Articles - Wild Writing Women - San Francisco Bay Area Writing Group

08/15/2008

Who Are the Wild Writing Women?

The origins of the writing group that became a San Francisco Bay Area inpsiration

Cathleen Miller

Funny that you should ask, dear reader, because this is a question that we are always trying to answer ourselves. The short retort is: We are a clan of travel writers based in the San Francisco Bay Area. But how did we become the Wild Writing Women—that's what you really want to know isn't it?

In the Beginning

Back in 1992, the group began innocently enough when I took a travel writing class from Don George, then travel editor for the San Francisco Examiner. Why I did this is still unclear, as I had never written anything and I had never really traveled. But I decided to pretend to be the woman I wanted to be, and it had been a lifelong dream of mine to see the world; I saw travel writing as a way to fund the fantasy.

During the course of the 10-week seminar, I met other women who were much better writers than I (easily done under the circumstances) and coerced them into starting a writing group by offering to cook dinner for them once a month at my home. Thus the format was set in motion that continues 16 years later: we meet on the fourth Wednesday of the month, to cook, gossip, drink wine—oh yes—and critique our writing. Speaking for myself, I was thrilled to be surrounded by talented females who were interested in discussing something besides toasters and tit jobs; these voyageuse spun tales of paddling canoes down the Amazon and peddling bicycles across Africa. I might not have been in their league, but at least I had found a league I wanted to play in.

The origins of our name are mired somewhere in the mists of memory, Merlot, and word games that swirl around a particular bar in San Francisco, much like fog rising out of the bay. The London Wine Bar, located in the city’s Financial District, was a frequent hangout in the early days of our then nameless sect. There we drank, argued, brainstormed, entertained our favorite editors, hosted our Winter Solstice get-togethers, and broke into spontaneous dancing to the surprise of the Wine Bar’s stock exchange patrons. One night, somewhere in between drinking six bottles of wine and planning an expedition to Mount Kailash, word games surrounding the letter “W” ended with a moniker that stuck: Wild Writing Women.

As the years went by we helped each other evolve from literary wannabes to professional writers. Adding to our maturation, new members like Pam joined us; she was already a seasoned veteran, editing anthologies for Travelers’ Tales. We slowly saw a change in the conversations around the dinner table—from questions about how to write a query letter, to queries about good locales for book launch parties. Our gals began to write for some of the top periodicals in the nation, have their work anthologized, publish their own books, and move into the role of mentor, teaching other women how to write.

Creating Community

The creation of community has long been a goal of our group, one we have pursued through a variety of channels. At some point all of us have led writing workshops. In fact we have included a section in our magazine featuring the work of our acolytes, “What Goes Around,” a title that symbolizes—not only the travel aspect of our material—but our reciprocal relationship of learning. This student/teacher rapport has been at the root of Lisa’s innovative approach for dance and poetry seminars. For decades she has held workshops in such exotic locales as the ancient kivas in New Mexico.

The WWW put together our first writers’ conference at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco in 2003, and felt honored (and astonished) when an international crowd of women enrolled. One of our own acolytes who attended that event, Suzanne, later went on to become a much-published writer and joined the WWW in 2007. There was some sweet symmetry to that conclusion, because Jacqueline has known Suzanne since she was born.

In addition to the writing workshops, we launched a literary salon at the Monticello Inn at San Francisco’s Union Square. For six years we met monthly, featuring guest speakers who presented on a variety of topics relating to the scribes’ craft—from historical research for biographies to publicizing new releases. The best part of this routine was the opportunity to meet many of you in person; like the full moon, some men and women reappeared each month, and other strangers dropped by when visiting from Germany or Australia or…

One of the miracles of our longevity has been existing long enough to see the expansion of our audience, from local readers of the San Francisco papers, to fan mail from folks in Brazil, India, Italy and Qatar—thanking us for what we’ve given them through the magic of the Internet. Our Web Dominatrix, Carla, has been a pioneer in technology since she was in pigtails, and just as she has for many a Silicon Valley corporation, she has given us the keys to this innovative medium, allowing us to build community with the women of the world.

Wild Writing Women, LLC

In 2000, after one of our meetings we were drinking wine late into the night (do we detect a theme here?) and complaining—as most writers do—about a lack of outlets to publish the type of stories we wanted to write, i.e. great narratives, not the type of dry factual material that the travel editors of most mainstream publications seem to think people want to read.

