Member Spotlight: Robin Patten

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? Writing is a creative act of observation and reflection that allows me to explore the world around me in depth. When I write, the thoughts that emerge are often unexpected, and so writing becomes a way of weaving together and better understanding ideas and events. When one reads other authors’ works, this also provides a way of exploring the world around us. Greater awareness and broader perspectives come from inspirational writing, something important for the world today.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? When I’m stuck, I go for a walk and/or write longhand in my journal with free-flow thinking. Never fails.

What is your favorite time to write? Morning is my best writing time, outside surrounded by the natural world, when the day is fresh and the world feels full of opportunity.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? Best advice: focus on the ideas first, the prose later. Getting what I am trying to say onto the page, then going back to make it lyrical has helped me get through many difficult passages. Also, let the writing sit. Setting aside any piece of writing for a day, a week, months, then picking it back up again has been essential in my creative process.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? In a world in troubled times, there is still room for expressions of beauty, love, and hope. I believe the writers, poets, and artists of today may play a role in sustaining these things that are essential to who we are as human beings.

Robin Patten’s The Mountain: Journeys in High Places is out now with University of Utah Press.