writing that focuses on how the author found a particular landscape healing in a difficult and dark time will offer readers guidance, reassurance, and solace in a time when they might need it most. A reader might feel comforted and seen by this kind of book.

Magical, nostalgic, and literary reflections on a particular place will help readers escape their reality and be transported to a far-flung location and wild places like a foreboding forest, a sweeping beach, a flowing stream, or an idyllic riverbank.

For nature writing that has a scientific or educational element, where an author is making the reader rethink the importance of a particular plant, ecosystem, or habitat, or where they are addressing the effects of the climate crisis on the environment, readers will be hoping to come away with new facts and insights about a particular topic that might serve their activism.

Nature writing by the sea - Photo by Kace Rodriguez on Unsplash

Focusing your work

It’s important when you’re embarking on a nature writing project to think carefully about exactly what kind of writing you’re aiming to create and what the reader who is drawn to this kind of book is seeking to learn from or feel when reading it. Does what you’ve written satisfy why the reader was attracted to the book?

The other important element to consider is what kind of writing best suits your subject focus. Given it is a genre that overlaps with other genres like memoir , science, and activism, the style of writing employed in nature writing is varied. It can take many different forms — poetry about the natural world, cultural history told through essays, literary prose about the personal relationship with the natural world, and factual guidebooks.

Make sure that the form of writing you choose fits with the content and aim of your book.

Tips for nature writing

If you’re developing a book proposal on nature writing, there are a few things that you should keep in mind as you write:

Your writing should convey a very clear sense of place.
The natural world should be explored in terms of our relationship with it.
You can write about any natural subject, from a single tree to a whole classification of flora or fauna, from a particular landscape to a whole country.
Nature writing can take many forms, from poetry and essays to memoirs and factual guides.
Think about the reading experience — consider why the reader might be attracted to your book and make sure your writing offers them what they are looking for, whether that’s reassurance, support, escapism, a new perspective or facts and figures.

As a genre, nature writing is experiencing a resurgence, thanks in part to society’s fatigue with the digital world and to the comfort many have found in retreating to nature and quieter places. The great outdoors is an appealing balm that can heal us and help us relax, acting as a tonic to a stressful day. While we can’t always access beautiful landscapes, we can access the natural world through writing.

Reading list

This list of popular nature books demonstrates the real breadth of the genre, from memoir to activism, and cultural history to more scientific approaches.

Entangled Life: How Fungi Makes Our World, Changes Our Minds and Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

book cover an entangled life by martin sheldrake

From redefining the boundaries of intelligent life forms to providing us with the building blocks of foodstuffs and medicines, Entangled Life demonstrates just how integral fungi are to sustained living on this planet.

Entangled Life is a mind-altering and surprising journey into a spectacular and neglected world. It shows that fungi provide a key to understanding both the planet on which we live, and life itself. This book is a remarkable work of modern science that truly changes the way we see the world. Every sentence offers up earth-shaking facts communicated in an excited tone.

Sheldrake shines a light on a totally unexplored topic with such accuracy and descriptive flair .

The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot by Robert MacFarlane

Robert MacFarlane is one of the most prolific and respected nature writers today. In The Old Ways , MacFarlane travels Britain’s ancient paths and discovers the secrets of Britain’s beautiful, underappreciated landscapes.

Following the tracks, holloways, drove-roads, and sea paths that form part of a vast ancient network of routes crisscrossing the British Isles and beyond, Macfarlane discovers a lost world – a landscape of the feet and the mind, of pilgrimage and ritual, of stories and ghosts; above all of the places and journeys which inspire and inhabit our imaginations.

MacFarlane is a master at totally immersing the reader in a particular place. To read this book is to be transported to different parts of the British Isles. One of the things that so many people love about this book is the impact it has had on the walks they previously thought uninteresting – MacFarlane forces the reader to rethink the landscapes they’ve become accustomed to and see the beauty in places they were previously blind to. Reading this book feels like an adventure and flight of discovery .

