By Sandra K. Barnidge
Recently, an English professor at my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, invited me to Zoom into her “Writing for Money” class to talk about my unusual career. I’m a rare creature in this field, apparently, as someone who has written both corporate messages for large institutions and a genre-bending novel so odd my publisher has called it her most different project to date.
I accepted the invitation but felt deeply conflicted about what, exactly, to say to the class. As anyone who is currently attempting to scratch out a living as a writer knows painfully well, this is an especially precarious moment for our industry. Too many paths to a wordsmithing paycheck are closing down now as the AI bot monsters rise from the murky depths of the Dead Internet. Journalism, publishing, marketing, higher education, nonprofits of all kinds—too many economic ecosystems that have long propped up the wildest minds of our society are seemingly under simultaneous threat from the systemic pesticides we call AI, private equity, inflation, etc.
Turn back now and major in … I don’t know, carpentry. Can you major in carpentry? Because if you can, you should do that, I imagined myself saying to the English students, though, of course, I did not say that.
“How do you balance scientific rhetoric with creative insight?” asked the English students at the University of Wisconsin. “What is your goal in writing creative fiction based on real-world scientific applications?”
In my forthcoming novel from Belle Point Press, a young woman finds purpose in a violent society through helping injured animals.
In my work-in-progress, an artist re-discovers her sense of self by solving a murder case involving plants.
In my column for Reckon Review, I draw parallels between rewilding my suburban lawn and attempting to navigate the challenges of being a professional writer with small children in a rapidly shifting economy.
“What advice do you have for aspiring writers?” they asked.
If you ever happen to move to the Southeast, try to be the kind of person who plants Sticky Rosinweed in their backyard, I almost said, although I stopped myself just in time.
*
Sticky Rosinweed is having a bit of a viral moment, thanks to Alabama forester-turned-grasslands conservationist Kyle Lybarger, who has amassed more than 10 million likes on TikTok for his videos about the urgency of protecting native plants in one of the most biodiverse regions of the world. In response to his online success, Lybarger has founded the Native Habitat Project, which now helps landowners, organizations, developers, and municipalities to restore and manage native plants and wildlife areas.
Lybarger has posted several videos about various species of rosinweed, including the highly threatened Sticky Rosinweed, Silphium glutinosum, which is sold commercially at only one nursery: Recreative Natives. Every Saturday morning from spring through late fall, owner Jessica Thompson welcomes the public to her yard, located on the banks of idyllic Logan Martin Lake an hour east of Birmingham, to peruse dozens of species of southeastern plants she grows primarily from seed.
Some of Thompson’s offerings are exclusively endemic to central Alabama, meaning the choice to establish them in gardens could actually make the difference between survival and extinction. For example, the tall, hairy, and small-bloomed Sticky Rosinweed is found only in the dolomite glades of nearby Bibb County. The Alabama Plant Atlas lists Sticky Rosinweed as “globally imperiled” and “very vulnerable” in the state, with less than twenty populations identified in the wild.
As I stood in Thompson’s yard in mid-October—the warmest October on record in Alabama—I stared at the floppy green stalks with wilting, quarter-sized yellow flowers and knew immediately that Sticky Rosinweed would not be the showstopper of my yard. Yet it felt important for me to give it a place anyway; while my yard is not technically a dolomite glade, it’s not too far off from the highly specific habitat where this plant belongs. Also, Sticky Rosinweed is Thompson’s least-sold plant at Recreative Natives, making it all the more vital for someone, anyone, to give it a home.
And so, unlike the rest of Thompson’s customers that Saturday morning, I didn’t walk on by the Sticky Rosinweed. Instead, I purchased two. I mentioned Lybarger’s videos about the plant to Thompson, and she smiled. They’re friends, she told me, and he regularly brings her seeds from the native plants he finds on development-threatened sites across the state. While she couldn’t remember for sure that he was the source of my own Sticky Rosinweed, odds are pretty good.
I think it’s safe to say I’ve been successfully influenced.
*
“What advice do you have for aspiring writers?” the English students asked.
To play it safe, I told them about the Four Pillars, a concept I developed during the years I, too, was teaching English majors, during the pandemic. Back then, my version of “Writing for Money” was called “The Entrepreneurial Writer,” and I’d advised my students to find a balance between four kinds of labor: creative passion projects, paycheck work, service work (volunteering for things like literary journals and writerly events), and exposure work (writing without pay for outlets that would promote you). It was a tidy lesson for the “Writing for Money” class. Practical, not too wild.
“We talk a lot in this class about the value of writing,” said the English professor. “About reconciling this kind of work with the structure of capitalism.”
I nodded, my giant head floating on the screen above the students. What is the value of a rare yet ugly plant like Sticky Rosinweed? How, exactly, do we quantify the knowledge that its resin was used as chewing gum among some Indigenous tribes and herbalists have documented it as possibly useful for treating bronchial asthma? How do we create projections about its potential to have other medicinal properties we haven’t yet discovered?
I have always believed it is the storytellers who can and will bridge the gap between the should-be world and world as it is today. But as I spoke with the English students, I wondered if it was time to concede that the stories of the future will probably not come in the form of a traditional literary novel. Maybe, too, it was time to accept that a TikTok star’s reach will far surpass that of a quiet columnist who writes in full, complex sentences, the kind ChatGPT critiques for being “at an advanced reading level.”
Maybe.
Or maybe there’s something still untapped in the ether between real-world actors like Lybarger and Thompson and the rest of us who have yet to be called into positive, tangible actions like planting native plants in our own backyards. Maybe there’s still a need for a more complex form of persuasion and the transmutation of content into actual narrative. Offering a way to morph short videos into more lasting parables is, I think, where some of us writers could find a toehold back into mainstream cultural relevance.
There is artwork left to do in this time of algorithmically manufactured outrage. Is there money in it? That, I don’t know.
What I do know is that Sticky Rosinweed can survive the destruction of its original habitat if we give it other places to grow. If we let it, it can continue to attract butterflies and birds. It can make life out of some of the poorest, harshest soils on earth. It appears to know something unique about perseverance and survival against all odds.
“What is the point of growing and seeding and establishing roots if no one thinks you’re pretty enough to buy?” I wish the “Writing for Money” students had asked me. “How can we quantify the value of wind whispering through green stalks in a dolomite glen, when it’s all probably destined to become a hot asphalt parking lot anyway?”
To that, I would have answered with a question of my own. “How do we stop talking about value, when what we’re really searching for is meaning?”
We change the story, of course.
We smile at the young people and try to influence them toward hope, rather than endless fear.
We plant the Sticky Rosinweed.
Read Sandy’s other work here at Reckon.
Sandra K. Barnidge is an Alabama-based writer with a passion for small towns and overlooked places. Her fiction leans speculative and has appeared in Barren, Nimrod, The Fiddlehead, Reckon Review, Reservoir Ridge, and elsewhere.
One response to “Buried Nitrogen: A Disquisition on Sticky Rosinweed”
Thank you. I graduated college a year ago with an English degree, and I’ve been a little lost ever since. I hesitate when it comes to writing anything at all. I’m apathetic because I find little value in my word count. I’ve been neglecting the meaning, but this was a pleasant and comforting reminder that writing with meaning is what produces valuable work.