Member Spotlight: Jo Salas

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? I can’t not write. It’s been one of my ways to communicate, comprehend, and create all my life. An important medium for the world? Definitely, for those who write, and for those who read, who are likely to be those who think. Sadly, there are steadily fewer readers and thinkers and that’s in part why we’re in the mess we’re in.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? Read a few pages of Virginia Woolf’s diaries. Jostle my stuck mind with a writing exercise, the weirder the better. Walk, dance, clean out the garage.

What is your favorite time to write? Morning, if I have a clear space of at least a couple of hours (which doesn’t happen often enough). By afternoon I’m feeling too guilty about all the things I haven’t done and by evening I’m a slug.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? Read good writing!

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? I can use the essential power of story to communicate my own understanding of our very troubled, beautiful world. Writing can help us find each other and find meaning. “Only connect” as E. M. Forster said.

Jo Salas’s Mrs. Lowe-Porter is out now with Jackleg Press.