Member Spotlight: Lynn Slaughter

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? Hardly original to me, but I do believe writing books offers a way to explore worlds and lives very different from our own, as well as to provide a way of reflecting on our own lives and experiences. I genuinely believe that writing and reading promote empathy.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? Rituals: starting each day reading a page from my favorite writer’s meditation book, Walking on Alligators, by Susan Shaughnessy. I light a candle and begin by reviewing and doing some light editing on the previous day’s pages. That helps bring me back into my story and helps me move on.

What is your favorite time to write? Mornings and early afternoons.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? You won’t always feel like writing, but when you commit to doing it regularly, it’s amazing what happens. It’s so much easier once you begin.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? It’s a way to envision a more positive, humane, and caring world than the one in which we currently find ourselves.

Lynn Slaughter’s The Big Switch: Varney and Cedric is out today with Nightingale Books.