Member Spotlight: Kimberly Dark

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? We are language creatures, observers, and culture-makers. Varied stories are vital for understanding and encouraging innovation in our lives, and for understanding ourselves through others.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? Silence, no electronics, nature, reading books. All of these lead to perception and ideas. They lead to form and voice – sometimes inspiration. Timed, predictable writing every day – just whatever comes – has helped in the past, but my life isn’t set up that way now. No matter how life comes, the writing has to adapt, find its way in.

What is your favorite time to write? First things in the morning, but any time something comes to me is good. It’s often more of a compulsion than a plan.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? You’re entitled to make what you want – poems, essays, novels, murals, sky writing. (And you probably need that permission over and over – so many things make us feel unworthy.) Also, edit. A lot.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? Certain messages of love and care and diversity seem more important these days, but I don’t know if this age is really much different than any other. We still have to make ourselves and each other every day. Writing is one way to do it.

Kimberly Dark’s Motherlode is out now with Indolent Books.