Member Spotlight: Steve Urszenyi

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? I love words. It sounds corny, but I’ve always been drawn to writing—structuring strings of words into sentences, paragraphs. Thoughts. Writing is more timeless and everlasting than the digital or celluloid medium of film. As much as I love a good movie, a book lasts forever and can be forever reinterpreted in your mind. A film is static: once someone else has interpreted the material and made it a visual thing, there is less room for the viewer’s mind to reimagine it.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? The only way I have found to overcome writer’s block is to write. Writing is as much a discipline as an art. You can only punch through the difficult moments by confronting them head-on. In writing, that means sitting down and forcing words onto the page or screen. Sure, some of it might be crap, but eventually, the bad writing will yield to better writing, and then—hopefully— to good writing.

What is your favorite time to write? I am a night owl by nature. So, the best writing time for me is late afternoon into the dinner hour and then again after dinner for a couple of hours. I used to pull long hours into the wee hours of the morning but found that too hard on family life and peaceful coexistence, so I reset.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? The best advice I was ever given on writing is not to listen to anyone’s advice on writing. The second best was that if you want to write, just write. Never mind what people tell you about how you should write or what you should write. Being a writer isn’t a static thing; it’s a continuum. You start here, you go there. One’s writing habits, skill, process, voice, all grow from the sheer act of writing: not thinking about writing, not wishing one was writing. But by actually writing.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? Writing in any age has always been a challenge. Every moment in history has posed challenges to creative voices. If you have the discipline and the determination, you can write about anything that interests you and find an audience for it.

Steve Urszenyi’s Perfect Shot is out now with Minotaur Books.