Some Writing Advice From Robert Macfarlane

I recently watched author Robert Macfarlane give an interview on the How I Write podcast. Macfarlane’s books — among them Is a River Alive?, Underland, and Mountains of the Mind — have redefined how we think about landscape writing. How I Write host David Perell asks his Macfarlane about his approach to writing. The entire interview is worth listening to, but below are some of points that resonated with me.

Begin Each Book with a “Portal Question”

Macfarlane begins each project with what he calls a “portal question” — seemingly simple questions like “Why do we climb mountains?” or “Is a river alive?” These questions, when combined with a child-like wonder and openness, can lead the writer through interesting, complicated, difficult terrain. These questions are the basis for a kind of intellectual exploration.

A version of this advice was recently given by another How I Write guest, Johann Hari. In his interview, Hari says, “There is always a problem that I want to solve or understand in my own life. And I start from that.” The “problem” is expressed as questions: “In every book I want to do, I write out a list of questions I want to answer.” Hari then thinks about whose story can best help him answer those questions.

“Capturing” and “Explaining” the World

Yet, unlike Hari, Macfarlane uses his question as an exploratory tool. Not an explanatory one. Early in his interview, Macfarlane says his use of language helps the reader say to themselves “I’m not dealing with a kind of fact book here.” Rather, the book is a text in which “other forms and forces are going to be active.”

Macfarlane notes that the form, the style, the lyricism of the book — from its opening line — signals to the reader that it won’t be a dry collection of facts. Because he aims not to explain but to evoke, his book aims to be something else, a “representation of perception rather than the thing itself.”

He aims to produce work that captures how it feels to encounter the natural world. He aims to “resist the impulse to explain” and to embrace the “unknowables,” the “feeling,” and the “phenomena” of the world.

Because “language will always be late for its subject,” writers should question their attempt to reproduce objective reality with words. As Macfarlane puts it: “We shouldn’t dream of capturing nature because then it becomes our captive and then it prowls restlessly backwards and forwards in its cage.” Instead, he advocates for “leaning into artifice” through metaphor and distortion.

Subjective Note-Taking

This relates to Macfarlane’s method of note-taking.

He carries small notebooks, like the Field Notes brand. The small size of the notebook doesn’t lend itself to lengthy discourse. Macfarlane jots down fragments—what he calls “qualia” or “mica-like shards.” These quaila are the subjective, qualitative experiences one feels.

The real work comes later when, in front of keyboard and screen, Macfarlane returns to these notes and does what Rilke called “the heart work”—finding patterns and deeper meanings in the collected images and fleeting sensations.