Meet Isa Meir

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Isa Meir a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Isa, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

It took me a while to discover creative writing even though I’ve been doing it since before I knew how. One of my earliest memories is scribbling in a notebook with a red marker, pages and pages of loops and swirls. I knew what writing was, couldn’t do it yet, but hoped that my imitation would suffice in capturing the story in my head. I remember the story as being world-changing, but of course I forgot it by the next day.
I dabbled plenty in storytelling as a kid, but something shifted when I met my best friend (sister, really), Ryann. We met on a public Minecraft server when we were twelve and bonded over a shared love of “Maximum Ride” by James Patterson. We spent weeks playing out scenes from the books before we knew anything about each other except time zone and supposed age. Eventually we got bored and started inventing new storylines, adding new characters, settings, drama. By the time we reached high school we were inventing our own source material to spin off. To this day the worlds I write do not fully exist if she doesn’t have a hand in them.
While she knew when we started college that she wanted to be a writer, I needed a few years to flounder. Covid sent me home my freshman year, and online biology labs are (not exaggerating) unbearable. I fled University for Community College, where they had just launched their creative writing program. One class and it was game over; Ryann was right (as she often is).

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Currently I’m inches away from a BFA in Creative Writing (fiction) from University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Writers’ Workshop. The next step for me is grad school (Gd willing), but even if that’s not in the cards I expect to be a student for a while. There are so many things left to try, Studio Art, ASL, Physics, even Rabbinical School. I’m working on a novel and have dozens of short horror stories to find homes for, but I’m most myself when I’m learning.
Outside of school I teach Torah and Hebrew to students in the years leading up to their B’nei Mitzvah. As someone who frequently finds herself the only Jew in the room, it keeps me grounded. Judaism haunts my writing, whether I’m trying for it (as I often do) or not. It’s a real privilege to work with these kids. It’s cliche, but teaching is the closest thing to getting paid to learn.
Publishing my writing is a work in progress, but in the meantime I’ve been busy doing local readings, workshopping, and taking notes in my little yellow notebook.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1) “Read far and wide” is common advice for young writers (also good advice) but I’d take it a step further and say learn to enjoy the stories you hate. Books, poems, plays, movies, video games—once you can pick apart a story and recognize its weak spots you’re most of the way to making sure you never make those mistakes. It’s hard to quantify, but I think I learn more about writing from the books I detest than the books I love. Read both, of course, one is not noticeable without the other. But it can be easy to get caught up in the fear that you’ll never be like your dream author if you don’t occasionally remind yourself you’ll never be like your nemesis author, either.
2) Noticing journals. Not a diary, just a place to write down things you notice (colors, smells, people, thoughts, anything). As you keep going you’ll start to notice the interesting stuff, which means your narrators will start to notice the interesting stuff. I avoided it for years because I felt stupid talking to a page no one would read (I wasted a lot of time expositing my personal life to catch the journal up to speed). It wasn’t until I was forced to do it for a class that I realized it didn’t have to be that way. I keep a physical one in my bag, but if it’s not on me I’ll write things down in a text to myself to transfer over later.
3) See those you disagree with as people, not as enemies. There are plenty of bogus, nasty opinions out there. Best case scenario they’re mind-boggling, worst they’re threatening. You don’t have to be friends with everybody, but my life (and my character design) became a lot more forgiving once I decided to take the time and understand my neighbors. Even the worst-est ones. People aren’t two-dimensional, and somehow the world is easier to swallow for me once I remember that—though some humans try really hard to be—none of us are monsters; we’re scared.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

When it comes to creative work, well-rounded is better hands-down. When I first started in workshop I was ready to write the next big thing in YA romance, as were all of my classmates. I’d done the reading, had a quirky narrator and steamy love interest locked and loaded, I was prepared to pine. I didn’t expect to love the literature, poetry, and creative nonfiction as much as I did. Enough that I changed course, explored themes I never knew I had in me. The secret is (and it’s not actually a secret), that branching out will make you a better writer no matter what you’re branching out into. I’ve written a butt-load of crappy poetry that strengthened my prose skills. My experience in dance and music affected my rhythm. The two years I spent pursuing a biology degree weaseled their way into my fiction’s fascination with the macabre.
Which is also to say that, even in periods when you’re not creating, you’re learning. Downloading information. I’m a visual artist on the side, and when life gets hectic I can go months between illustrations. The pen always returns to my hand, though, and I’m always better than when I left it.