Member Spotlight: Larry F. Sommers

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? A memory or a bit of data from history or from my own life may inspire creation of a story that reveals meaning in what has gone before, that explores what knits us together as humans, and why sometimes we are driven apart. The poet T.S. Eliot wrote:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? I have several projects going at once. Then I work on whichever one is most accessible to my mind in the moment.

What is your favorite time to write? Mid-morning–one of the few times when my mind is clear!

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? “At some point attention must be paid to the writing.”–Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel. The point being that the frustration we feel in marketing our manuscripts may be due to the need for a better manuscript.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? A new understanding of ourselves and our world, leaping out as if by miracle from retrospective writing, is what I seek for myself and what I strive to share with reflective readers of all descriptions. Such readers may hope for something true and enduring. My stories simply aim to supply whisperings from the past, which may nourish the hearts of readers in their own quests through the mundane present and into the hazy realm of the future.

Larry F. Sommers’s Price of Passage: A Tale of Immigration and Liberation is out August 23 with DX Varos Publishing.