A Room For Writers
Tap into the minds of two local fiction writers—Emily Seo and Darcy Van Poelgeest.
In this feature, each writer shares their perspective on what it feels like to create, the driving forces behind their work, and their approach to crafting their stories.
I’ve paired each of the writer’s quotes next to a photograph that I took to visually represent their ideas.
Emily Seo: You can have multiple ideas, but unless you choose one way and work at it, you won’t know for sure if it will work out.
Your intuition is a tool so follow it. Start by going with your gut.
Darcy Van Poelgeest: When I’m creating, I feel like I’m a sculptor. There’s a thing that I’m trying to see and it already exists, and my job is just to get to it. I’m chiseling, looking at it, turning it around. I’m finding my way but I’m not making it up. I don’t know what it is, but my instincts tell me when I’m getting closer or farther away from it.
Emily Seo: When I put myself in the character’s shoes, I can create a story that’s more realistic. I don’t treat my characters like pawns on a chess board that I can move around by force. I see what they’re thinking and write towards where they want to go next.
Darcy Van Poelgeest: Most of what I write has something to say about what might be a real problem in the world. But that’s never the driving for me. It’s more about the characters. I’m trying to figure out who these people are and what they would do in their situation.
Emily Seo: I have my PHD in Organic Chemisty, which took a lot of years and a lot of hard work. I had to redo experiments many times. Even when the reactions were not working, each time I would learn something new. It was easy to give up, but I didn’t want to. Same thing for writing my novel—I wrote and rewrote until all the pieces came together. It was trial and error to get to the desired product. I never gave myself the option of giving up.
Darcy Van Poelgeest: For as much as I let the dream side of me drive the ship, I’m also a cutthroat editor. If I’ve written something beautiful, but it doesn’t serve the story—it’s just a gorgeous tangent, and I delete it. In screenwriting they call it “Killing your babies”.
Support your local writers
Visit their websites to learn more about their work:
