Member Spotlight: Victoria Moran

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? Words are how I think and how I interpret the world. If I’m going to share anything with other people or lift them up or have any hope of leaving this planet better than I found it, it’s going to have to come through this medium. I’m not alone in being wired this way. If writing were to disappear, all the contributions of us word folks would cease to be.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? Writing time goes on my calendar like any other appointment. It is simply time blocked out — a great way to I get the energy from the other people, but nobody wants anything from me.

What is your favorite time to write? Morning is best, but for me, morning is best for everything, so writing has competition from exercise, meditation, walking the dog, breakfast. When this happens, I am tasked with creating morning in the afternoon. To do that, I take myself to a cafe that welcomes writers and other laptop warriors, set myself up at a table with some tea, and start the day a second time. I know that writing is the task at hand, and that is generally an enticing prospect. It’s often laborious, of course, but it is sometimes easy and exquisite, and this could be one of those days.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? The late Jerrold Mundis, my longtime writing coach and friend, told me that writing well for more than three hours is almost impossible. The nervous system gets weary. You can research, edit, interview, proofread, and ponder, but keep the actual writing, Jerry would tell me time and again, to three hours a day. (If you’re on deadline: you can do two or three hours if separated from the first spate by lunch and a walk and a stroll through a museum or a department store.)

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? I’m not sure “excites” is the word: I’m just grateful to be writing books, given the onset of the digital age and all the challenges it brings to writers and publishers. I trust that words, strung together in some remarkable way, will find the means for getting to readers. I just hope that these words come from humans and that those humans can make a living providing them.

Victoria Moran’s Age Like a Yogi: A Heavenly Path to a Dazzling Third Act is out now with Monkfish Book Publishing.