Reclaiming Ground: Zachary Porter on Voice, the Right to Want, and What the Mountains Still Hold7/24/2026
 Zachary Porter lives on a reclaimed strip mine in Eastern Kentucky, raising his family on ground that was once taken and is still being cultivated. He writes the same way—pulling story from scarred earth, refusing the easy tragic tropes so often assigned to his mountains and his people. In this conversation, Zach speaks about the long habit of keeping his ambitions hidden, the grief that finally forced him to sit still, and the slow work of reclaiming both his voice and the right to want a writing life out loud. What emerges is a portrait of a writer learning that the ground beneath him, and the story rising from it, were worth claiming all along. If you’ve ever struggled to hold onto hope, doubted whether your voice is enough, or wondered if the ground you’re writing from is worthy of a story, Zach’s words will feel like someone finally naming what you thought you carried alone.  What’s the harshest thing your inner critic has ever said to you? What have you learned to say back to it? I’m pretty positive that I’m not allowed to use the actual words that my inner critic inundates me with on a regular basis. I can assure you they are not appropriate for polite company. One of the recurring questions I ask nearly every client is “are you saying things to yourself that you wouldn’t say to another persons face? Then why would you say them to yourself?” I really don’t have any positive affirmations to combat the negative. I’m terrible at taking my own advice. I guess the best thing I’ve started doing is accepting the compliments that I’m given. That’s new for me and it’s difficult but I’ve been making a solid effort to not wave those off or minimize them like I usually do. I’ve been trying to say thank you and internalize the compliment. Which part of yourself feels most exposed or “not enough” when you write, and how do you keep going anyway? The part of me that feels most exposed isn't about craft, exactly–it's the part that learned a long time ago not to put voice to what I was excited about. I grew up believing that wanting things too visibly was an invitation to get shot down, so I got very good at keeping my ambitions quiet, my hopes hidden and to never dream. That instinct followed me straight into this book. I didn't tell my wife I was writing again until February. My mom didn't know until April. Almost nobody I work with knows I write at all, let alone that I've got an actual literary agent who asked for a revise and resubmit. If nobody knows, then nobody's watching if it falls apart. When I was asked where I saw my writing career in five years time it took me two days to form the answer because honestly I didn’t ever think a writing career was possible. Even saying the words, “writing career,” out loud seems insane to me. I keep going anyway because I've started noticing the pattern for what it is instead of just living inside it. And because the alternative, staying quiet forever so I never risk the disappointment, started to feel worse than the fear itself. What’s the loneliest moment you’ve had as an unpublished writer, and what (or who) helped you through it? The loneliest stretch wasn't really about being alone in the room, I’m used to that–prefer it actually. It was not knowing if what I had was any good, and having no one to ask who wasn't already obligated to love me. My wife read it. My parents read it. A couple of beta reader friends swore it was good. But there was always that little voice in the back of my mind repeating “but they’re supposed to say that.” I couldn't tell if I had a real book or just people being kind to someone they cared about. That uncertainty sat with me for a very long time. What do you grieve about the writing life that most people don’t see or talk about? How isolating this can be for someone who's both geographically and temperamentally cut off from any kind of writing community. I live in the country twenty minutes from a small town—we don’t have a library. We just recently got a tiny bookstore, I think they opened up a couple of days ago, but before that there was nothing. No writing groups, no critique partners, nothing local. And I'm deeply introverted, to the point that the idea of workshopping with strangers online feels genuinely frightening to me, not just uncomfortable. So for a long time it was just me, alone with the manuscript, with no one to measure myself against and no one who understood what I was doing or why it mattered so much. I joined some online groups to start to attempt to connect but avoided the live meetings with other writers-–for months, because even that felt like too much exposure. I'm going to my first live meeting this month. It's still terrifying. People assume introversion looks a certain way, but nobody guesses it about me—I can be social, I can hold a room. What they don't see is what that costs on the inside. That's the grief nobody talks about: not the rejection, not the slow query process, but the sheer loneliness of building something this personal with no one around who speaks the language. At what point did you first allow yourself to call yourself a writer? Did that feel scary or presumptuous? How do you combat those feelings of imposter syndrome when they try to creep up again? Funny story about that which has already become a