Member Spotlight: Robyn Ryle

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? Susan Cain said, “We are creatures who are born to transform pain into beauty.” That’s what writing is to me. A way to make sense of suffering and beauty and joy. Writing is a way to give the confusing chaos that is life some meaning and structure. It is how I follow Mary Oliver’s guiding words to pay attention, be astonished and tell about it.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? When I get writer’s block, sometimes I give myself a break. Writer’s block might simply mean I need to recharge my battery. That means doing whatever gets me back up to full power. Sometimes that’s trying some different artistic medium–painting or drawing or playing music.

What is your favorite time to write? I’m a morning writer. I can make myself write in the afternoon, but it’s not easy. I love the quiet of a morning with nothing in front of me but time to write, especially in the winter when it’s a little dark and I light a candle and my cat’s asleep in her bed beside me. That’s heaven.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? I was lucky enough to do a workshop with Elizabeth Strout. She said always start with something true from your own life and put it on the page. This felt like a strange piece of advice, especially as at the time I was writing a character who was very different from me. But I think she’s right that our own hearts are always the map to good writing. There’s an amazing alchemy there, in taking our own experiences and transforming them into the thoughts or feelings or actions of someone else.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? One of the very exciting things about being a writer right now is that platforms like Substack allow me to have a direct relationship with my reader. I can sit down and write whatever I’m thinking or feeling and in minutes, people are reading it. That’s a small miracle.

Robyn Ryle’s Sex of the Midwest: A Novel in Stories is out now with Galiot Press.