But for a change something profitable came from this whining: a book was born. We decided to collect our favorite travel essays and compile an anthology which we titled Wild Writing Women: Stories of World Travel. At first we self-published the volume and, in what became a bit of a Bay Area literary legend, we sold 1000 copies in a week. Next we signed a contract with Globe Pequot who bought the rights to the collection. What we discovered along the way was that we enjoyed the artistic control that this process entailed.

I remember reading a study on women’s leadership that was apropos to our experience: clusters of females function differently than men in that there is not one dominant leader. Rather we are more similar to fish. We will school based on signals from any one of the group, suddenly turning and following her lead.

Our next course of action was to expand on the success of Stories of World Travel and form an LLC to explore more creative business ventures. We vowed that one of our missions was to empower other women, employing the same methods we had used to egg each other on as wayfarers and wordsmiths.

The creation of our online magazine marked a milestone in this goal. In fact the idea for an issue devoted to maiden voyages grew out of the readings we did to promote our anthology. Travel virgins from 18 to 80 would come to meet us and wistfully comment: “I wish I had the guts to do what you do—to take a trip alone….” It occurred to me that all they were missing was someone to teach them how to do this, and so we wrote down our own stories of early jaunts and the lessons we’d learned along the road.

We collected advice from some of the most prolific travelers we knew, like our pal Maureen Wheeler who founded Lonely Planet. The resulting issue, Taking Flight, won us two national awards for best online travel publication. The judges from the University of Missouri School of Journalism offered us high praise which could have come straight from our mission statement: “Wild Writing Women’s online magazine combines lively features and practical advice aimed at novice travelers. What makes Taking Flight particularly refreshing is its exploration of travel as a vehicle for empowerment and personal growth.” When you can control your ability to go where you like, you have taken a major step in controlling your destiny.

What’s it like to be a Wild Writing Woman?

Down through the years our members have come and gone, and at present we have six intrepid souls in the tribe. The WWW’s composition is not static—it’s evolved and changed along with our lives, and our work always reflects those volatile lives. There is something incredibly bonding about reading each other’s stories. The result is that beyond our role as a writing group, we have become a loving—if dysfunctional!—family, six sisters who’ve guided each other through difficulties more hazardous than dangling modifiers.

To date the Ws have nursed each other through countless broken romances including divorces; it seems one of the occupational hazards for female travel writers is that it’s tough to leave a man tending the home fires. By the time you get back he’s either taken up with the trollop downstairs or burned the house down.

The Sisterhood has also responded to many a panicky email sent from a W alone, frightened, and sometimes stranded on the road, looking for help or merely reassurance from the people she knows will get it. Together we’ve navigated moving, robbery, career meltdowns, financial and natural disasters and a host of vehicular mishaps. (See Carla’s Motorcycle Misadventures for an encyclopedic exploration of this topic.) We’ve supported each other through a host of physical ailments ranging from lice-infestations to breast cancer, and cried on each other’s shoulders at the death of family, friends and our beloved pets. Now some of us are heading into the choppy waters of many women our age—the care of elderly parents.

While writing the above list I questioned perhaps we’d made the wrong decision and created trouble for ourselves by choosing a rather unorthodox lifestyle as adventurers along life’s highway. Maybe it would have been wise to take the safer route, the road more traveled? But I concluded our meandering has created few problems; rather we’ve merely suffered the same difficulties our gender faces universally. The truth is that many a woman whose sole travel consists of the well-worn path from cookstove to cradle has experienced all our woes—without the exquisite delights of being artists who have chronicled the world.

Traveling Companions

One of the grandest treats we have experienced has been our group retreats with our friend Maureen Wheeler. These trips would never have occurred without our bon vivant social director, Jacqueline, who accomplishes the impossible: she herds the cats together so that we all land in the same corner of the galaxy during the same week. Along with Maureen, our menagerie has stayed in a ninth-century villa in Tuscany, boarding empty planes just days after 9/11, and simultaneously rejoiced and cried at the bittersweet mysteries of life. We have sipped Provencal rosés as we watched the sun set over the Cote d’Azur, the night shift (including moi) staying up all night telling stories, while the day shift rose at dawn to hike the steep trail down to the Mediterranean for a swim. We took ferries around the Greek Islands, eating at tavernas in the villages and shopping till our bags burst at the seams.