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

As a botanist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer brings together scientific understanding with history and tradition in a collection of moving essays on how plants give us gifts and lessons.

The central argument running through the essays in Braiding Sweetgrass is that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires us to embrace a reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. From asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass, Wall Kimmerer argues that only when we can hear the languages of these other living beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

The book is a powerful vision of a new world of balance, reciprocity, and gratitude. Wall Kimmerer is an incredible storyteller who writes with real compassion and very poetic prose, which is what makes this collection of essays so special and unique.

The Shepherd’s Life: A Tale of the Lake District by James Rebanks

Rebanks’ rural memoir is a rounded account of shepherding in the twenty-first century and a frank and engrossing dissection of a vanishing way of life .

In evocative and lucid prose, James Rebanks takes us through the year in the life of a shepherd, offering a unique and candid account of a truly rural life and fundamental connection with the land that most of us have lost. Part cultural history of the Lake District and part personal memoir , Rebanks’ passion for his subject lights up every sentence.

At once lyrical and political, gentle and angry, The Shepherd’s Life is an amazing example of nature writing at its finest – a book that successfully draws on the author’s deeply personal relationship with the land, transports the reader into the landscape and rural life of the author, and offers poignant historical and political commentary on the natural world all at the same time.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

H is for Hawk is a profound meditation on grief expressed through the author’s experience training a goshawk.

As a child, Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer, learning the arcane terminology and reading all the classic books. Years later, when her father died and she was struck deeply by grief, she became obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. The book is a moving and candid account of Macdonald’s struggle with grief as she tried to tame the hawk.

Macdonald writes beautifully on memory, nature, and nation, and how it might be possible to reconcile death with life and love. Her descriptive writing about nature is startlingly precise and her reflections on how taming an animal led to the untaming of herself are poignant. H is for Hawk is a fantastic example of distinguished writing about the relationship between humankind and the environment that evokes truly deep feelings in the reader.

The Salt Path by Raynor Winn

Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years, is terminally ill, their home is taken away and they lose their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall.

The Salt Path is an honest and life-affirming story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world. It is a portrayal of home, and how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways. And it makes the reader appreciate the comforts of a warm home and good health. Written with real tenderness and humanity, it is about two people finding themselves in nature.

If you’re interested in writing non-fiction and want to get your work in front of a publisher, visit our free non-fiction book proposal course written by Lydia Yadi, Senior Commission Editor for Non-Fiction at Penguin Random House.

Note: All purchase links in this post are affiliate links through BookShop.org, and Novlr may earn a small commission – every purchase supports independent bookstores.

Healing Forest

Forest Walks, Nature Art, Mindfulness Activities, Healing with Nature

Words that heal: creative nature writing.

CREATIVE WRITING EXERCISES IN NATURE

Writing is therapeutic. Writing in nature – meditative.

Writing helps to give direction to our thoughts. From clouds of voluminous chatter in the mind, words drop on to paper like gentle rain, turning into streams of sentences. These streams follow their own path to uncover what is hidden and discover what is waiting to be discovered. It is a way to ignite creativity, curiosity and a deeper enquiry into the self.

It’s about observing the nature outside and observing the nature within.

Writing about nature leads to an increased awareness of our surroundings. This simple activity is an exercise to enhance our attention and also become aware of our own state of being. Nature is a place where one can observe our outer and inner landscape. Every person has a unique way of perceiving life and things around them. You begin to discover this uniqueness when you channelise your memories and imagination in a creative way.

Writing in nature is also a way to reconnect to a calmer self. Putting words on paper brings us back into the present moment and by paying attention to our senses and breath we can reach a state of relaxed ease. When one is relaxed and calm, it is easier to get creative insights about the questions in our mind.

WRITING EXERCISES IN NATURE

Our mind is a forest of memories, ideas, and observations. Let us explore the power of words to rediscover the nature around us and the nature within us.

