Meet Melanie Mar

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Melanie Mar. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Melanie, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.

I’m so glad I get to answer this question—because I haven’t.
I suffer with imposter syndrome every.single.day. I actually made a social media post about it recently, after a pretty heavy week of needing to write but being unable to. It was the first time in a long time I felt so restrained by my own mind. I wanted to write, had all the words, the ideas and motivation, but was physically unable to move my fingers across a keyboard for longer than a few sentences. If I did write, I’d look at it with a critical magnifying glass after, upset that it wasn’t perfect. That I wasn’t perfect.
I felt like I was too inexperienced or inadequately equipped to tell my own stories, or to do my characters justice.
After several days of tears and some heavy support from my writing community, I was able to regain my footing, even if not entirely.
Imposter syndrome is something all authors experience at any point in their careers. A dear author reached out and told me something I won’t forget: “Aiming for perfection, however impossible, means you care.” And she’s right. I care deeply about these stories, and only I can tell them perfectly because they’re mine. In the end, no one can tell a story as well as its writer.

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

My name is Melanie Moore, I am a recently published fantasy author. I have been writing since I was young, creating since I was young and I am so lucky to be able to do these things on a larger scale now is an adult. I never thought that I would be able to write professionally, much less publish an actual book. Reading, or books in general are such an important piece of culture. To learn about the history of other individuals, whether in a fantasy world or in the real world is such a privilege and being able to contribute to at least a temporary escape from reality for readers is a form of magic in itself.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I definitely think one of the most impactful skills in this journey is the skill to step out of my own body and experience works of art below surface level. Anyone could read a book or look at a painting or listen to his song and take it at face value, but I’ve always had the, unfortunate gift of excavating beneath the surface of everything in my life. Although difficult to live with, that screwy for meaning, emotion, and feeling, helps my craft immensely. So, I guess it’s a curse I will bear proudly.
Some advice that I have for those early in this writing journey is, to just write. I say with a heavy heart that the hardest part of being an author, is in fact, writing. It sounds silly, but as authors, we often have the whole story or movie rolling in our heads 24/7— the difficult part is fitting it into a manuscript, not coming up with ideas. If you have an idea that you’re passionate about, right, even if it’s just a little bit every day. Find a community that’s excepting and encouraging. It makes all the difference to have supportive people in your corner, motivating you to continue.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

To this day, my favorite adult book is House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J Mass. perhaps it’s because it was the first book I picked up after a decade of not reading, or maybe because it was the book that helped me claw my way out of postpartum depression, but I reread it often. The world building, the story, the characters, I love everything about that book. It was the first book that made me cry ever.
I think the most impactful thing I got out of that book is how cleverly Sarah was able to weave plot twists into the narrative without being so obvious, at least to me at the time. It inspired me to weave foreshadowing in my own stories and really throw my readers for a loop once in a while.

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