My life as a writer, Katherine Vaz.
Get Inspired!!!

During her “one and only” semester at Baruch College, writer Katherine Vaz gave the students of a journalism Feature class the privilege of having a private conversation with her. During one hour, Vaz told the class about her personal experiences and her inspiration to write, while giving advice on how to stop a writer’s block.

It all started with a question about the amount of death in her stories. “I think that is really hard to write fiction that doesn’t have issues that connect to loss. But the true theme of most of my stories is how human being find happiness in life, or different ways in which people find happiness, despite the loss they face. Fiction is an exploration of how people find joy and how they connect,” said the author.

Vaz grew up nearby a little town that is known as being the capital of the artichoke. She was surrounded by tumultuous things while growing up, like the Vietnam War, and this influenced her writing. In one of her books, titled “Our Lady of the Artichokes,” Vaz uses many of her memories and experiences to create several of the short stories that composes the book. “When you write fiction you have this germ, that sometimes is real, and it helps you to create a completely fictional story. I see this like instruments on writing fiction stories,” said Vaz.

Friends influenced Vaz by giving her ideas, and some of these ideas have become incredible short stories. “ A friend of mine once said to me, why don’t you write about when you had to ride the bus to go to school? And I did,” said Vaz. Indeed the story, “Taking a Stitch in a Dead Man’s Arm” is the story of a girl who takes the bus to school, and other things like losing her dad, and getting rid of fear. This story’s title was also inspired by one of the author’s father’s memories.

“ Writing fiction really isn’t about writing about personal things. It is good to have a filter when writing because you might not want to expose the life of people you love, or even yours. I have made the decision that what I draw on is not about the personal moments, but the feeling behind them, because that makes it all very much authentic,” said Vaz.

Vaz said she discovered she wanted to be a writer at the age of 12. But things didn’t just come easily after that. She went to college during the 70’s, and even in this “interesting decade” she made the decision to write three hours everyday, while giving herself exercises in order to learn how to write well.

“ I discovered that I wanted to be a writer in a classroom. I remember we had to write sentences with five new words, which we had to learn everyday. And that specific day I wrote a sentence, and I cannot remember what I wrote, but the sentence almost flew away from me. It was such a moment to realize how the sentence just happened, and how easily it happened, and at the moment I just knew that I was going to be a writer,” shared Vaz. “ I spent 3 hours everyday writing. It was just like an exercise I forced myself to do. I don’t think I have anything saved from this time. But I was waiting for that moment I had in the classroom, when I knew who I was. But those hours were very important, I was learning to make sentences.”
Vaz’s stories in the “Our Lady of the Artichokes” collection are also very much connected with her father. He is still alive and is Vaz’s best friend. Being around him seems to have helped shape the writer’s mind.

“ The idea of sitting around in the middle of six kids growing up, and have the ability to do something beautiful without any need of awarding in the end, is a gift that my father had, and it was so important for me to grow up surrounded by that,” said Vaz.

Katherine Vaz also told the students that when she was making a living by selling short stories to magazines she would buy other literary magazines and books because she liked to think that one day someone would be buying her work, too. “It was my way to give it back to the universe,” said Vaz.

(Sharing this conversation with you today, is my way, to give back to the universe because Vaz truly inspired me, and I know many others like me need to know her message.)
Mayara Guimaraes