Terry Tempest Williams on her creative process

“Most of the day I am doing nothing,” she confessed of her writing process. “I am waiting. Writing is a natural process, like evaporation, we might not see it going on but it is happening.” As a writer she keeps a candle lit in her workspace, a sacred space she says, one that is spiritual. She also has a bowl of water nearby, in the writing room, because even if she is not writing anything, it is good to know that there is still evaporation - that something is happening in the room.
“Writing is saying the things you don’t want to say, and this takes stamina.” Those who are fortunate enough to have read her work, and even more fortunate to experience meeting her, are certainly thankful that she says them.
~Ian Isherwood

From an interview in The Progressive:

Q: Why do you remain hopeful?

Williams: Hope is not attached to outcomes but is a state of mind, as Vaclav Havel says, "an orientation of the spirit." And I have faith; maybe more than hope, I have faith. I think of my great-grandmother, Vilate Lee Romney, who came from good pioneer Mormon stock. She always said to us that faith without works is dead, so I think if we have hope, we must work to further that hope. Maybe that is the most important thing of all, to have our faith rooted in action. Our community in Castle Valley, Utah, gives me hope. It is a group of people who have committed to caring for a place, both human and wild. If I walked forever, I would never be able to cover this native ground of wonder and awe. I really do believe if there is hope in the world, then it is to be found within our own communities with our own neighbors, and within our own homes and families. Hope radiates outward from the center of our concerns. Hope dares us to stare the miraculous in the eye and have the courage not to look away.
I refuse to walk away.

-- David Kupfer is a longtime contributor to The Progressive.  Williams has a story in the 6/11 Progressive.  See link for a taste of her fine writing.