family story I'm not sure my daughter will ever live down. Around the time I had over 90k words finished, I had the whole book outlined and the end was in sight. I was starting to feel a real sense of accomplishment, and my daughter walked up and delivered this gem: "So you haven't sold your book?" "Nope." "Has anybody read it?" "Your mommy has read a few chapters." "So you're not like a real author, just a guy who likes to write?" Ouch. Out of the mouth of babes, haha. Honestly, I'm still not sure I've fully let myself claim that title—not in the sense this question poses. I'm a Christian, a clinician, a husband, a father, a farmer, and somewhere underneath all of that, a guy who writes. That's tangled up with the harsh-inner-critic question too and I’m honestly trying to work through that. The closest I've come to believing it was the day an agent I deeply respected told me the manuscript was good and worth pursuing and that I was talented. She had no reason to say that if it wasn't true. That was the first time someone outside the people who love me made it feel possible. It's one of the best days of my life—and it's the closest thing I have to a starting line, even if I'm still not sure I've crossed it.  Need an expert critique of your query letter, synopsis, novel/manuscript, or nonfiction book proposal? We have you covered. Check out our critique options and many success stories who found literary agents after working with us. If your value as a writer wasn’t measured by publication, queries, or word count, how would you describe your worth right now? Do you have a personal mantra that helps? I've heard a lot of mantras over the years, but the one I actually live by is one that echoes through my head in my dad’s voice: "If something is worth doing, it's worth doing right." For a long time I applied that only to the work—if I'm going to write this thing, I owe it my full effort, publication or not. But I think my worth as a writer has to be the same principle turned inward. This story sat inside me for years before I let myself write it down. The fact that I finally did, that I gave it everything I had, regardless of what happens next, that's the part that's mine no matter what a publisher or an editor or a sales number ever says. I did it right. Nobody can take that back from me, even if it never sells a single copy. What’s one way this manuscript has forced you to face something painful about yourself or your past? Writing this book forced me to face grief I'd been shoving down for years under work and gym schedules and busyness. In 2019, my sixteen-year-old cousin Colt was killed in a car crash on his way to school. I'm deeply Appalachian—eight first cousins, raised like siblings—and losing him felt like losing a baby brother. We'd played wiffle ball in Mamaw's front yard until 9:30 the night before. My dad called the next morning and he was dead. A little over a year later, in the middle of COVID, I lost my papaw, my original best friend. That's when the first existential crisis started—why am I here, is it all just birth and suffering and death, why can't I shut my brain off. I'm the firstborn son, the firstborn grandson on both sides, which in Appalachia carries its own weight. I'm the one who speaks at weddings and funerals both. They look to me to be the rock, the steady one, the one who holds it together while everyone else is allowed to fall apart. I'm glad I can be that for them. But nobody really asks the rock how it's doing. Writing didn't let me outrun that weight anymore—it made me sit in it. And life kept piling on while I worked: I lost my other grandfather partway through writing this book, and my youngest son was born two days later. Death and new life arriving on top of each other, almost close enough to touch. That whiplash ended up in the book's tone whether I meant it to or not. Looking at the writer you are today versus when you began, what unexpected strength or softness have you discovered in yourself? The unexpected thing I've discovered is that I don't have to fight everything, and that's not a weakness—it took me a long time to understand that as a strength. When I was younger I wanted to be Aragorn and Theodon, the kings who rode out to glorious battle, who literally slayed the forces of evil. But the older I get, the more I understand Sam. He's the one who actually carries the ring and hands it back willingly—not because he lacks ambition, but because he already knows exactly what he wants: Rosie, children, to plant his acorn in the Shire. Not power. Not glory. My trail name is actually Samwise—I earned it hiking Dolly Sods, quoting Tolkien the whole way because the landscape looked so much like Rohan. I guess that wasn't a coincidence. What I've discovered writing this book is that it's enough to do the next right thing in front of me, over and over, and to raise my kids to do the same. I can't solely fix the enormous evils I'm angry about. But small, consistent goodness, repeated daily—that's not nothing. That might be everything. What has this book taught you about patience, surrender, or acceptance? This book taught me two different lessons, and I didn't expect either one. The first was to surrender to my own voice, rather than forcing it into a shape that wasn't mine. Epic fantasy has always been my preferred reading genre. Escaping into fantastical worlds through Sanderson and