What I Learned From Baba Yaga About the Monsters We Go Looking For
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Welcome to What I Learned From… a newsletter that offers short essays, resources, and reading suggestions to help writers and essayists improve their writing craft. It's nice to see you here! If someone forwarded you this email because they love your writing, you can subscribe here. Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes “The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous” ― John le Carré What I Learned From …Baba Yaga lives deep in the forest, in a house that walks on chicken legs, because why settle for a boring witch’s hut when you can perch on poultry?! The fence? Human bones. The gate? A mouthful of teeth. The Airbnb rating? Surprisingly high for a death trap. When a traveler approaches, the house spins and turns, until its crooked door finally faces the path. She might help you. She might eat you. It depends. Ask people who Baba Yaga is, and you’ll get wildly different answers. A terrifying witch. A forest-dwelling wise woman. A keeper of secrets. A devourer of children. A mentor. A monster. A mother figure. Years ago, I was having a conversation about Baba Yaga with my Russian friend Euvie, who was rereading some fairy tales of her childhood. “You know,” I said, “I think you get the Baba Yaga you deserve.” She was struck, telling me I had to write about that at some point. Turns out, I was a little wrong. Baba Yaga doesn’t give a damn about what we deserve. Baba Yaga’s not your fairy godmother. She’s not karma. She gives back to you exactly what you came to her with. She’s a cosmic vending machine: insert trauma, make your case, press the button. Out pops either a life lesson or your half-digested femur. Baba Yaga is one of the oldest figures in Slavic folklore. She appears in Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, and other Eastern European tales as a force of power. She’s ambiguous, wild, and deeply feminine. Living alone in the woods, she is unbothered by kings and villages and decorum. And she rarely plays the role you expect. Sometimes she gives cryptic advice. Sometimes she sets impossible tasks. Sometimes she hands you a magic item that turns out to be exactly what you need. But just as often, she devours those who come to her with arrogance, cowardice, or greed. Her mentorship style? Brutal. In one famous story, a young girl named Vasilisa ventures into the woods to seek fire from Baba Yaga. Her stepmother sent her on the errand, hoping she’d be eaten alive. Instead, Vasilisa survives the journey! Not by fighting or fleeing, but by listening, doing the work asked of her, and trusting her intuition. Baba Yaga gives her the fire. And it burns her wicked stepmother to ash. She is clever, brutal, and strange. She lives by her own logic. Every writer’s block has a monster lurking in the woods. Sometimes it’s the algorithm. We collect these voices like breadcrumbs and follow them deeper into the trees. Other times, the villain is internal. Procrastination. Perfectionism. That little goblin of imposter syndrome who lives in your prefrontal cortex and screams ‘Delete it all!’ every time you open Google Docs.. We brace for the worst. We wait for the rejection. We come looking for someone to tell us we can’t do it, so we don’t have to prove that we can. We build fences out of bones before we’ve even reached the house. But what if Baba Yaga isn’t here to punish us? What if she’s here to reflect us? What if the scary woman in the woods isn’t a monster…but a mirror? She asks: Why are you here? What do you really want? What are you willing to face to get it? And the tale unfolds accordingly. Come seeking shortcuts? She’ll make you clean the house until your fingers bleed. Come looking for fire, and you may leave with a skull full of it. That’s the real lesson, I think. Not about witches or fairy tales. But about how we move through the forests of our own creative lives. Baba Yaga doesn’t reward the pure of heart or punish the wicked. That’s a Western framework. As with many Slavic traditional stories, she’s a straightforward lady. She rewards the honest. Props up the prepared. Honors the ones who know what they came for. So if we want to find our way forward as writers—or as anything, really—we have to stop looking for villains. Because sometimes the scariest thing isn’t what we’ll find in the woods. It’s what we’ll see when the crooked door swings open, and we’re forced to face ourselves. We don’t just get the Baba Yaga we deserve. The house just turned to face you …If you’ve been standing at the edge of the writing woods, wondering whether to go in? Consider this your sign. Become a Master Writer opens Monday. It starts next Saturday. It’s not a tricked-out productivity system or some glittery “build your brand” workshop. It’s 8-weeks of deep craft, unexpected magic, and facing the real work. No chicken-legged huts required. 🖋️ Hop on the waitlist before Monday to unlock early access and a special discount. In Other Reading This Week …Need more insights and inspiration for your writing and mindset?
Weekly Writing Tip …A quick chance to learn from the masters. “When we employ commonplace words, we forget that they are fragments of ancient and eternal stories, that, like barbarians, we are building our homes out of fragments of sculptures and the statues of the gods. Our most sober concepts and definitions are distant offshoots of myths and ancient stories. There is not even one of our ideas that is not derived from mythology, a mythology that has been transformed, mutilated, remoulded. The spirit's first and foremost function is to tell stories and to make up 'tales'.” — Bruno Schulz, The Mythification of Reality Bygone …Exquisite words from years gone by. Wyrd [weerd] (n.) — From 8th-century Old English wyrd (“fate” or “that which comes to pass”), rooted in the verb weorþan (“to become”) and the Proto-Germanic wurđíz (“turning, unfolding”). Think less of fixed decree, more a path to becoming. Notably, wyrd is the ancestor of our modern word weird, which once meant fateful or otherworldly, before it leaned into the strange. Sorta synonyms: destiny, serendipity, fate, your lot in life Use it for: That eerie sense of life’s plot twists ("Ah, wyrd! Of course I’d meet my nemesis at the laundromat." This Week’s Writing Resource …Why not use the tools at your disposal? Book (Ask) a Librarian — Did you know that many large city, state, and national libraries offer a service where you can book time with a librarian to help you research? I’ve linked the US Library of Congress, but just search “book a librarian” to find sources near you (or near where you need information from!) For the Upcoming Week …Because we all need a good chuckle to start things off right! Just making small talk with some other creatives down at the local caffeine hole. ‘Til next time ~ Elisa |