Liam Scanlon
Oyster River Pages: What inspired you to begin writing or creating? Has that source of inspiration changed throughout your life?
Liam Scanlon: I've always been a storyteller; you can find old family videos of me at three years old babbling away about princess kingdoms and outer space adventures while I doodle messily on a sheet of paper. I started to pursue writing in earnest as a teenager because it was the easiest way to make those stories real. The more stories I wrote, the more I considered myself a writer. Interestingly enough, though, since getting the chance to pursue my artistic life full time a year ago—which included producing and acting in the play I'd written—I no longer consider myself 'a writer.' I've gone back to seeing myself, above all else, as a storyteller. I see all expressions as valid and draw inspiration from the most random sources, which has been very freeing for me. This journey typically still translates into telling those stories through words, but now that journey might just go to some funkier places in the process!
ORP: What does success as a writer or artist mean to you?
LS: I definitely like to see it in tiers, or stages, ones which I'll hopefully slowly ascend over time. For the longest time, I didn't have the confidence to pursue my writing full time, feeling trapped in a corporate job that was draining that creativity away from me. A year ago I finally quit that job, and these days being able to shape a life for myself—however precarious—that honors my creativity already feels like a massive success. Today? That's enough. Tomorrow? The world.
ORP: Does writing or creating energize or exhaust you? What aspects of your artistic process would you consider the most challenging or rewarding?
LS: I'm lucky that the act of writing new material never exhausts me (at least up to a certain point of daily saturation)—it's always a deeply meditative, cleansing act for me. A process that feels increasingly like flying the deeper I get into it. Writing to me feels like play. On the other hand, editing is what feels like 'work' to me, and it's definitely taken me longer to appreciate the time it takes in fine-tuning a work to make something suitably enjoyable/insightful/wonderful. Because it's when I take the time to do that work in crafting something creatively viable where I feel truly rewarded.
ORP: Do you know more than one language? How does this influence your art and/or writing?
LS: I love learning languages! Currently I speak French, Spanish and Japanese, having had the chance to spend time in all of their respective countries. Going back to what I said about all forms of expression being valid, I see the struggle I've had to express myself in non-English languages as a similar journey to the pains taken to express myself in writing. New languages open up new mental realms and visions of how to live a life, all of which has been crucial to informing my writing.
ORP: What does vulnerability mean to you as an artist and/or writer?
LS: I'm learning these days how, if you've written something you're nervous to show to other people because of what it might 'say' about you, you're probably on the right track. It likely means I've dug into something that surprises even me. It's the feeling I get when I go up on stage to perform something at an open mic: that hush that falls across the audience, the way my voice shakes as I start. Those nerves are a sign that I'm about to go somewhere deeper, and bring the audience with me. The same thing happens, I believe, when my reader is about to read something of mine that's truly vulnerable.