Given below is a list of simple writing games that can be incorporated into an engaging walk for all age groups. The aim of these games is to build your awareness and curiosity. We hope this practice leads you to calm, creativity and clarity.

Senses: Pick any one of your senses. Describe your surroundings keeping only the chosen sense in focus. You can turn this exercise into a letter to a friend. In the letter you are describing your nature walk to a close friend who is not present with you, but remember you can only use one sense to portray the scene. Objects: Choose any object in nature, create a riddle around it. Let others in the group guess what object you picked. In the riddle the less you reveal, the more interesting it becomes. Just like the language of the forest which is full of riddles and mysteries. Here’s a riddle for you. The answer is given at the very end of the article.

You can see me, but you can’t hear me. You can feel me, but you can’t smell me. What am I?

Emotions: Take an emotion that you are feeling. Include it in a 3 line poem. These 3 line poems are a simplified version of Japanese Haikus . The aim of our poem is to capture an image from your nature walk and convey the emotion you are left with. It’s not a test of your poetic skills and the lines do not have to rhyme. Here’s an example:

Characters : Pick the oldest tree around or a tree that feels special to you. Spend time with it and write the story of its life. In this exercise allow your imagination to fly. You can compress time and write a biography for the tree or simply write about a day in the life of your tree.

EXTRAS: IDEAS FOR NATURE WRITING

Magical Creatures: Our forest stories have always been full of magical beings like elves, fairies, gnomes. If you could create your own magical creature what would it be? What magic will they have and what would you call them?

Game of Memories: When we recollect positive memories in nature it strengthens them and allows us to return to them when we need it the most. Write down your earliest happy memory. Write down your most peaceful nature memory.

Nature Song: This is a fun exercise that gives rest to the logical, thinking side of your brain. Pay attention to the sounds of nature and write a song in gibberish. Which means you cannot use any known words from your language. Just compose a song from the sounds around you: Krr Krr Krr Krr Krr, tok tok, Ku-oo

One Word Connections: This game serves as a warm-up to our next exercise, but is also fun on it’s own. If you are in a group, form a small circle. The game starts by one person saying any word from nature. The next person says the first thing that comes to mind on hearing that word. You are not allowed to think and respond. If a participant takes too long to respond, then the chance automatically passes to the next person in the circle. Complete 2 to 3 rounds of the circle with this exercise and build your spontaneity.

Twisty Tale: This is a group exercise. Stand in a circle and create a story starting with ‘I went for a walk into the forest….’. The conditions are that each person adds one line to the story, but alternate people add happy and sad twists to the story. So one set of people are trying to make the story positive and happy while the other set is giving it a dark or tragic turn. Once the story runs its course, switch the roles of the people.

Gratitude Note (Closing Exercise)

We usually end our nature walk by writing a note of gratitude. The note starts with gratitude for the gifts we have received from nature and grows to encompass other aspects of our life.

Without gratitude, nothing is enough ~Julio Olalla

At the core of all emotions in life, this emotion of gratitude is the one that allows us to find contentment and make peace with ourselves. It shifts focus from what is missing within our life and moves our heart to appreciate what we have. As with all writing, this exercise is effective only when the words flow from the heart and not the head. We hope that being in nature has enabled you to do so.

Bonus: Story Walk

A story walk session typically takes about 60~90 minutes. It is suitable for all age groups and creates more delightful results when people of different ages participate together.

Give around 15 minutes for each activity – 10 minutes for exploring, walking, writing and 5 minutes for sharing the stories. If there are a large number of participants, create smaller groups of 5 or less for sharing. Smaller groups create more meaningful engagements.

Any safe space in nature works for a story walk. Make pairs to create responsibility and manage the group better. At the end of each activity, have pre-decided meeting points for sharing stories from that section. These ideas are mere suggestions. Feel free to make your own. Stay creative.

