Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with Anne Marie Wells, our Fall Resident.
Tiny Spoon: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you? Do you follow any rituals or creative exercises to spark your writing process?
Anne Marie Wells: I am much more organic in my creative process—if it flows, it flows; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I know some people are very committed to a specific writing time or their morning pages or what have you, but I just don’t work that way and cannot work that way. Anytime I’ve tried to impose a habit or ritual, it turns creativity into a chore for me. Then when I miss a day, it sparks a sense of shame and disappointment—detrimental to creativity. Instead, I allow the muse to visit or not. I don’t grow anxious about “writer’s block”. I trust that my subconscious brain is doing the work or taking the rest it needs to prepare for my next idea.
TS: What inspired you to begin and maintain these practices?
AMW: The inspiration was simply trial and error (or trial and success!) I cannot force myself to write something when I am not ready to do so. The times I have tried to wake up an hour early to write or dedicate myself to morning pages or simply write every day, I have only ever created really sterile, uninteresting work.
And every time I have worried I would never write another play or another poem or another blog post, that I would never have another good idea again, I have always been wrong. So, I have learned to stop worrying about it. When the next play, poem, or blog post (or whatever else) wants to be born into the world with me as its mother, it will come. It always has, and it always will.
TS: Does your writing intersect with other creative practices?
AMW: I love performing. When I write a play, I envision it as I write and even act out the scenes as I write to help me with dialogue and stage directions. When I write a poem, I often think about how it sounds out loud, how it might be performed on stage. There’s something about that transitional line between potential energy and kinetic that gets me particularly jazzed.
TS: If your work was a song, what would it be?
AMW: Great question. I have turned to The Avett Brothers’ “No Hard Feelings” throughout the recent years for solace and guidance and inspiration. The music and lyrics pull something out of me that I can’t quite explain. So, I hope if my work were a song, it would be that one.
TS: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends who have been influential to your work?
AMW: Andrea Gibson is one of my poetry crushes. Even before I was a poet, I was in awe of their word play and ways of seeing the world. A true sage of our age.
Most recently I have been greatly inspired by Ilya Kaminsky’s poetry collection, Deaf Republic and Talicha J.’s Taking Back the Body. Two completely different works by completely different poets with completely different messages, and yet, they both remain on my side table, and I keep picking them out and reading from them over and over.
TS: Are there any natural entities that move your work?
AMW: I lived in Jackson, WY and its environs on and off for ten years. The backdrop of the Teton and Gros Ventres mountains certainly impacted my work. I am actually an ecologist by education! I earned my Masters of Ecology back in 2013 and have yet to use that degree in any professional way. My degree is more a reflection of my love of flora and fauna (and rocks and clouds). Now I live just outside Shenandoah National Park, and the East Coast’s natural wonders (particularly the fall foliage) fill me and my poetry with awe.
TS: What is on your reading list this season?
AMW: Speaking of natural entities, Ada Límon’s anthology You Are Here is at the top of the list. I also have Charles C. Smith’s Searching for Eastman and Dorsey Craft’s Plunder.
TS: Can you share your philosophy on sustaining creative communities?
AMW: The most challenging part of creating a creative community is sustaining it. I have seen and experienced it myself: the one person who organizes it all burns out, and the group can’t stand on its feet without its spine. Another reason is a lack of monetary funds to host events or rent meetup venues. We have all read the news: arts funding is constantly under attack and dwindling.
However, I do believe ephemeral experiences can be just as meaningful. I was once a part of an ad hoc playwriting group. With confidence bolstered by the group, I wrote and put on a choose-your-own-ending murder mystery play. After that, we put on one collaborative play as a team, and then never did anything again. But who cares that it didn’t last? We created art that we showcased in the community that wouldn’t have been created otherwise. And that’s still great!
My philosophy for sustaining would be reframing one’s mindset, one’s definition of what a successful creative community looks like. Let’s not let the Western capitalist mindset of “success” or longevity deter us from even trying. We can still put forth something positive and constructive into the world even if we only meet four times and then never meet up again. I mean, that’s still four opportunities for connection, inspiration, and creation that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. The world needs much, much more beauty and connection and art right now in our world, and I think it’s sometimes easier to even try if we have the expectation of sharing a moment rather than starting a movement.
TS: What advice would you give to emerging writers?
AMW: Read, read, read, read, read. Take workshops. Join critique groups. There are plenty of free opportunities available online. The old adage “practice makes perfect” does not apply to writers. Practice without the (tactful) insights and guidance from others only makes for permanently unevolved writing.
TS: Is there anything else you would like others to know about you, your creations, or beyond?
AMW: My two published poetry collections, Survived By and Mother, (v) both center around concepts of grief, but I wouldn’t consider them “downers.” Instead, I think they are more bittersweet, the way we listen to sad songs when we’re already sad. The sad songs don’t make us feel sadder, they help us travel through our sadness like a life raft down the sadness river. Like Andrea Gibson famously wrote, “Let your heart break so your spirit doesn’t.”
TS: What projects are you working on? Can we find you at any upcoming events, etc.?
AMW: Oo. Like so many writers, I have a gazillion ideas and half-started projects. My most enduring project is my travel memoir, Happy Iceland, about my experience hitchhiking and backpacking across Iceland in 2016 finding the places strangers’ happiest memories took place. Within the last eight years, I have hired two editors and a book coach. I won a travel memoir contest complete with a contract, then terminated that contract when the publisher only wanted to self-publish the book through Amazon. I’ve sent over two hundred agent queries. I have had chapters of this book critiqued at two writers conferences. I’ve made countless revisions, both broad-sweeping and nitty gritty. Now I am participating in AWP’s writer-to-writer mentorship under the guidance of columnist and travel memoirist Laura Carney. I hope this latest iteration of my book is the one that finally breaks through! I hope, I hope, I hope. I believe, I believe, I believe.
TS: Where can people learn more about what you do?
AMW: Folks can find me on most social media platforms @AnneMarieWellsWriter , on SubStack @AnneMarieWells , and/or on my website http://www.AnneMarieWellsWriter.com