Member Spotlight: Kirsten C Weiss

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? I grew up a voracious reader. Books were both an escape and an education. And I think long-form reading is even more important today. Our attention is increasingly divided and scrambled online. Novels can help us take back our powers of concentration and have fun at the same time.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? I sit in front of my laptop and remind myself that even if the words on the page are garbage, that’s what first drafts and future are for. Occasionally I’ll use a prompt to get me going, but butt-in-chair is my go-to method.

What is your favorite time to write? I prefer to write in the morning, when my brain is more attuned to long stretches of deep work. By the afternoon, I’m tired and am better with short bursts, like social media posts and other marketing work.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? The best way to learn anything–including writing–is to write.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? There was a period of commercialization and corporatization (if that’s a word) that forced a certain sameness on genre fiction. But now with the rise of self-publishing–and *good* self-publishing–I think that model is being broken, and good riddance. I love the ability to take more risks with my genre fiction, and I love the new publishing models, such as author cooperatives.

Kirsten C Weiss’s The Cannoli Caper is out now with Misterio Press.