WORDS THAT HEAL

Please share this article with friends who may find it useful. Here’s a link to download some posters, in case you’d like to create an event for people in your city.

Fewer people are spending time in nature these days. This distance is affecting our health – as individuals, as a society and also as a planet. The intention of this idea is to bring nature back into conversations and inspire more people to connect with forests in creative ways. Let’s do this as a collective. When you create writing in nature and share it with other, it spreads the seeds of emotions you felt and the insights you learnt. Hopefully, it will grow the magic of nature and draw more people to it. Do share your poems, puzzles, stories or reflections from the nature walk on our Facebook group . In case you post your writing on social media, add these tags: #healingforest / #forestlearning . It will make it easier for us to find them.

*This page is part of our learning program with nature arts, activities and meditations from around the world.

END NOTE: To get uplifting new ideas once a month you can join our free newsletter here . We are a small group of friends trying to find new ways to reconnect people with nature. Our aim is simple. Helping people heal. Helping forests heal.

We’d love to hear your thoughts, experiences, and suggestions for more writing games. Please add them in the comments section below to grow our collective learning.

p.s: Our answer to the riddle is ‘ Sunlight ‘. But in nature, there can be more than one right answer!

Spread A Little Calm. Our World Needs It.

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Posted on May 24, 2018 by Healing Forest

Category: Healing Forest

Tags: creative writing , Creative writing exercises , creative writing in nature , Forest Bathing , forest therapy , forest therapy activities , gratitude meditation , healing arts , healing meditation , mindful meditations , mindfulness , nature connection activities , nature healing , nature meditation , nature walk , shinrin yoku , words that heal , writing in nature

3 Comments on “ Words That Heal: Creative Nature Writing ”

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Open your senses and notice what you hear-smell-touch-see. Start by connecting with one sense using word association to prompt your writing. For example, seeing green = money, begin freestyle writing about money. Close your eyes and touch the tree bark, then describe what sensations immediately come to mind, allowing the words to flow on their own. Utilizing your senses is a sure way to expand your writing with more vivid detail, while also enhancing your own connection to nature, and to your readers.

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Thank you for this beautiful opportunity to share our nature perspectives and writings. I’d like to share my recently launched book now available on Amazon, “Strength from Nature—Simple Lessons of Life Taught By the Most Unlikely Masters: The Nature Teachers.” Each chapter features everything from a scraggly weed to a rock, waves, mighty forests, butterflies and much more offering to help us face our human challenges with a greater appreciation for all life on this planet.

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Published: 23 September 2015

Creative writing: A world of pure imagination

Roberta Kwok 1

Nature volume 525 , pages 553–555 ( 2015 ) Cite this article

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The creative process of writing science-inspired fiction can be rewarding — and the untapped niche is rich in opportunities for originality.

When Steve Caplan was a graduate student in the late 1990s, he accidentally inhaled a toxic chemical in his immunology laboratory, and had to spend ten days at home to recover. With little to do, he began to write a novel — he loved reading and had published some short stories, but hadn't yet had the time or mental space to produce longer work. He pounded out most of a rough draft about a scientist struggling to get tenure and coping with childhood memories of a parent with bipolar disorder.

After going back to work, Caplan — now a cell biologist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha — spent months revising the manuscript at night and on weekends. His initial attempts to sell the novel to a publisher failed, but in 2009, he decided to pursue the self-publishing route. Caplan produced print and electronic versions of his novel using the Amazon services CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing, and publicized the work by doing readings at bookshops and libraries. He collaborated with his university's public-relations office on a press release, and showed a slide of the book at the end of his seminars. The novel, called Matter Over Mind (Steve Caplan, 2010), has sold more than 2,000 copies so far, netting roughly US$7,000. He has since written two more novels, which he published through small presses, and is now working on a fourth.