We hope you've enjoyed reading about the WWW on the WWW, and that we can connect with you further along the road—whether it's just the occasional visit to our website, subscribing to our free newsletter, downloading our magazine, ordering our books, or coming by to say hello at one of our public appearances. But whatever the method, our most fervent desire is that we'll inspire you to be a wild woman in your own right, whether you write or not. §




Magazine		Articles 08/15/2008 Who Are the Wild Writing Women? The origins of the writing group that became a San Francisco Bay Area inpsiration Cathleen Miller Funny that you should ask, dear reader, because this is a question that we are always trying to answer ourselves. The short retort is: We are a clan of travel writers based in the San Francisco Bay Area. But how did we become the Wild Writing Women—that's what you really want to know isn't it? In the Beginning Back in 1992, the group began innocently enough when I took a travel writing class from Don George, then travel editor for the San Francisco Examiner. Why I did this is still unclear, as I had never written anything and I had never really traveled. But I decided to pretend to be the woman I wanted to be, and it had been a lifelong dream of mine to see the world; I saw travel writing as a way to fund the fantasy. During the course of the 10-week seminar, I met other women who were much better writers than I (easily done under the circumstances) and coerced them into starting a writing group by offering to cook dinner for them once a month at my home. Thus the format was set in motion that continues 16 years later: we meet on the fourth Wednesday of the month, to cook, gossip, drink wine—oh yes—and critique our writing. Speaking for myself, I was thrilled to be surrounded by talented females who were interested in discussing something besides toasters and tit jobs; these voyageuse spun tales of paddling canoes down the Amazon and peddling bicycles across Africa. I might not have been in their league, but at least I had found a league I wanted to play in. The origins of our name are mired somewhere in the mists of memory, Merlot, and word games that swirl around a particular bar in San Francisco, much like fog rising out of the bay. The London Wine Bar, located in the city’s Financial District, was a frequent hangout in the early days of our then nameless sect. There we drank, argued, brainstormed, entertained our favorite editors, hosted our Winter Solstice get-togethers, and broke into spontaneous dancing to the surprise of the Wine Bar’s stock exchange patrons. One night, somewhere in between drinking six bottles of wine and planning an expedition to Mount Kailash, word games surrounding the letter “W” ended with a moniker that stuck: Wild Writing Women. As the years went by we helped each other evolve from literary wannabes to professional writers. Adding to our maturation, new members like Pam joined us; she was already a seasoned veteran, editing anthologies for Travelers’ Tales. We slowly saw a change in the conversations around the dinner table—from questions about how to write a query letter, to queries about good locales for book launch parties. Our gals began to write for some of the top periodicals in the nation, have their work anthologized, publish their own books, and move into the role of mentor, teaching other women how to write. Creating Community The creation of community has long been a goal of our group, one we have pursued through a variety of channels. At some point all of us have led writing workshops. In fact we have included a section in our magazine featuring the work of our acolytes, “What Goes Around,” a title that symbolizes—not only the travel aspect of our material—but our reciprocal relationship of learning. This student/teacher rapport has been at the root of Lisa’s innovative approach for dance and poetry seminars. For decades she has held workshops in such exotic locales as the ancient kivas in New Mexico. The WWW put together our first writers’ conference at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco in 2003, and felt honored (and astonished) when an international crowd of women enrolled. One of our own acolytes who attended that event, Suzanne, later went on to become a much-published writer and joined the WWW in 2007. There was some sweet symmetry to that conclusion, because Jacqueline has known Suzanne since she was born. In addition to the writing workshops, we launched a literary salon at the Monticello Inn at San Francisco’s Union Square. For six years we met monthly, featuring guest speakers who presented on a variety of topics relating to the scribes’ craft—from historical research for biographies to publicizing new releases. The best part of this routine was the opportunity to meet many of you in person; like the full moon, some men and women reappeared each month, and other strangers dropped by when visiting from Germany or Australia or… One of the miracles of our longevity has been existing long enough to see the expansion of our audience, from local readers of the San Francisco papers, to fan mail from folks in Brazil, India, Italy and Qatar—thanking us for what we’ve given them through the magic of the Internet. Our Web Dominatrix, Carla, has been a pioneer in technology since she was in pigtails, and just as she has for many a Silicon Valley corporation, she has given us the keys to this innovative medium, allowing us to build community with the women of the world. Wild Writing Women, LLC In 2000, after one of our meetings we were drinking wine late into the night (do we detect a theme here?) and complaining—as most writers do—about a lack of outlets to publish the type of stories we wanted to write, i.e. great narratives, not the type of dry factual material that the travel editors of most mainstream publications seem to think people want to read. But for a change something profitable came from this whining: a book was born. We decided