Member Spotlight: Karla Tonine Huebner

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? I’m one of those people who needs to be writing something or other, whether to tell a story or to know what I think. Writing fiction is particularly satisfying, although I also enjoy other forms. Basically, I believe humans have always told stories and wanted to know what was happening, and for thousands of years writing has been a good way of addressing those needs.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? If I’m stuck on one project, I just work on a different one. I’ve only truly been blocked once, and I was fine as soon as I let myself work on something else. (Not that I ever managed to return to the book I was blocked on.)

What is your favorite time to write? I write whenever I have the chance, or have time to fill. At different times that has meant writing on the bus to work, writing late at night, or having the good luck to have all day available. It’s great when I’m able to spend the morning writing, then spend a few hours doing something else, and then write some more.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? I’m not sure I’ve received any particular piece of remarkable advice, although in college I did hear that it wasn’t considered a good idea to use too many adjectives and adverbs. The advice I would give others is that different people have their own best ways of approaching writing and that one shouldn’t assume that someone else’s method is right for any other person. See what fits your goals and personality.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? I’m not sure much of anything excites me about being a writer in today’s age, although I appreciate the opportunities the internet provides to exchange information, have long-distance critique groups, and so forth. Otherwise, I’m sure it was simpler to be a writer a hundred years ago, when there were not droves of new books appearing each day, making it extremely difficult for most of them to be noticed.

Karla Huebner’s In Search of the Magic Theater is out now with Regal House Publishing.