Liz Chang
Oyster River Pages: Do you rely more on discipline, inspiration, or something else when writing or creating artwork?
Liz Chang: Elizabeth Gilbert in her TED Talk on Genius (which I use in my classroom when I teach Intro to Creative Writing) talks about herself as a "mule... showing up and slogging through the mud." I definitely identify with that. I have a young family, but I prioritize setting aside time each week—even if it has to happen in thirty-four discrete chunks of time—to write or complete a task related to writing (like researching literary magazines). I've been lucky enough a few times that sometimes the muse smiles on me and a poem or essay arrives nearly fully formed, but I tell my students that that happens, on average, once every two or three years. The rest of the time, I do not wait for inspiration to strike: I show up, write that terrible first draft, and revise the hell out of it until I get something that I can feel excited about.
ORP: Are you working on anything at present that you would like to share with your readers/viewers?
LC: I have a short collection of poems that I'm working on that began as flash nonfiction pieces. The impetus was an essay I read that talked about CNF writers as the "emotional packrats of the writing world." (I think this was in Rose Metal Press’ Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction, but I am struggling to find the exact quote now.) This reverberated through my writing and my life because I have always been an incurable packrat. I realize now that I keep things because I want to keep the story—much to my husband's chagrin. I'm writing poems that immortalize these everyday things as objects in a museum of my life. Each poem begins with a museum tag like you'd see next to artwork.
ORP: What do you see as the greatest obstacle or challenge to your personal creativity? How do you work to overcome it?
LC: I was raised to be a "good girl," which sometimes meant not speaking my truth to spare someone. As I explore Creative Nonfiction, it has been a challenge for me to acknowledge where this line is (of what is fair or "true" and whether it must be said) or if it even exists. Obviously, CNF is not and should not be a revenge-extraction genre, and truth is always subjective. Still, I find that the best work arrives on the page when I push myself beyond what I would normally be brave enough to say.
ORP: What is the artist’s/writer’s greatest asset?
LC: I studied visual art first, and there, I had a teacher who used to say, "drawing is about seeing the world." I think the same is true of any art really, but for writers, it might be more about hearing the world (in addition to seeing it). Great art looks at the heart of what it means to be human, so a writer or artist must constantly examine the human experience as they see it in their own life.
