I knew I wanted to build a community for anyone who wanted to write more and live more like a writer. I’d been teaching for years, and I had seen how regular creative writing could transform people’s lives. I had ideas about what makes a workshop work and what doesn’t.
But what should this thing be called?
As writers do, I scribbled and crossed out many ideas. Nothing seemed to fit. Then one night, as I sat with a cup of hibiscus tea and a notebook, the word “Upwellers” appeared under my pen. That’s it, I thought. It felt true to how the workshops stir us into a deeply imaginative state.
I thought about how that word came without effort. But more months passed until I made a connection that should have been obvious.
Before I was a journalist or a teacher, I worked as a longline commercial fisherman in the Caribbean, Atlantic, and Pacific. I was in my twenties. The work was grueling, and for weeks at a time we saw only the watery horizon. Each trip, we steamed thousands of miles looking for good spots to throw our lines for swordfish. Some places are dead and some places are full of life. The difference is invisible from the surface. You have to read the water. The good water sits over seamounts, along temperature breaks, in places where deep currents collide with topography. It’s hard to fathom why fish would be there until you understand what’s happening underneath.
An upwelling is when deep, nutrient-rich water rises toward the surface. The current can produce an upwelling, as can wind or the shape of the seafloor. Nutrients that have been sitting in darkness rise toward the sunlight. Phytoplankton bloom. Zooplankton feed on the phytoplankton. Small fish feed on the zooplankton. Bigger fish feed on the small fish. A whole food chain explodes in a place that had been mostly empty.
The most productive fishing grounds in the world are upwelling zones, such as Peru, the Grand Banks, and the coasts of northwest and southwest Africa. They’re sometimes called the lungs of the ocean. They breathe life into Earth’s waters with their rhythmic, creative force.
Once I made the connection, I knew I had the right word.
When we write, we may draw on memories we haven’t accessed in years. Stories we’ve half-told ourselves but never put on the page. Something flickering in the depths.
A regular writing practice invites them to surface and can reconnect us to ourselves. In the right conditions, it’s amazing how quickly spontaneous material rises. You might surprise yourself by writing a character based on a kid from your third-grade classroom, or that trip to Egypt, or a scene that unlocks that mystery novel you’d been meaning to work on.
That’s what these workshops are for. To create the conditions where the good water rises.