Lord Thompson Manor

 How to Write About Nature

Lord Thompson Manor About Nature By David Yarian.

Have you ever wanted to write about an experience you had in nature? Or integrate more of the natural world into your writing? How do you put into words what you experience in nature?

Nature confronts us with the web of Life of which we are both participants and observers. The best nature writing weaves communal meaning from the elements of this shared experience and places it before the reader in language and symbol that is accessible and understandable.

Francine Prose, in Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them believes that the best way to learn to write is to read: quality reading, she says, informs great writing. There are many great nature writers publishing today. One good way to start is by picking up an anthology of nature writing – the editor has done the work of selecting the finest writing.

Reading is an osmotic process; one soaks up language and rhythm and narrative as a plant draws water from the Earth. Writing, on the other hand, is expressive. The writer creates much as a tree bears fruit, producing words that will hopefully seed new experience within the reader of those words.

While teachers can teach writing and books can instruct, there is no substitute for doing it — writing, that is — putting words on the page without worrying if they make sense or are grammatical or are even worth keeping. Much that a teacher or book has to offer the writing student is encouragement to soldier on and to learn from the process. All the reading and instruction and wisdom and insight is within your body, awaiting your invitation to spring forth so the rest of us can see the world as you see it, for a while.

Keeping a nature journal cam be useful, as a way of training yourself in close observation and accurate description. Thoreau produced many of his published works out of material he originally wrote in his journals.