Member Spotlight: Lynn Schmeidler

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? Writing is communing—communing with the self and with others. It is a way to connect across time and space with people one may never come to face with. We recognize ourselves in the words and worlds of others; we experience the lives of others through words on a page, and through writing we live our interconnectedness.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? Going out into nature, taking a walk, swimming laps, going to a museum and immersing myself in the visual arts.

What is your favorite time to write? Very early in the morning or very late at night.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? That there is no one way to be a writer. It’s addictively fun to research how other writers work—does she write with a fountain pen? Wear a special hat? Light a candle and speak an invocation? Compose in her head on the bus? But that can quickly become yet another rabbit hole of procrastination. Find whatever works for you and lean into that.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? The ways in which writers are connecting with one another virtually—that I can make friends with people who live all over the world and read and exchange ideas and champion their work even if I never get the chance to know them in person.

Lynn Schmeidler’s Half-Lives is out now with Autumn House Press.