Photo courtesy of Isabelle Stillman
Editorial intern Vee Syengo ’25 talks to former NER intern and current editor, writer, and musician Isabelle Stillman ’16 about the comfort of routine, anti-productivity, and writing within the family saga genre.
Vee Syengo: Could you share your class year and major?
Isabelle Stillman: 2016, English and creative writing.
VS: Where are you now, geographically and professionally?
IS: I live in Long Beach, CA, where I’m a fiction writer and the editor/publisher of december magazine.
VS: What’s one memorable moment that you remember from your time as an NER intern?
IS: I have vivid memories of sitting in a circle of folding chairs in the NER office, papers in our laps, talking about stories. The discussions always started out focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of a certain piece, but by the end we were talking about what makes good writing in general. I learned so much from those circles.
VS: What skills did you develop as an NER intern that you utilize in your work with december?
IS: I definitely started to learn to read like an editor at NER, which is different than reading like an English major. Working with Carolyn and the rest of the staff, I started to think more about what a piece was trying to do and whether or not it was succeeding rather than analyzing it to make an argument about what it said about the world. I also saw the multi-responsibility work that being an editor is: how much logistical, managerial, planning, and big-picture-thinking goes into making a literary magazine.
VS: How do you find the balance in your work as an editor, writer, musician, and a teacher? In other words, what does a day in your life look like?
IS: I’m very protective of and sacred about my writing time. I write every morning for at least a few hours. In the afternoons and evenings, I shift to editing and work on managing the magazine and reading submissions. Music happens on the weekends when I have a chunk of hours to sink into it. I’m not teaching anymore, but when I was, all of this happened around the edges of the school day. Routinizing my creative time is important for me because it tells me and the rest of my world what my priorities are, and it makes sitting down to write not only less intimidating, but comforting—it’s like, here we are again, Word Doc, my old pal.
The balance I aim for in terms of hours in the day really comes from the balance I know I need in order to (not to be dramatic but) really be myself. If I picture the pieces of who I am in a pie chart, they each get a proportional amount of time . . . ideally.
VS: I read somewhere that you found relief pursuing music and songwriting “in a society where progress is the goal, and achievement and productivity often define our worth.” Could you talk more about this feeling/idea?
IS: Being a creative in a capitalist society is always an uphill battle. Our work isn’t valued in the value system we live under—that is, it’s not valued monetarily. You’ve seen the stats about streaming compensation, and any literary magazine will tell you their pay might buy you dinner, but it’s not going to pay the bills. Our system doesn’t reward creation, but at the same time, creation doesn’t really . . . ask for reward. Art is anti-productive, anti-achievement. It’s an ongoing process, an experience, a byproduct of living—even if we end up with a specific product, that journey doesn’t end. We just sort of ooze or wisp or melt over to the next project, with the same kind of stuff in our bodies and souls and mind and worlds, and make another thing with all that same stuff. Like . . . art is the artist. An artist is their art.
I do think we should resist the idea that art isn’t “worth” anything and that art isn’t monetarily valued in our society: art is work and if work is the thing we reward, then art should be rewarded, too. But I’ve also started to think of my own creativity and creative work as something that lives and thrives outside of a system of productivity and compensation. It’s like this magical land of wildness and color and dancing and waves where everything is made up and everything is beautiful—a land that actually is in no way related to the strapped-down, tied-up world that we meet face-to-face every day. It’s a relief, personally, and an opportunity everyone deserves to have: to leave the rigid world and spend time in something more human and free.
VS: As you currently work on your first novel, where do you draw inspiration from when you get stuck or feel stagnant in the creative process?
IS: I keep a shelf of books next to my desk with all my favorite books in the genre/sub-genre I’m working in. So right now, it’s all my favorite family sagas. We Were the Mulvaneys, Pachinko, The Corrections, a ton of Anne Tyler. When I get stuck, I reach for one of those, crack it open, and read. I don’t know if other writers have this, but sometimes I get in this fog where I’m like, wait . . . what is a book? What are chapters supposed to do? How do sentences go? It’s helpful to remember how novels actually sound.
VS: Are you planning on resuming national music tours after the disruption brought forth by the pandemic?
IS: I don’t think I’ll tour again for long stretches, no. I’m too much of a homebody. Touring was indescribably cool for many reasons, and I feel lucky to have done it, but these days, I’m really liking my slippers and my kitchen table.
VS: Anything else you would like to share?
IS: Carolyn is so brilliant and kind and such an icon in the literary world, and I’m so, SO grateful to have learned—and to keep learning!—from her.