What the Camino Taught Me About Writing

My friend Rebecca just hiked the Tour du Mont Blanc. When she posted about her last day, she shared words that resonated deeply and reminded me of my own many journeys: the unknowing is magical.

The words make me smile, my heart’s pace quicken. They reminded me of my own long-distance hike across the Camino de Santiago and what it taught me.

Fourteen years ago, in 2012, my husband and I trekked 500-miles across northern Spain from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago de Compostela.

I wrote back then, at the end of Day 28, two days from the finish: “A gentle rain sprinkled the Galician countryside. We had a Spanish lunch of pulpos and bread, a beer to wash it down. The trail was ours. A canopy of trees. Birds, raindrops, and my hiking poles tapping in the dirt. No one else in sight.

“Somewhere on that wet trail, it hit me. Not a revelation about Spain, or even about walking—a recognition of what the Camino had quietly been showing me: the things that actually matter to me—solitude, a pace that’s mine, time to think, time to be next to someone I love—they don’t only exist on this trail. They’re always available. I just have to notice them, understand what’s important, and then give myself permission to pursue them.”

The Unknowing Is Where the Story Lives

I didn’t know it then, but the Camino was training me for another long-distance hike that would take eighteen years to accomplish.

Writing and publishing The Fevered World has been its own unknowing 500-mile journey. I started researching the 1918 influenza pandemic in 2009. I finished revisions in 2020—just as our own pandemic shut the world down. The book publishes in February 2027. That’s eighteen years from first question to first bookshelf.

There were years that felt purposeful and years that felt lost—wrong turns, dead-end chapters, research that led nowhere and research that changed things. I couldn’t see the trail ahead. I didn’t know if the book would ever exist.

But the wandering was the point. You can’t shortcut your way to understanding a world that existed over a hundred years ago. You have to walk through it slowly— lost, uncertain, paying attention—and let it show you what matters.

There’s a saying among long-distance hikers: hike your own hike. Stop comparing your pace to everyone else’s. Walk your trail, at your speed, for your reasons.

I think about this every time I see another debut author announce a book deal or a six-figure advance. The comparison trap is real, and it makes you stumble. My path took eighteen years. Some of that was the research, some learning to write. Some was life—raising daughters, moving countries, working, learning, hiking. All of it fed the novel.

The Magical Unknowing

Traveling and living abroad has taught me the same thing the Camino taught me, which is the same thing writing a novel taught me: the unknowing isn’t something to get through. It’s where the discoveries happen. New places, new people, new perspectives. They don’t just add to your life. They reshape how you see everything you already had.

It’s why I love to travel, move, try new things. It was a feeling I rediscovered living in Malta this past winter—everything was unfamiliar. The light on the water, the language, the rhythm of the days. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t have routines. I walked narrow streets that led to places I couldn’t have predicted, ate things I couldn’t pronounce, and had conversations that shifted how I see the world.

It was disorienting and exhilarating.

Rebecca was right, and I wanted to share it, too: embrace the magical unknowing.

(And if you’re inside an unknowing right now—in your writing, your work, your life—you might be exactly where you need to be.)