Meet Seth Fischer | Writer & Editor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Seth Fischer and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Seth, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
Before I started as an editor and writer, I worked in politics. Like, I was an aide to a Congresswoman, and I worked on campaigns, and I was even going to get a PhD in political science. My friends call those my “dark years.” I wore ties, and I had a Blackberry, and I was, sadly good at that job, at least as soon as I got the hang of it. The only thing was, I was the worst at being a human. And I was the worst because I was completely cutting off the artistic or creative impulse in order to try to win in politics, which might, if I think about it, be the absolute opposite. I feel like art should be collaborative, at least in spirit, even if it’s done by just one person, whereas politics? Politics is all about competition. And even collaborations are done more out of spite for the enemy than out of a desire to create.

Anyway, I took this one class at Syracuse when I was trying to get my PhD in political science. It was a class in creative nonfiction taught by the absolute legendary poet and writer Minnie Bruce Pratt, who sadly passed just recently. She basically re-opened the creative part of me, and I spent every day in that class crying. Just writing and bawling, writing and bawling. Because I’d grown completely convinced that the world was too ugly for a creative person to survive, and while she didn’t tell me that wasn’t true, she led me to ask, “Is what you’re doing now surviving?”

And once I started towards my career now, well, everything kind of shifted for me. I’m not going to say it’s all better now. The world is still a dark place. But I just thrive so much more being someone who thrives in making things out of words. I make it a point to stay out of working in Hollywood, because it starts to feel, if I spend too much time around it, like my political days. But I am happy, if not exactly rich, writing and helping people write their stories in prose, helping people find expression and learning everyday how to find my own.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
As someone who does both–who is both a writer and an editor–it can feel overwhelming to answer this question, because the paths are different for both, and because I feel like I am at different points on both trajectories.

That said, I’ll talk about the challenges I’m overcoming at the moment, and that challenge is overthinking. This is the reason I have published tons of short pieces but don’t yet have a book, this is the reason I am a fast editor but a slow writer. There is an intuition required for artistic work that can be hard to trust, because for the most part, that is trained out of us from an early age. Sometimes, you have to sit down to write with an emotion, not an idea. Sometimes, a plan is your enemy. Sometimes, you have to let things come out from a part of ourselves that we can’t control. This is hard and vulnerable and risky. And, I’ve learned, it is the only way to do it.

Man, reading this now, I’m realizing that I am a terribly hype man. I think, though, that this is what I want the world to know about my story: I am awful at self-promotion, and that is the point, and that is, somehow, the key to whatever success I have. I have somehow counterintuitively figured out how to survive without being profit-driven. My edits, I always say, are about making the work better, not about selling anything. My writing — hell, I write literary work — is not about making money, either.

I remember explaining to my accountant once how the economics of writing works. For most people, unless you are, like, a household name, you don’t make money on your writing. Or at least, you don’t make much. You make money on the teaching and editing and speaking engagements you get from your writing. So, from a capitalist standpoint, it makes no sense. After writing something that is financially worth very little, you can then get paid to help others write something that is also likely financially worthless. The thing is (and this is why authoritarians tend to hate writers), there is an immense worth there. There is an immense emotional or spiritual or personal worth to the writer and to the people she reaches and to the community she builds in creating that writing. It’s just not a financial thing. And the fact that something can have a worth that’s not financial? That is immensely threatening to a whole lot of people.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Oh, man, just one week?

One of my favorite places to bring out of town visitors is The Museum of Jurassic Technology. It is weird, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment. There are Soviet Space dog portraits. Sculptures in the heads of pins. There is also a beautiful aviary where they serve tea. I love that place.

I also recently just got a membership to Descanso Gardens. It depends on the guest, but if your guest is someone who wants to sit serenely in an Adirondack while overlooking a beautiful lake, breathing clean(er) air and learning about plants? Well, it’s perfect.

I also often like to take people to Patrick’s Roadhouse in Santa Monica, near the Malibu border. It’s a tasty funky diner, and then you can park on the street near there and just walk over to the beach. Free beach parking and good food is pretty much impossible to find.

My favorite picnic spot is at the top of Barnsdall Art Park. It has an amazing view of the city and there is incredible people watching.

I also love hiking anywhere in the hills above Pasadena. Waterfalls! We have waterfalls!

And bookstores. If they are into books? Man there are so many incredible indie bookstores in Los Angeles. I’ve never been to an American city with so many of them. Stories, Village Well, Chevalier’s, Libros Schmibros, Skylight, The Last Bookstore, Pop-Hop, I could go on.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Man, this is such an impossible question, because there are so many people, and I could be here for ten years listing things. It is not easy to survive in this city alone, so it’s a good thing this is a city made up of wonderful people.

I’m going to go with the first people who jump into my head. Antonia Crane is a writer and professor and sex work activist whose first book, Spent, was the first book I ever edited professionally. It is a great book and she is a great writer and editor who has been working so hard to make this world better every day of her life. I’d also mention by other guardian angel, Melissa Chadburn, whose recent book A Tiny Upward Shove is absolutely fantastic, and who helped me get into teaching writing. Her work on kids in the foster system is really incredible.

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is also an incredible human, and founder of the group Women Who Submit, which aims to encourage women to submit to literary magazines and presses to try to get to something approaching parity in the representation of women in literary spaces. Without her, I likely never would have moved to LA. She is a great friend and an awesome activist and an ever awesomer poet. She has a new collect Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites.

And Tisha Aguilera-Reichle, too. I’m right now getting my PhD at USC in Creative Writing, and without her, I would never have considered that. It has been wonderful and life-changing. She is also a brilliant writer about rural California and Chicana California. Her new book Breaking Pattern is this really wonderful YA about junior rodeo competitions.

Website: www.seth-fischer.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sethfischer/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/sethfischer

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sethpippfischer

Image Credits
For pro shots, credit: Rachael Warecki, Camera Raw Photography: https://www.instagram.com/camerarawphotography/?hl=en