Meet Kim Suhr

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kim Suhr. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kim below.

Hi Kim, thank you so much for making time for us today. Let’s jump right into a question so many in our community are looking for answers to – how to overcome creativity blocks, writer’s block, etc. We’d love to hear your thoughts or any advice you might have.

Actually, I’m not sure I believe in writer’s block (which is usually a function of someone’s perfectionism rather than a failure of creativity), but I get what you’re asking: how do I weather a creative dry spell and come out the other side with a piece of writing that doesn’t make me want to climb into a hole and quit my art all together? I guess, for me, the answer is trust. I remind myself to trust that there’s a reason I have chosen this artform—or it has chosen me. I remind myself to trust that I have something to say and that, if I do my half of the job and show up ready to work with my butt in the chair, nuggets of inspiration will try to make their way to me, too.

I’m probably cribbing from Elizabeth Gilbert here, but my experience bears this out. Even when I don’t feel like it, I start scratching words onto paper (Yes, with a pen—that’s how I work best in the generative stage.), and if I stick with it and turn off my internal editor and just keep working, just keep working—eventually, I come around to what I’m trying to say or to what it trying to be said through me. Trust. The result isn’t always immediate, but trust hasn’t failed me yet.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

In addition to being a writer myself, I am Director of Red Oak Writing where I have the honor of helping others on their creative paths. For some, I am writing coach/developmental editor helping them hone their manuscripts to get ready to submit to agents and editors or to indie publish. For others, I lead the Roundtable critique group where they share their early draft work for feedback and support from a broad range of writers. In both situations, emerging and veteran writers receive the benefit of trusted and nurturing readers before their words go out the big, scary (and exciting) world of publishing.

I lead another group called “Time to Write!” which meets weekly to write together (virtually) and where writers get a chance to “play” at the page. Gotta keep those creative juices flowing! And in the summer, I add leading Creative Writing Camps for youth to my repertoire. What a gas it is to be with the next generation of writers! Here and there, Red Oak offers master classes on craft and writer showcase events. Maybe most importantly, we provide a community where people feel a kinship with others who are listening to the call to write.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Okay, so my advice is going to be (mostly) writing focused:

1. Read like a mutha.
2. Study other writers you admire. (This is deeper than simply “reading.”)
3. Deconstruct what they do and then reconstruct your own version with your own elements.
4. Then, listen to the voice that urges you to “break the rules”—and do it with intention—to develop your own creative voice.

I have rarely seen writers jump successfully to #4 without doing #1-3 often for a long time. Actually, I guess this advice applies to lots of creative endeavors, not just writing. I’ll leave it to you to translate into your art form.

Also, I don’t know who said this, but start before you’re ready. At least for me, this is important because I’ll NEVER feel ready. There will always be one more thing to tweak. And another. Over time, I have cultivated a sense of “ready enough,” and it has served me well—in launching the Red Oak business and in submitting my work to publishers.

Finally, staying in touch with my beginner’s mind has helped me be a better teacher and coach for others on their writing journeys.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

I’m certain this isn’t type of answer the question intends but it’s the truth… When I was a wee tot, my young parents were charged with “raising” my 15-year-old aunt Jean Anne. Feeling they had to follow through on a threat about wearing a life jacket in a boat, they grounded her for the entire summer. Grounded, that is, except for the “freedom” to take me to the Monroe Street Library, which, I’m grateful to say, she did with great regularity. These were the trips that made me feel happy and at home surrounded by books.

I imagine Jean Anne and I read our way through the picture books in the collection. Dr. Seuss’s rhyming and cadence still echo in my ears, and, every so often lo these 50+ years hence, Jean Anne will recite the “Once a leopard say his spots…” rhyme to me (which is not Dr. Seuss and was actually in a book we owned rather than one from the library—but still).

What I remember with more specifics, though, are trips I made to the library when I was old enough (and given the freedom—my parents loosened up a bit after the Grounded Summer) to get there on my own and check out books with the cream-colored library card, my uneven, second-grade signature on the back. I can still hear the crinkle of plastic-covered books and the ka-thunk as the demagnetizing machine did its job, the stamp-stamp of the due date being inked onto the check-out card and slip taped inside the cover. The squeaky wire rack of paperback Peanuts books, which featured comic strips of Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the gang—and which I read through, sometimes twice or three times in a summer.

Later, I exhausted the collection of Encyclopedia Brown and Little House books from the tiny library at the end of the hall at St. James School. Judy Blume entered my life, including the forbidden Forever…, in which premarital, teen sex had no negative consequences (gasp!), giving me new ways to see myself, my changing body, and my relationships with friends and guys. My friend who turned me onto Blume probably sneaked me the copies of Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! And Go Ask Alice, too. Talk about forbidden.

What matters in all this is that books gave me mirrors and windows and doors into the world—and a thirst to write and, later, to help other writers. And it all started with my parents’ need to teach Jean Anne a lesson.

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