For many scientists who spend their days cranking out papers and grant proposals, writing fiction may seem like the last thing they would want to do. But some researchers with a love of literature have made time to pursue the craft — and have found it creatively rewarding. Science offers plenty of rich material, whether it is the drama of overwintering at a polar research station or the futuristic thrill of genetically engineering live organisms. “You're sitting on a gold mine of really interesting stories,” says Jennifer Rohn, a cell biologist at University College London and founder of LabLit.com , a website about portrayals of scientific research in fiction and other media.

A tantalizing niche

When done well, science-related fiction can help to expose the public to the scientific process, humanize researchers and inspire readers to learn about topics they might otherwise ignore. Such nuanced depictions of science in fiction are relatively rare. LabLit.com has catalogued about 200 examples of novels, such as Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior (HarperCollins, 2012) and Ian McEwan's Solar (Random House, 2010), that feature realistic scientists as characters. Stories about scientists are well outnumbered by those about, for example, doctors or artists. Even science fiction tends to lack portrayals of the actual scientific process, says Alastair Reynolds, a science-fiction author near Cardiff, UK, who left a career in astronomy to write full-time.

The shortage of works with accurate depictions of science means that researchers who write fiction have a good opportunity to be original — a task that would challenge an aspiring crime or romance writer. “It's sort of untrampled ground,” says Rohn. Many researchers are familiar with fieldwork sites and unusual settings that other writers might not have at their fingertips. In her novel The Falling Sky (Freight Books, 2013), Pippa Goldschmidt, an astronomer turned fiction writer in Edinburgh, UK, writes about a young astronomer who wanders into a telescope dome on a Chilean mountaintop and is nearly injured when the operator moves the instrument.

Sources of plot inspiration abound in science. Reynolds reads research news and papers voraciously for intriguing elements that can be parlayed into fiction. One time, he found a study about huge flocks of starlings in which the authors used high-tech equipment to track individual birds. He incorporated the idea into a science-fiction story, but made the fictional technology so advanced that it could track the birds' eye movements.

Scientists also can draw ideas from the past. Goldschmidt was inspired by an anecdote about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer: during an unhappy period in the 1920s while studying abroad, Oppenheimer left a poisoned apple for his tutor. The details are sketchy, but Goldschmidt wanted to imagine what might have transpired. “No historical figure is ever completely understood,” she says. “There's always gaps in their lives, and fiction can inhabit those gaps.” The result was a short story entitled 'The Equation for an Apple', a fictionalized account of Oppenheimer's life leading up to the act.

Scientist–writers can also generate ideas by doing something they are already used to — sitting around and imagining scenarios, notes Andy Weir, a novelist in Mountain View, California. His novel The Martian (Crown, 2014) explores what might happen if a crewed Mars mission goes awry and one person is left behind on the red planet. The story follows the lone astronaut's trials as he tries to grow enough food for himself and to make contact with Earth.

Fiction-writing classes offered through adult-education programmes or at creative-writing centres can help authors to transfer an idea onto the page. These courses provide basic tips, such as how to construct compelling characters, build tension and handle shifts between past and present. Participants often critique each other's manuscripts, giving scientists a chance to get feedback from non-technical readers.

Reading widely and critically helps, too. Reynolds learnt to write fiction by studying the differences between his writing and that of successful authors. To work out how to rotate between different characters' points of view, he read James Ellroy's crime novel L.A. Confidential (Mysterious Press, 1990). And writers can learn how to structure dialogue from masters such as Jane Austen, he says.

Opening act

Short stories are a good starting point because newbies can quickly practise the basics, explore story ideas and learn from their mistakes. But, Goldschmidt notes, “there's no point in writing short stories if you don't like reading them”. Scientists who want motivation to complete a longer work might consider participating in National Novel Writing Month, an international programme held every November that encourages writers of all levels to produce a 50,000-word manuscript (see nanowrimo.org ). Researchers can also find support through collaboration with professional writers on works of fiction (see 'Meeting of the minds').

boxed-text Researcher–writers should keep in mind that education is not the main purpose of fiction. Technical details should be included only if the reader needs them to understand the story, not simply because the author finds them fascinating. For The Martian , Weir went to great lengths to ensure accuracy, and even performed orbital-dynamics calculations. But he left out how he came up with certain numbers, such as the mass that had to be removed from the ship to achieve escape velocity.

