Member Spotlight: Karen Gray Ruelle

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? I write to make sense of the world. Writing is a way of processing and communicating. It’s a powerful medium that can bring us closer or divide us.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? I don’t believe there are any 100% effective remedies for writer’s block! But I have found it useful to trick myself into writing. If I sit down to write just a sentence or two, before long I get lost in it. When I emerge, writing has happened.

What is your favorite time to write? I can write any time of day, as long as I have a cup of tea and a cookie nearby.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? My mother is an artist. She says she always ends her work day leaving something unfinished so that when she returns the next day, she can ease her way back into the work. I find it’s often the same with writing.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? I write children’s books and I love seeing kids reading. Books are everywhere–in public libraries and little free libraries, online, in bookstores.

Karen Gray Ruelle’s Jump for Joy, illustrated by Hadley Hooper, is out today with Astra Young Readers.