Melanie Votaw leads NYWC’s workshop at BEGIN, an adult basic education and ESL center in midtown Manhattan. Melanie lives in Brooklyn and is an author, freelance journalist, speaker, copywriter and editor. She is the author of many books, including Hummingbirds: Jewels on Air, 52 Weeks of Passionate Sex, The Art of Chinese Calligraphy, The Art of Belly Dancing, and is a contributor to Five-Minute Erotica. Her poetry has been published in Offerings, Folio, Double-Entendre, American Writing: A Magazine, and other publications.

Below is a poem of Melanie’s followed by an interview with her:

DESIRE - PUNCTUATED!(?)
the first time i saw you…you looked like an exclamation point and everyone’s eyes grew when you entered the room…the next time i saw you…you looked like a hyphen pointed toward me with purposeful intent…and no matter how hard i tried to be an ampersand…i still looked like an apostrophe…the next few times i saw you…you looked like a question mark…and i felt redundant in parentheses…the last time i saw you…there were quotation marks between your eyes…but you looked like a period.

Now I know

what I really want is a comma.

(Previously published in Folio, Washington, DC, Summer 1994.)

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Interview with Melanie Votaw

When and how did writing become part of your life?

In second grade. I think I wrote poems in first grade, but in second grade we were given a book report assignment, and I just loved doing this book report. I got a C on it, which really upset me, and I was determined to do better. So I guess the C was good because it motivated me! Then in fifth grade, I won a writing award from the Humane Society. Ever since then, I’ve been into writing. I’ve had a lot of detours away from writing but have come full circle back to it.

My father passed away in 2005, and when I was going through his things, I found some papers that I’d written in high school saying I wanted to be a journalist. I guess I knew what I wanted to do back then and somehow lost sight of it for a while.

From looking at your website, I’ve noticed that you’ve written many books, on a wide variety of subjects, from hummingbirds to passionate sex. And you’re a prolific poet. How do you decide what to write about?

Poetry was my reintroduction to writing—there was a long period when I was not writing, and then I felt a need to, so I started to write poetry for myself. Then I thought, hmm, this is pretty good, so I started sending my poetry out, and I got a good response.

Most of my books were brought to me by the publisher—they decided on the subjects, but they usually chose me to write the books for specific reasons. Because I’ve been a dancer, they asked me to write the book on belly dancing. I’ve written erotica, so they asked me to write the ones about sex. And I’m a bird watcher and photographer, so that’s why they chose me for the hummingbird book.

When I’m deciding for myself what I want to write, I just go where my interests are. I would love to write more about nature and wildlife.

Most of my work is heavy editing, copywriting and ghostwriting, but I get enough work that I can be picky and choose what I want to do. I won’t write about anything if it absolutely doesn’t interest me. And I won’t write about anything that I have strong reservations about. I’m adamant about certain industries. I won’t write about any industries that involve gold or diamonds (which, oddly, I get asked to do a lot).

Do you have a preference between writing non-fiction, fiction, or poetry?

No. I guess I’m pretty focused on non-fiction these days but I’ve begun to feel a longing toward writing a play or screenplay. The genres are all so different that I don’t know that I have a preference. I find fiction to be the hardest—I don’t have the most experience there, so I’m less confident when it comes to fiction. I would love to write a romance novel one day. And I have ideas for children’s books that I’d love to try but I just don’t have enough time in the day. The more creative the writing is, the more I like it, but non-fiction can be very creative as well. The more of myself that I can put into my writing, the more I enjoy it.

I also noticed on your website that you wear many hats: author, speaker, editor, journalist, and that you’re a hypnotherapist as well. Do you prefer one of these disciplines over the others? Do they work in conjunction with one another?

To some degree they do. I consider myself primarily a writer, at least these days. I love speaking, and I love teaching, but I don’t get to do it much. I would love to change that. And I would love to put some materials together to become a corporate trainer. It’s nice to balance the writing with that type of work because writing is so solitary, and I’m actually a social person. I’m both a homebody and social so it’s good to have a balance between communicating with people on the page and in person.

