We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ruby Moran a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ruby, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
It’s difficult to keep my creativity alive with a life full of responsibility. I have to focus on school and my education, first and foremost, which has become difficult to juggle with with college applications during my first semester, and I’ve had to look after my sister at home every afternoon for the past three years. I’m the main person relied on for help at home, not just in babysitting but also in sending and responding to emails, sometimes taking calls in English, helping with job applications and other things of that nature. As I continue my studies and help my mom make sure my sister catches up with her own academics and her speech/occupational therapy, there’s a big roadblock in the way that obstructs my ability to participate in most creative pursuits. I keep this alive by watching. I watch shows and films, both animated and live action, and I talk about them. I go on social media and gauge what others are saying about the show or film, watch video essays on them, and create my own notes on the plot, world building, character designs, character arcs, and more. Even when I cannot sit down to write my stories as much as I’d like to, I can still make a creative hobby out of a more relaxed leisure activity. Additionally, I’ve taken up journaling. I have a lot of thoughts swirling around my head every day, and my AP creative writing teacher has assigned us all a journal to write in everyday. I’ve found this exercise immensely helpful in drawing out ideas or thoughts that weren’t getting much attention from me, and I think that maintaining this habit of freely writing things down will help me with my stories, and on the whole my creativity, in the long run.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
The majority of what I do revolves around writing. I’ve been writing journalistically and creatively for the past few years, dabbling in poetry a few times in between. I’ve been a part of my school’s newspaper, The Science Survey, for three years, mostly writing editorials on different themes found within media. I started out as a staff writer, became section editor for the arts & entertainment pieces my second year, and am now one of the paper’s copy chiefs. Outside of school, I co-direct The Cleverly Creatives’ content team, overseeing the writers, editors, interviewers, and any non-members interested in contributing their work to our literary magazine issues and events. We’re currently working on more issues, and I hope to resume our 8-book series focused on important creative themes. Additionally, I founded the NYC chapter of Ecolearners and started a website to house an environmental blog. This month, I aim to release more blog posts and literary magazine issues in both of these organizations. My biggest goal of the year, however, is to have my first draft of my book done. I know this is a lot, and I still feel uncertain about my ability to balance it all along with my academics, but it’s been a dream of mine to publish a novel, and I truly believe that my newest idea might be the one.
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?
Writing is fluid, it is not a once size fits all journey at all. Not everyone needs to keep a diary or a neat journal, not everyone has to aim to write 1,000 words a day, our schedules simply don’t allow that all the time. Learning to recognize that what adults online, who might even write professionally anyway, do won’t entirely be what will end up working for me. Resilience and resourcefulness are two other incredibly important skills that I have had to develop throughout my writing journey. With any hobby or profession there are going to be challenges, and one must be ready to face them, or at least prepared to stand back and come up with alternative solutions to get by it. If I can’t stampede through an obstacle, how can I jump over it, dig underneath it, or move around it?
What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?
I think the only way to become stronger is to become more well-rounded. Sometimes what we are weakest can connect to what we are strongest in. Only focusing on our strengths leaves us vulnerable in situations where that strength may not be sufficient enough to help us get through a challenge. Focusing on strengthening some weaknesses can in turn help the strengths we value so much. My writing wouldn’t have developed as much as it has if I didn’t work on my time management and organization. I used to jump right into my work without a plan, and would abandon projects whenever I got stuck and couldn’t brainstorm new ideas to keep me moving forward. I worked on the underlying issues with how I chose to approach the project in the first place, learned to be a little bit more strict on myself, and now I really enjoy planning ahead and end up with longer lasting projects.
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Image Credits
Photo credit: Ruby Moran, all photos provided by me
