Scott R. Welvaert

So, you’re probably squinting, and your cheeks have ridden high on your face, as your mouth sneers upward at one side in a twisted mask of doubt.

What the hell is a Blue Skunk?

I’ll explain, but first a story. You see, when I went to college, I had little acumen to figure out just what the hell I was good at, or what I wanted to be, and which degree I should pursue to have a fulfilling life. Scratch that. I knew I was good at writing and telling stories, but my brain and the advice from adults got the better of me. The voices at my high school graduation party still echo in my ears:

“A business degree will always come in handy!”
“Engineering. The world needs to build stuff!”
“Plumbing.”
“My buddy Al is an Electrician. Always need electricians.”
“Radiologists make great money.”
“You’re not lawyer material. But you can type, so stenography is an option.”
“Business. Engineering. Those are fine trades.”

So despite the story-teller inside me shriveling to a husk, I legit just picked a random trade on the crazy advice of adults I no longer remember and who have passed on from this plane, and declared I wanted to be an engineer.

There was just a tiny problem. I SUCKED at math. And science. And virtually everything an engineer needs to excel. I spent three trimesters (yes, they had those back then) my freshman year earning 8 F’s, 1 D, 3 C’s and flushing $9 grand down the toilet.

So, I switched majors. I’ll be a teacher. Sure, the pay is WAY less than an engineer, but I couldn’t blow another $9 grand testing the university plumbing again. That sophomore year I was crusing…well, motoring with B’s, and an A or two in there. And then it happened. I was filling up an elective – American Literature – and on the first day I was late.

I’m usually never late, but the building was way on the far side of campus. When I got there, I was a sweaty mess. I took my seat, embarrassed, stinking, and unaware that the only seat left was right in front of me. Luckily, not many focused on me being tardy, as a weird elf-like guy arrived five minutes after me. So, as the prof paused for the guy, the late-comer found the seat in front of me. He sat down and as the prof prattled on, the late-comer turned around, smiled at me, and left a piece of paper on my desk. Unsure of what was written on it; I opened the note. It had his name (Josh) and his phone number scribbled on it.

By the end of class, I had totally forgotten about “Josh” and just made my way back to campus, but he caught up with me and in his very extroverted nature just blurted out, “Do you write?”

The Blue Skunk Society was born.

According to many people who know a hell of a lot more about stories than I do, along your hero’s journey, you’ll come across companions or allies to aid in your quest. Josh was one of my allies. My first, really. We become quick friends. Talked about books. Drank coffee and jabbered on about writing. And through him, I met many more companions on their own writer’s journey. All of us had one thing in common: we wanted to be great writers…or at least successful writers.

Together, we read in the campus commons. At the bars, we scribbled things on cocktail napkins and shoved them in our pockets. We recommended reads for each other as we shot darts and drank cheap beers. And we began to write in the styles of our favorites. Some nights, we just sat at someone’s apartment in a circle and just talked. We went home ach night with notebooks full of each other’s stories, essays or poems, so we could provide feedback and critiques. Before long our large group decided to formalize. And like the Fellowship of the Ring and the Rebel Alliance, we needed a name. And Josh had one. He had heard a local myth that the city of Mankato, which was named after the Lakota pronunciation of “Blue Earth.” Unfortunately, the white settlers misunderstood the very nasal pronunciation of “mah” as “mahn” or “man,” and forever tied the city to the meaning of “blue skunk,” instead of “blue earth.”

The name stuck on so many levels.

And I switched my major to English, with a concentration in writing.

What did I gain from this band of Blue Skunks?

So much. Camaraderie. Connection. Collaboration. Not just C words, but confidence too. Shoot, that’s another C word. In high school I never really found other like me: readers, writers, drunk on storytelling, curious about language, nerds, and weirdos. But, in terms of D&D, it felt good to find my party to travel with. We met in our apartments. Passed around bottles of Wild Turkey, Jack Daniels, or, if we were lucky, Jameson. We smoked cigarettes, cigarillos, and…more. Must of us wore thrift store threads, and ate cheap food. When we went out, we scraped change together for dime pitchers of beer. But when we workshopped, we read our work and then sat in silence as the verbal hammers fell on our fingers. And this was the first lesson.

You and your work are two separate things.