When technical information is necessary, writers should try to deliver it in a way that sounds natural. “People don't tell each other a whole bunch of information about particle physics when they're having breakfast together,” says Goldschmidt. Instead, she tries to make the science an organic part of the character's personal journey. In the Oppenheimer story, the physicist thinks about an experiment that he is trying to replicate, but the details are woven into his emotional turmoil at failing to complete it.

Humour can help to lighten the tone. The Martian 's protagonist is a smart-aleck, and his jokes break up the expository text. In one section, he says that if he were exposed to damaging solar radiation, he would “get so much cancer, the cancer would have cancer”.

The path to press

Many outlets accept short-story submissions. LabLit.com often publishes fiction by scientists, although it does not pay them because it is a volunteer effort. Nature runs an 850- to 950-word science-fiction story each week (see nature.com/futures ). The website Duotrope.com offers a searchable database of literary journals and other fiction markets around the world, and writers can peruse newsstands for sci-fi magazines such as Analog Science Fiction and Fact .

For longer works, small presses are a more-realistic option than major publishers, and many do not require writers to have agents. Tasneem Zehra Husain, a theoretical physicist and writer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wrote a novel that revisits physics breakthroughs throughout history from the perspectives of fictional characters. Through an acquaintance, she connected with the publisher Paul Dry Books in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which released her book Only the Longest Threads last year. To find small presses, scientists can look for companies that have published similar books. Alternatively, authors could self-publish using a service such as Lulu.

Many literary journals do not pay at all, and Reynolds estimates that science-fiction magazines have paid him an average of only US$200–300 per story. But the contacts that Reynolds made through short-story publishing led to a book deal, and he published four novels while working as an astronomer. By the time he quit science to become a full-time writer, he was making about $60,000–$75,000 per year from book sales.

The write balance

Few scientists can expect to make a living — or earn much — from their fiction. But money often isn't the main motivation. Caplan, for his part, wanted to bring attention to the challenges faced by the family members of people with bipolar disorder (challenges he himself has experienced) and to provide entertainment for scientists. He also finds that writing fiction clears his head, in the same way that playing a sport might do for others (see Nature 523 , 117–119; 2015). “It's almost like a form of meditation,” says Caplan. “It just keeps me sane.” And there are other rewards. Scientists have a chance to reach people who might not read a non-fiction science book or visit a natural-history museum — but who might read a love story about ecologists in an exotic field location. And readers might be inspired to look up the science once they've finished.

Scientists have a chance to reach people who might not read a non-fiction science book or visit a museum.

There can also be a cross-training effect. Rohn thinks that her fiction has helped her to get more grants; reviewers have commented that her proposals are beautifully written. The craft of telling a story applies to scientific papers as well; in hers, for example, she lays out the phenomenon that her team noticed, the questions it raised and what they did to try to answer those questions. “Everybody wants to hear a story,” she says.

Finding the time to write is a challenge. Some scientists squeeze it in on evenings and weekends. Husain wrote her book while working part-time, and says that she could not have done so with a full-time job because the novel required extensive historical research.

Scientist–authors also risk having their fiction perceived as a distraction by promotion committees. Husain worried that her novel might affect her career prospects. But she has received positive feedback on the book from other physicists, including prominent researchers whose fields are described in her book.

For researchers who delve into fiction writing, the act of creating a world, characters and stories can be intensely rewarding. When the writing is flowing, says Rohn, “it's like being caught up in the best book you've ever read”.

