Member Spotlight: Kathleen Brady

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? Writing is something that I need to do and while I try to find shortcuts to almost everything else, the time-consuming struggle over the apt preposition seems well-worth my effort and attention. Writing is an important medium for the world because of the joy and/or knowledge that it brings to contemporary readers, but equally important it provides a record of who and what humanity is and has been.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? The exercises in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron have been very helpful. They both get me out of my own way and into my self at the same time.

What is your favorite time to write? My favorite time to write is the morning, beginning at 8 am, which in true fact is 9 am because I procrastinate for an hour or so. This can be productive. I once re-wired a lamp with the help of YouTube instruction to avoid re-writing a difficult chapter.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? The great biographer Kenneth Silverman told me that being an experienced writer did not make the work easier, but it provided knowledge that no matter how bad a particular piece of writing seemed to be you knew you could find a way to get past the problem.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? I do love it that if all else fails (meaning agents, editors, publishers), a writer can get his or her work out through the Internet. This has its drawbacks, sometimes to society, but it does excite me.

Kathleen Brady’s Francis and Clare: The Struggles of the Saints of Assisi is out now with Lodwin Press.