The road rash from a workshop is not a reflection on you, but a corrective action for the work. I went into the Blue Skunks with a high ignorance level. At the time, I had read a bunch of Anne Rice novels, so I mimicked her, terribly. And in one of those first workshops, I got a story torn to shreds. After the workshop, my best friend Josh brought me into my small dingy college apartment kitchen, held my story over the sink, and lit it on fire with his Zippo lighter. As the twenty pages burned into curls of ash, he looked me in the eyes and said, “You need to read and write poetry. It will make your prose better.”

That night, after everyone had gone, I couldn’t sleep. I was traumatized. Hours of my time turned into literal ash in my macaroni and cheese encrusted dishes. But it presented me with an inflection point: I could cave in, weep, and quit; or I could stand up and listen to the feedback and try and get better. Which led to the second tenet of knowledge.

Feedback can change your life and writing for the better.

Of course, I chose not to quit. I listened to Josh. I took poetry classes, read classical and modern poetry for years, and turned my writing focus to poetry. In that change, I learned about the music and cadence of syllables and words, how abstract language never hits as hard as the concrete that feeds the senses and is far more relatable. I learned language isn’t about souls, and love, and sadness, and death, but real-world tangible things we deal with every day from not being able to pay the bills to blackberry picking to the way rain sits on a red wheelbarrow. And the crazy thing as, I came across poetry collections that told an over-arching story in a collage of poems. I had hit paydirt. Story and Poetry? Golden! So knowing that my support system gave life-altering advice and I was growing into a newer self, I learned the next tenet.

Finding my people built my confidence.

Every university has one I imagine. A writing community namely, but then that thing that ALWAYS comes with an ardent writing community – the open mic night. For us in Mankato, it was called Writer’s Bloc. See what they did there? Of course you do. So, I had NEVER read anything out loud as an adult before. Sure, as a kid, I stumbled my way through questionable book reports I had crafted, but as an adult its different. Adults might be listening. They might voice their opinion. They may not clap. It was a horror show for an introvert like me. But my companions urged me to try it. To break the ice. After all, if no one hears your work, how can you build an audience, or understand when the beats of your work are hitting. So, I listened. It was horrifying at first, but once you do it enough, you find a groove, a cadence. And you figure out where the music in your language stumbles. That’s why I always read my work out loud to myself. It helps fix a lot of issues. Through all this, I understood. I am not alone. I have support. And with that came the next lesson.

Don’t put yourself on an island.

Throughout my writing life, I’ve always had a core workshop group. The Blue Skunks still meet today, albeit with less bottles and cigarettes being passed around. But with fellowship, comes support. If I were to write by myself and never bounce ideas off folks, I maybe would never have realized to make certain changes that completely change a story or poem. We like to think we are the smartest ones in the room, but in an isolated environment, the same idea cycle and thought process becomes almost incestuous. Alone, we tend to play it safe, hitting slap singles and laying down bunts, but working with others may help you get to another level, where you’re taking bigger swings and jacking balls out of the park. That’s when your Blue Skunks reap the rewards for you – in those creative collaborations, where they uncover something for you that was likely staring you straight in the face, but you, on your own, were too blind to see it. That’s magic time, baby! And all this time, I imagine what my life would have been like without my D&D party wrestling and casting spells against literary demons and monsters. And it has always led to the last tenet I share with writers.

Seek out your Blue Skunks.

The biggest thing to learn in this journey of writing is that you and you alone scratch the pen to the paper or tap the keys into the plutonium glow of your laptop. The drive, the impetus, the force behind all change and evolution begins and ends with you. It’s not the industry, or the audience, or the reviewers, or even your Blue Skunks. Only you can take what the world is telling you and make the changes necessary to make the leap to becoming a better writer. Your Blue Skunks, like Obi-Wan and Gandalf, can point out directions and give you options, but it’s your feet that must take the first step, and your hands that must swing the wooden staff along the darkened path. They cannot do it for you. This journey, that many think is an external journey, is internal. You must take the cues, the symbols, and road signs around you, and translate them into the right decisions to grow, and evolve as a writer. And thankfully, if you find the right fellowship, the journey inward will be all the easier to slay those beasts and see your way through.

One more for the road: story is everywhere.

By the way, Josh never actually burned my story in my sink. Sure, there was a real Zippo, a real manuscript, and real mac and cheese crusted dishes, but he never outright burned it. His words alone did the burning. But sometimes a story needs a larger push to get the point across.