Box 1: Meeting of the minds

Scientists who are too daunted or busy to write fiction can pair up with a professional writer. Comma Press in Manchester, UK, for example, has published four short-story anthologies — a fifth comes out this October — as part of its 'Science-into-Fiction' series. Each scientist suggests a few research items or emerging technologies for inspiration, and a writer chooses one to develop into fiction. The researcher provides technical guidance, reviews the draft and writes an afterword explaining the science in detail.

The partnership is satisfying because scientists see their work portrayed in a real-world context, and the writer can raise social or ethical implications that the researcher may not have considered, says Ra Page, who founded Comma Press. One scientist studied how nanotechnology could improve body armour, which could have military applications. The writer penned 'Without a Shell', a tale of a futuristic society in which children at an elite school have 'smart' uniforms that heal their injuries, while kids at a poor school do not. Comma Press included the work in its 2009 anthology, When It Changed . An upcoming collection will focus on fabrication technology, such as 3D printers; interested researchers can contact Page to take part.

Scientists also can offer to answer questions from fiction writers through the Science and Entertainment Exchange, run by the US National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC. For instance, a novelist might want to know what types of equipment a researcher would carry in the field. Scientists can call 844-NEEDSCI (toll-free in the United States) to volunteer (see go.nature.com/e6juh9 for more).

Researchers can also partner with faculty members in their universities' creative-writing departments, suggests Page. Authors do not need experience writing about science, but it helps if they have been commissioned to write about specific topics before. When collaborating, “allow the writer to make silly suggestions”, says Page. An idea that at first seems impossible may be plausible after further thought.

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Kwok, R. Creative writing: A world of pure imagination. Nature 525 , 553–555 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7570-553a

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Published : 23 September 2015

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5 places to submit your environmental writing

The natural world is a source of inspiration for many writers. If environmental themes play a prominent role in your story, poem or personal essay, consider submitting it to one of the journals on this month’s list. All are currently open for submissions and none charge reading fees.

Note: We are a creative writing school and compile these lists for the benefit of our students. Please don’t send us your publishing queries or submissions :). Click on the green links to go to the publication’s website and look for their submissions page.

Terrain.org publishes both established nature writers and new voices on a rolling basis on their website, and accepts articles and reviews alongside poetry, essays, and short fiction of up to 6K words. As a journal about place, they welcome stories that explore urban as well as natural landscapes.

The Hopper wants your explorations of the human experience in nature. They publish approximately one poem and one prose piece (fiction and creative nonfiction up to 4K words) per month on their website alongside an annual print journal.

The Future Fire has a broader scope than just nature writing, and welcomes any socially-progressive writing that seeks to imagine possible futures. They pay for fiction (flash fiction up to 1,000 words; short stories up to 7,500 words; novellas up to 17,500 words) and poetry (up to 60 lines per poem, 3 poems per submission), and nonfiction submissions are by query only.

Deep Wild publishes creative work ‘inspired by journeys to places where there are no roads’. They are currently accepting submissions for their second annual publication, and are looking for poetry, fiction, and narrative nonfiction (word limit for both is 3,000 words).

The Tiger Moth Review is a literary journal based in Singapore focused on nature, culture, and the environment. They especially encourage writers from southeast Asia to submit but have published pieces by authors from around the world. They accept submissions of poetry and fiction (up to 5K words) year-round and publish their favorites in an online magazine twice per year.

3 responses on "5 places to submit your environmental writing"

My 90 word sci-fi eco-poem is much loved by the several dozen people who have read it. The poem is about humans who leave Earth to search for intelligent life in the Milky Way. Long gone generations who were all unable to fulfill their quest eventually return to the good green Earth. Where can I submit this poem?

I have written a short piece on the farmer fishermen of the early fifties on the North West coast of Ireland and the demise of that fishery. Where can I submit this?

Where would I submit a short piece on the demise of the Atlantic Salmon?