Brent Weeks and Robin Hobb—dense magic systems, sprawling world-building. I kept forcing my prose into that story shape and it never worked. It wasn't until I surrendered to the fact that my voice was more literary, more Southern and Appalachian, than epic fantasy—and let the world grow out of that voice instead of bending it to fit someone else's—that the book actually came together. The second is patience—the kind Tolkien writes about again and again, the idea that it isn't great power that holds back darkness, but the small, everyday deeds of ordinary people, repeated over time. I can't fix the enormous, broken things I'm angry about in this world. All I can do is the next small right thing in front of me, and trust that it matters, even if I never see the results. That's patience I didn't have before this book. When you imagine the person you’ll be after this manuscript is truly finished (regardless of publication), what do you hope has changed inside you? I really hope I'm able to be proud of myself. That I can accept a compliment without immediately deflecting it, that I can let myself feel the sense of accomplishment the people who love me keep telling me I deserve. The clinician in me has spent years trying to diagnose where this comes from—is it a millennial thing, an Appalachian thing, firstborn, farm-raised, just a male issue—and I still don't fully understand. What I do know is the pattern: every failure becomes a reason to tear myself apart, and every success gets a flat "okay, what's next" before I've even let myself feel it. What I hope has changed by the time this book is truly finished is that I've broken that pattern, even a little. That I can look at what I built and just let it be enough for a minute, without immediately reaching for the next thing to prove. I don't know if I'll get all the way there. But I'd like to find out what it feels like to actually sit in "I did that" instead of rushing past it.  Learn secrets and proven paths to finding an agent with the book GET A LITERARY AGENT. The guide explains query letter writing, submission dos and don'ts, how to craft engaging opening pages, synopsis FAQs, nonfiction proposal tips, literary agent pet peeves, and much more. Have you ever felt ashamed of how long your WIP is taking? What shifted that shame for you? Not in the direction you would think. My actual first draft-to-R&R timeline was fast—under a year once it all finally clicked. So there is guilt there, the idea that “I didn’t do it the right way, that I wrote it too fast.” I also carried shame about everything before that: eight or nine abandoned first chapters over five years, false starts I could never push past because I was scared of failing, or because the pieces just hadn't clicked yet. I held this notion that “real writers” wrote consistently, daily, for years, building toward something. I write 8-12k words a day—but it’s insurance reviews and CARF policies and letters to judges, not fiction, so for a long time I didn't let it count. What shifted it was realizing those false starts weren't wasted time. They were compost. I wasn't failing to write a novel for years—I was becoming someone who eventually could. What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about love—love of story, love of self, or love of the work—through this unpublished season? I think this falls into the “love of the work” category but the most surprising thing has been discovering that I can actually control when I enter Flow in writing—because everywhere else in my life, it's out of my hands. I've had rounds of golf where I'm playing out of my mind, completely locked in, but I can't just show up and summon that. It happens to me, when it happens and I’ve learned to just enjoy it while I have it, same with playing music but writing is different. I can manipulate my mind and my situation—the right weather, the right music, the right frame of mind—and put myself there almost on command, whenever I actually need to be there. I have to force myself to come up for air—to be present with my family, to show up for my actual responsibilities—because left to myself, I wouldn't stop. That probably sounds bad to say out loud. But honestly, if I'm writing on my lunch break and HR walked in mid-scene and said "quit writing or you're fired," my first instinct would be to ask them to just pack my office for me so I didn't have to stop. I don't know exactly what that says about me. But I know I've never had that kind of control over anything else I love. How do you balance writing with the business side—marketing, social media, or day jobs—and still protect your creative energy? Honestly—I resent the "business side" part more than I can put into words. I swore off social media in 2018. And then I found out it was basically a required part of having a modern writing career. I spent two weeks building a website, hours in Canva laying out Instagram posts—hours I would much rather have spent writing, or with my kids, or helping my dad on the farm. I already carry two clinical director positions on top of everything else. But like my mantra says, if I'm going to do something, I do it right. I have degrees in psychology and history, so I understand exactly what these platforms are built to do to the human brain—and that doesn't make it any easier to feel it happen to mine. I feel the small dopamine hit when a notification