Writers in the Sky, 2006.

This year’s WITS brought acclaimed Colorado authors to Telluride to share their inspiration, their writing, and their experiences in the publishing world.

Each talk was unique—each writer different, and yet each was united by a common theme: Inspiration.

This low-key event fosters an intimacy lacking in other writing festivals; a real sense of the personal is touched. And the universal is glimpsed.

There are few things as useful to a would-be writers as hearing the stories of those who have succeeded in the business. Hearing how authors craft their stories is inspiring, and brings something foreign closer to home. For example, a commonality among the authors was their approach to the start of their novels, or poetry, as case may be. They started, for the most part, with an image—an idea—around which the narrative fell, like leaves off a tree. Julia Ross, a very successful romance novelist, said she didn’t typically write an outline.

Will Hobbs, the famed young adult author, found his inspiration in our country’s wild and unkempt places, often writing a story around a single scene in some mountainous aerie, or along the foaming waters of the Colorado River.

Clinton McKinzie is similarly inspired by the outdoors, and research for his books consists of climbing vertiginous cliffs, and crossing dangerous passes in the most northern reaches of the Boreal forests.

For David Mason, literary critic and acclaimed poet, the creative process starts with a flash of feeling, a symbolic image that elicits emotional and psychological responses. Poetry is a careful blend of the conscious and the subconscious (or super-conscious?), a human voice that rings across time, like the bells before a funeral. His superb readings, that pulsed with soft rhythms and careful cadence, brought tears from a number of the audience.

Carol Batrus has written a book inspired by her life experience. The vicissitudes of circumstance have brought her from Wall Street Vice President, a highly successful executive, all the way to Community Assistance Advisor for the Zulu in rural South Africa—a place she described as “country where rape is a national sport.” Her inspiration came from her extraordinary experiences working to reestablish a supplanted culture, and the certainty that something much larger than chance—if she could but listen—was at work in her life. Visible in everyone’s life!

Julia Ross, whose narratives are well crafted, sonorous, and descriptive, certainly well written, told the room that “you must give yourself permission to be mediocre.” Meaning to just write, not let the best supplant the possibility for the good.

Writers in the Sky provided an intimate portrait of the author, framing the creative process within attainable norms that the audience shared. Suddenly something seemingly distant, and so out of reach, was as visible as an apple, hanging from the undergrowth.