Member Spotlight: Alison Kimble

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? Stories have the ability to shape our world and ourselves. Books, in particular, let us imagine ourselves in new situations and visualize new lives. Living in someone else’s life for a little while expands our empathy and stretches our imagination of what is possible for ourselves. There is truth to the phrase “if you believe it you can achieve it.” No one ran a four-minute mile until someone who relentlessly visualized it did it… then many others followed. Expanding what we believe is possible, even if only briefly in the context of a fictional world, expands what IS possible. 

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? Unstructured “empty” time. I have found success giving my brain a rest and let the connections happen subconsciously. Usually, the only way I can demand nothing active of my brain is to take a long walk on a familiar path, where there are no decisions to be made or devices to distract me. Meditation also works. I think this is why I get so many ideas right before bed… when I’m trying to do nothing, the words come!

What is your favorite time to write? Nighttime! It is the time of day where I can claim the most hours for myself without a strict endpoint. It’s always harder to start when I know exactly when I have to stop.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? If you write, you are a writer. Writers write. I like this advice for two reasons: 1. It reduces the barrier to being a “writer”… you don’t have to have started writing when you were eight, or have an MFA, or any external acclaim, or even have an audience. 2. It offers a challenge to all the people who have a book in them, as so many people do. You can plan to write, or be good at writing, or be an industry expert, or have an amazing story idea… but if you want to be a writer, you have to write. It’s that easy. It’s that hard.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? Audience accessibility. Social media and marketing is hard, and a lot of writers (myself included) hate splitting time between that and the work itself. However, this is an exciting time when gatekeepers no longer hold the keys to what the public consumes. So many more individuals can get out there and connect directly with readers. Finding your voice and your audience can be hard, but ten years ago, twenty years ago, there were fewer options to even TRY.

Alison Kimble’s Strange Gods is out July 20 with Immortal Works.