Member Spotlight: Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? Writing is as important as all art forms are: it feeds the human soul, our need for storytelling and tools of expression. Writing is the tool that speaks to me in the clearest voice in filling this human need. It’s the narrator I hear when I’m away from pen and paper, waiting for her form to be put in letters. I feel fullest when a story comes out from me.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? I say this with humility: I don’t suffer from writer’s block. Writer’s waterfall, yes. In that there are so many stories to tell, in so many forms (prose, comic scripts, graphic prose, zines and small collages) my challenge and cure is to focus on what speaks to my heart and life circumstances at the moment, perhaps the call of an editor, and making it the “me and now” in the process. I write in seasons. I listen to those seasons, and that’s when the best comes out from me.

What is your favorite time to write? First thing after coffee, the morning. MORNING! Editing happens in the evening. But when you are a mom, you take what you can get. With school-aged kids, I have a little more control now.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? Take what you know and write about what you love.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? I can choose to do it all myself. I can choose to submit to publishers. I can submit when editors ask me to. I can bend genre and not be limited by outdated publishing traditions, and invite others to join me in the process. We have more options, as well as noise. But you don’t have to wait for anyone, or compromise your art in the process if your art isn’t fitting in other people’s homes.

Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos’s Event Horizon: Stories of No Turning Back is out December 15 with Janus Point Press.