to collect our favorite travel essays and compile an anthology which we titled Wild Writing Women: Stories of World Travel. At first we self-published the volume and, in what became a bit of a Bay Area literary legend, we sold 1000 copies in a week. Next we signed a contract with Globe Pequot who bought the rights to the collection. What we discovered along the way was that we enjoyed the artistic control that this process entailed. I remember reading a study on women’s leadership that was apropos to our experience: clusters of females function differently than men in that there is not one dominant leader. Rather we are more similar to fish. We will school based on signals from any one of the group, suddenly turning and following her lead. Our next course of action was to expand on the success of Stories of World Travel and form an LLC to explore more creative business ventures. We vowed that one of our missions was to empower other women, employing the same methods we had used to egg each other on as wayfarers and wordsmiths. The creation of our online magazine marked a milestone in this goal. In fact the idea for an issue devoted to maiden voyages grew out of the readings we did to promote our anthology. Travel virgins from 18 to 80 would come to meet us and wistfully comment: “I wish I had the guts to do what you do—to take a trip alone….” It occurred to me that all they were missing was someone to teach them how to do this, and so we wrote down our own stories of early jaunts and the lessons we’d learned along the road. We collected advice from some of the most prolific travelers we knew, like our pal Maureen Wheeler who founded Lonely Planet. The resulting issue, Taking Flight, won us two national awards for best online travel publication. The judges from the University of Missouri School of Journalism offered us high praise which could have come straight from our mission statement: “Wild Writing Women’s online magazine combines lively features and practical advice aimed at novice travelers. What makes Taking Flight particularly refreshing is its exploration of travel as a vehicle for empowerment and personal growth.” When you can control your ability to go where you like, you have taken a major step in controlling your destiny. What’s it like to be a Wild Writing Woman? Down through the years our members have come and gone, and at present we have six intrepid souls in the tribe. The WWW’s composition is not static—it’s evolved and changed along with our lives, and our work always reflects those volatile lives. There is something incredibly bonding about reading each other’s stories. The result is that beyond our role as a writing group, we have become a loving—if dysfunctional!—family, six sisters who’ve guided each other through difficulties more hazardous than dangling modifiers. To date the Ws have nursed each other through countless broken romances including divorces; it seems one of the occupational hazards for female travel writers is that it’s tough to leave a man tending the home fires. By the time you get back he’s either taken up with the trollop downstairs or burned the house down. The Sisterhood has also responded to many a panicky email sent from a W alone, frightened, and sometimes stranded on the road, looking for help or merely reassurance from the people she knows will get it. Together we’ve navigated moving, robbery, career meltdowns, financial and natural disasters and a host of vehicular mishaps. (See Carla’s Motorcycle Misadventures for an encyclopedic exploration of this topic.) We’ve supported each other through a host of physical ailments ranging from lice-infestations to breast cancer, and cried on each other’s shoulders at the death of family, friends and our beloved pets. Now some of us are heading into the choppy waters of many women our age—the care of elderly parents. While writing the above list I questioned perhaps we’d made the wrong decision and created trouble for ourselves by choosing a rather unorthodox lifestyle as adventurers along life’s highway. Maybe it would have been wise to take the safer route, the road more traveled? But I concluded our meandering has created few problems; rather we’ve merely suffered the same difficulties our gender faces universally. The truth is that many a woman whose sole travel consists of the well-worn path from cookstove to cradle has experienced all our woes—without the exquisite delights of being artists who have chronicled the world. Traveling Companions One of the grandest treats we have experienced has been our group retreats with our friend Maureen Wheeler. These trips would never have occurred without our bon vivant social director, Jacqueline, who accomplishes the impossible: she herds the cats together so that we all land in the same corner of the galaxy during the same week. Along with Maureen, our menagerie has stayed in a ninth-century villa in Tuscany, boarding empty planes just days after 9/11, and simultaneously rejoiced and cried at the bittersweet mysteries of life. We have sipped Provencal rosés as we watched the sun set over the Cote d’Azur, the night shift (including moi) staying up all night telling stories, while the day shift rose at dawn to hike the steep trail down to the Mediterranean for a swim. We took ferries around the Greek Islands, eating at tavernas in the villages and shopping till our bags burst at the seams. We hope you've enjoyed reading about the WWW on the WWW, and that we can connect with you further along the road—whether it's just the occasional visit to our website, subscribing to our free newsletter, downloading our magazine, ordering our books, or coming by to say hello at one of our public appearances. But whatever the method, our most fervent desire is that we'll inspire you to be a wild woman in your own right, whether you write or not. § index of articles \| next article: How to Navigate our IRELAND Magazine Reviews · Contact Us © 2012 Wild Writing Women. All rights reserved.