Member Spotlight: Kate Whouley

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? I love the intensely private conversation between writer and reader that happens inside the pages of a book, and the way a compelling story can transport us to another world, open a door to another life, even lead us to a new way of moving through our days. For me, writing is all about empathic and creative connection, and honestly, that feels almost radical–and radically important—in an era defined by divisiveness and disconnection. I’ve come to believe that writing is service. Whether we’re sharing our life stories or writing an article about how to shop for health insurance or creating an alternate reality through fiction, whether we are educating, enlightening, or entertaining, or simply sharing our truth, writers are granted the opportunity to serve the reader, and through hard work and astonishing serendipity, to offer a reader exactly what he or she or they want or need in their present moment. How amazing and important is that?

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? To me, writer’s block is most often a symptom of what I think of as wrong-story syndrome. When we’re drawn to a subject, fascinated by a concept, a theme, an era, or a person, when we feel eager to learn more and excited to uncover something new, we tend to keep writing. In other words, if I feel compelled to discover, I feel compelled to write. I think that’s true for a lot of writers. But most of us have day jobs and a million other obligations that can interrupt the pursuit of our compulsions—and launch us into a cycle of not-writing that can lead to more not-writing. When that happens, I like to eschew order, to write the scene that is in my head or calling to me, even if it is not the “next” thing that happens in the story, or even if it belongs in an entirely different project. I’m an avocational musician, and I know that we become better players through sustained practice. Yet—as important as it is to woodshed a tricky passage for an upcoming performance, it’s even more important to stay connected to our instrument, playing whatever we’re moved to play.

What is your favorite time to write? Writing—by hand—in my notebook I like to do in the morning, before the weight of the world is upon me. When I write for Yankee, I tend to research and interview in the afternoons and write in an all-day surge. My experience with books is that they dictate their preferred times of day. Cottage for Sale was an early morning book, echoing the rhythms of the project that inspired it. Remembering the Music, was not such an early riser, clocking in mid-morning. My new book, The Maestro and Her Protégé asked me to write late into the evening, suggesting I sleep in. But here again, I’d say that when we’re writing around the other necessities of living, we need to be flexible, and open to working whenever we can grab some space and time and focus.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? Here, I’ll defer to two books: Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. Cameron recommends what she calls “morning pages,” as a way to clear out the mundane concerns with no worry or judgement for what we write (or how much moaning we might do) before we begin the creative work for the day. I write my “morning pages,” in pinkish-purple ink to remind myself that anything goes—even purple prose! Reading Art and Fear (the first time in a single sitting) was truly life-changing for me, both as a musician and a writer, with perhaps the most important reminder that stopping is not the same as quitting. We can always begin again.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? I believe the need for human-to-human connection becomes even more important as artificial intelligence makes its way—sometimes stealthily—into our everyday lives. The ongoing conversation that happens between writers and readers and the humanity we express as writers and experience as readers, are critical components in our capacity to live and create beyond the machine. In this age of what feels like unceasing robotic expansion, I am honored and excited to be a human who writes for other humans.

Kate Whouley’s The Maestro and Her Protégé is out now with Blackwater Press.