pops up, and I hate myself for it, because I know precisely what button just got pressed and who built it and why. Knowing the mechanism doesn't make you immune to it. What actually worries me is watching it happen to people who don't have that lens—genuinely intelligent, good hearted people who've been pulled into these feeds without ever questioning whether something's wrong with it. High schoolers now average something like eight to ten hours of screen time a day, with 90% being on TikTok. That's not a personal failing. That's a system working exactly as designed. It's part of what I'm writing against, honestly—the sense that a handful of corporations shape how entire populations think and spend their time, and there's not a thing an individual can do to stop it. That feeling of impotence is soul crushing at times. Writing about it is the closest I can get to fighting back. What actually protects my creative energy is a hard boundary: the business side happens in its own designated block, and writing happens somewhere else entirely—different time of day, different mindset, sometimes literally a different device. I don't let myself scroll or "engage" while I'm supposed to be building the world. If I let the two bleed together, the algorithm wins and the book loses. What’s a fear about your writing that you’ve never told anyone before? Honestly, I'm not sure there's a fear I've never told anyone—my wife is my best friend, and she knows every thought that moves through my mind, including this one. But the fear itself is this: that my metaphors are contrived, that my prose is sloppy, that my voice is lazy. That I'm a hack, an amateur, a poser—that eventually someone's going to read my writing and find me out for what I really am. It shows up hardest when I read other literary fiction. I can't get through a beautifully built sentence in someone else's book without thinking: they're so talented, and I think my book could sit on a shelf next to theirs? I must be delusional. What I'm trying to hold onto is that the comparison itself is proof I care about the craft, not proof I'm failing at it. I guess a hack doesn't lose sleep over whether his metaphors are earned. I do. Maybe that's just what this looks like from the inside: caring enough to doubt everything, and being good enough that someone else doesn't. If this book remains unpublished forever, what would you need to believe to still feel you had spent your life well? Oh boy, that's a deep question so I’ll give it a deep answer. I’ll get the shallow part out of the way first. I do want to be published. Not for money, not for fame, those have never been the pull. But publication would be a kind of validation I've been quietly chasing for a long time, longer than this book has existed. I'm working on separating my worth from that validation. I haven't been successful yet. I've carried a fear for years that has nothing to do with recognition or validation—that something could happen to me, and my kids would never really know who I was, or would eventually forget. That fear is the motivation behind—everything. More than any ambition to be published, and writing has been the closest thing to a cure I've found for it. So if this book never sells, what I'd need to believe is something much simpler than "I made it as a writer." I'd need to know I was a good man, a good son, a good husband, a good father. That I stood up for my faith and principles even when it wasn’t easy. That I showed up for the people I love. That's the actual measure of a man—not queries, not sales figures. The book is just my attempt to get some of that down in a lasting way, so that even if I'm not there to walk my daughter down the aisle or if I don’t get to meet my grandchildren, they can open these pages and find the man I was trying to be woven with things I love most. Magic and laughter and hope.  Zachary Porter is an Eastern Kentucky author and clinical director of two substance abuse facilities. A licensed mental health clinician writing Appalachian folk fantasy molded by his Christian faith, he writes the mountains and his people as more than the accent or tragic tropes they are so often relegated to. His narratives focus on the depth, dignity, and resilience of his home. He lives on a reclaimed strip mine with his paragon of a wife, their brilliant daughter, and two semi-feral, but hilarious sons. When he isn’t reading or writing, he can be found chasing birdies, rolling math rocks, or somewhere in the woods attempting to decompress. He loathes social media, merely tolerating Instagram but thriving on Substack. You can find more info and all his links at zacharyporterauthor.com.  This post was compiled by Brandy Vallance, a literary agent with Barbara Bova Literary Agency, an award-winning author, and Executive Aide for Writing Day Workshops. Brandy is the winner of two national writing awards, one of which included a $20,000 prize. Her novel, THE COVERED DEEP, has been featured in USA Today & Writer’s Digest. WITHIN THE VEIL has been called “passionate and riveting” and Publisher’s Weekly encourages those who like sweeping Scottish sagas to dive in because “the journey is wonderful.” Brandy loves helping writers break the chains of fear and self-doubt. You can find out more at brandyvallance.com.  Pitch Agents at a Writers Conference in 2026:
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