I can’t write if I’m not roaming around… I love cafés and even bars, where I’m that oddball all alone with a notebook. I write outdoors a lot – I like to walk out to a local area of farm fields flanking the Connecticut River, just below the line of the Holyoke Range, then park myself by the bank or on the loading dock of an old red barn I love, and scrawl away.
I was grateful to be interviewed by Northern Woodlands Magazine for their series “Writers in the Woods” about my forthcoming children’s novel The Monarchs of Winghaven, my writing process, and my influences in writing about the natural world.
Northern Woodlands Magazine: Writing is Natural for Naila Moreira
I also talk a bit about how to get started as a nature writer and the importance of forests in my life, including a memory that inspired a scene in The Monarchs of Winghaven:
The first time I ventured alone into a deep pine woodland as a young teen, I spotted my first pileated woodpecker. The woods were dim and spooky, and I wasn’t supposed to be in a place of such solitude on my own. But when a pileated woodpecker landed on a dead snag and split the air with its call, the fear and sense of trespass were worth it.