Member Spotlight: Chera Hammons

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? I always felt like the page was always the only place I could really be myself. So that was the place I started from. But in a wider context, when you write, you become a part of this wonderful human tradition of telling stories. You get to pick up the thread and carry it. Maybe in the process, you give a voice to something that another person feels and needs but doesn’t know how to say. Books have done that for me many times.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? My writing isn’t good when it’s forced. So when I’m in that position, I take a break. I go for a walk. I make something with my hands. I do more research so that I can find another way back into the material and get excited about it again. I leave the computer and sit down and write with a pen for a while. Anything that may shake the ideas loose.

What is your favorite time to write? I have brain fog from chronic illness, so I can’t think clearly very early or very late in the day. I usually do my best writing from mid-morning to mid-afternoon.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? The most important thing is that you make your writing the best it can possibly be, and write something that fulfills you. Then, even if it never gets published, or a million other things go wrong, you can still feel good about what you accomplished.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? We live in such a difficult time. But it’s also an important time. We get to be witnesses to this. We can use our words to remember what is lost, and by doing that, we keep it from being lost forever.

Chera Hammons’s Birds of America is out June 9 with Dial Press.