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The art of nature writing itself can be a children's story, a poem, a list, a eulogy, a translation - it can be fiction or non - written or other - short or long; it is anything that takes our world and makes it sing. The best nature writing, for me, speaks of transformation - anything from a fiercely hungry caterpillar, through to ...
How to Use Nature to Inspire Creative Writing
Nature Provides Unlimited Topics to Write On. A part of my mindful writing strategy is to use that which is going on around me as inspiration to create original works. Think about how awesome this is: If you can draw creative inspiration from your surroundings, then you'll never be out of ideas to write about.
Amy Liptrot chooses the best of Nature Writing
The Outrunby Amy Liptrot. Read. 1 Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell. 2 The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard. 3 Findings by Kathleen Jamie. 4 Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life by George Monbiot. 5 The Orkney Book of Birds by Tim Dean and Tracy Hall. Y our bestselling first book, The Outrun, follows your story of recovery from ...
How to Write Engaging Non-Fiction: Nature Writing
Nature writing can be about cliffs, lakes, rivers, deserts, gardens, meadows, oceans, remote islands, and underwater worlds. It can be a study of the slices of nature within cities and urban spaces, whether focusing on parks or plants that we find cropping up in pavements. Nature writing can focus on developments in agriculture, new farming ...
How to Write About Nature: 11 Steps To Success
How to Write About Nature: 11 Steps To Success. Learning how to write about nature can bring an extra element into your stories that can make them even stronger.
Writing About Nature: Capturing the Beauty of the Outdoors
Writing about nature is an endeavor of love and respect — a celebration of the world surrounding us. It's an act that requires mindfulness, a rich vocabulary, and a willingness to see both the ...
Words That Heal: Creative Nature Writing
Writing is therapeutic. Writing in nature - meditative. Writing helps to give direction to our thoughts. From clouds of voluminous chatter in the mind, words drop on to paper like gentle rain, turning into streams of sentences. These streams follow their own path to uncover what is hidden and discover what is waiting to be discovered.
Creative writing: A world of pure imagination
Creative writing: A world of pure imagination. Roberta Kwok. Nature 525 , 553-555 ( 2015) Cite this article. 7610 Accesses. 78 Altmetric. Metrics. The creative process of writing science ...
The Rise of Eco-Literature: Nature and Environmental Themes in Writing
Aug 13, 2023. 166. 1. Eco-literature, also known as environmental literature or ecocriticism, has emerged as a crucial genre in contemporary literature, reflecting society's growing concern for ...
5 places to submit your environmental writing
They publish approximately one poem and one prose piece (fiction and creative nonfiction up to 4K words) per month on their website alongside an annual print journal. The Future Fire has a broader scope than just nature writing, and welcomes any socially-progressive writing that seeks to imagine possible futures. They pay for fiction (flash ...

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Nonfiction Books » Nature » Nature Writing

The Outrun by Amy Liptrot

Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell

The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard

Findings by Kathleen Jamie

Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life by George Monbiot

The Orkney Book of Birds by Tim Dean and Tracy Hall

1 Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell

How to Write Engaging Non-Fiction: Nature Writing

The varying styles of nature writing

What attracts readers to nature writing?

Focusing your work

Tips for nature writing

Reading list

Entangled Life: How Fungi Makes Our World, Changes Our Minds and Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot by Robert MacFarlane

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Shepherd’s Life: A Tale of the Lake District by James Rebanks

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

The Salt Path by Raynor Winn

Forest Walks, Nature Art, Mindfulness Activities, Healing with Nature

CREATIVE WRITING EXERCISES IN NATURE

WRITING EXERCISES IN NATURE

EXTRAS: IDEAS FOR NATURE WRITING

Gratitude Note (Closing Exercise)

Bonus: Story Walk

WORDS THAT HEAL

Spread A Little Calm. Our World Needs It.

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Creative writing: A world of pure imagination

Box 1: Meeting of the minds

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