A Writing Tip by Sharon White
IT’S OKAY TO CHOOSE WELL-BEING OVER BRANDING

For me writing is not a business. It’s an adventure and should be fun along with everything else.

I suppose I made a decision when I was in my 20s at the first low-residency MFA program that I wouldn’t worry about finding a brand. It wasn’t called that then, but one of my teachers told me I had to pick a genre or I’d never be successful. What I liked about Goddard, though, was that I could experiment with different forms. I’ve kept that spirit over many years. I supported myself as a poet-in-the-schools first and, eventually, with a full-time job at a college and then a university. 

I confess I’ve chosen my happiness over my career several times—like when I abandoned a fellowship at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference after about an hour. My husband and son had driven me to Bread Loaf, and we’d said goodbye. They were driving back to my parents’ house, two ridges over in Vermont, and would pick me up for our move to Philadelphia after the conference was over. But I was already miserable. I was given a hot room, above the kitchen, with one bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Clusters of people were in a line in the main room of the building registering for their workshops. Surrounded by strangers, everyone jostling for attention, I was surprised when my five-year-old son and my husband tapped me on the arm. 

“Ready to go?” they asked. 

“I thought you left,” I said. 

“We decided to stick around to make sure you really wanted to do this,” my husband said. And we drove south to the summer alpine slide at Pico Mountain, something I’d never tried. 

A friend who’d won a Pulitzer Prize told me later it was not a wise thing to do; my workshop leader was someone famous who could have helped me place the memoir I was writing. Eventually, I sold the book.

I have published eight books in several genres and received grants and awards. I’ve had writing residencies all over the world, and these unfamiliar landscapes have sparked new explorations in my work. My most recent book of poetry was partially written in Shetland, Scotland. A semester teaching in Japan became my first novel, Minato Sketches. Instead of chasing connections and increasing my online presence during the years when I was teaching, I spent most of my free time writing.

I’m guilty of not being the kind of writer some people have told me I should be in this world of branding and exposure. I’m not a bestselling author, but my vocation as a writer has given me joy. It doesn’t mean you won’t succeed in a different way if you choose your well-being over a more conventional path.

Sharon White is the author of several books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including Vanished Gardens: Finding Nature in Philadelphia, winner of the AWP award in creative nonfiction. Her first novel, Minato Sketches, won the Rosemary Daniell Prize and is published by Minerva Rising Press. If the Owl Calls, a mystery, was published in November 2025 by Betty Books, an imprint of WTAW. Recent nonfiction appears in Solstice Literary Magazine, Miracle Monocle, Cleaver, Ways of Walking, Switch, DIAGRAM, The Rupture, and Nowhere Magazine. Sharon White is an Associate Professor Emerita at Temple University.