I have a newsletter that I put out quarterly called Rapturous Living, focusing on psychospiritual issues. I have a small list of subscribers that the newsletter goes out to, and that’s where the writing and counseling come together. I do think they’ll come together more in the future, as I’d like to write books on the same subjects. But right now, my focus is on living as a writer which I’ve only been doing full-time for two years.

How did you first hear about NYWC?

From somebody on the American Society of Journalists and Authors online forum. I posted a question asking if anyone knew about organizations through which I could lead a writing workshop in a prison. Someone answered that they didn’t know about prisons but suggested I look up NYWC.

Up until then, I had been doing volunteer work with an organization called Free Arts for Abused Children. Through them, I did art projects with children. I loved it, but visual arts are just not my area. I found most of the time the kids were better than I was, which was a little embarrassing! So, I thought I needed to do workshops with people who’d like to write, since that’s what I do best. It just seemed like the natural progression. That’s how I came to find NYWC.

What workshop do you lead through NYWC?

I previously ran a workshop at Barrier-Free Living, but my current workshop just started. It’s at BEGIN (an adult basic education and ESL center in midtown Manhattan.) I’m not sure what’s going to happen at BEGIN because they have a rotating program with new people coming every two weeks, and I have not managed to get a core group yet.

Can you tell us a little bit about your experience leading the workshop thus far, triumphs, challenges, etc?

A lot of the people in my workshop are ESL students and are writing in their second language. It’s kind of cool to watch some of them get better, but it’s so hard for them to write in English. They feel very vulnerable, which I totally understand. There’s one Chinese man who comes every time who is working really hard to write in English, and I admire him so much. He was a scholar and businessman in China and is now basically starting over in English. If I put myself in his shoes, trying to write in Chinese somewhere in China, I think it would be extremely difficult. I really respect him.

My biggest challenge so far is getting people to see writing as something of value. I explain that they can write about anything—including if they want to rant about George Bush or their spouse, emphasizing we will treat it all as fiction, and the writing can be anything they want or they need in order to blow off steam. They don’t have an experience of that kind of writing, and that’s really a sad commentary on our school system—that writing never became a real personal endeavor that they felt encouraged to do. They probably only felt criticized rather than encouraged for expressing themselves in a unique way, no matter how they constructed a sentence. That’s why the work that NYWC does is so important—exposing people to writing and showing just how fulfilling and empowering it can be. I find it very sad that people grow up in our school system thinking that writing is all about work. I try to convince them that it can be something else, but they think creativity is only for the few. Then they sit there and tell these wonderful stories verbally. They really do need to express themselves, so I tell them to write the stories down. Then, they’ll have the experience of having written a great story that they can keep. That seems to get them thinking about it.

Is there a writing exercise you’ve done with your workshop that’s been particularly successful?

I find it very individual. I find that people who haven’t been writing a lot need to write about themselves, even though we treat all the work as fiction. So, in the beginning, I try to do things that would be not too complicated for them. What I’m trying to do now is to open them up, so we write about childhood, songs they love. I’m trying to get more personal, even though I emphasize that we’ll treat everything as fiction, because if they get an emotional experience out of writing, maybe they’ll see the value in it and want to do it more.

One day, I had the workshop write about things that bring them joy, and everyone wrote about the same thing—children—which was sort of neat because we all felt this communion with each other that we all felt joy from the same thing.

Who are some of your favorite writers, or favorite books?

My favorite non-fiction writer is Barry Lopez. He writes mostly about nature, and a lot of his writing is sort of a mix of non-fiction and fiction. Some of his pieces are very magical.

My favorite author of fiction is Dostoevsky. I don’t read a whole lot of fiction, though. I just don’t have time for it, but I am devoted to the Harry Potter series! I buy the books right when they come out.

In terms of contemporary poets, I really like Galway Kinnell. His poetry is very moving, and he’s a professor at NYU. I took a workshop with him, and he was just lovely. It was like the NYWC workshops—no criticism. It opened me up a lot, and he was very tender with me. I will never forget that. I also like David Whyte and Mary Oliver.

In terms of Classical poets, I especially like Rilke, e.e. cummings, and T.S Eliot.

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A sampling of Melanie’s poetry and links to information on her books can be found on her website, www.ruletheword.com