As many people know, Timothy Gomez has become the new conservatory director this year and has quickly become accustomed to his new role. The CSArtisan talked with Mr. Gomez about his passion for writing, his responsibilities as director, and possible future plans.
Why do you enjoy writing?
For me, I got into writing when I was in high school and I really loved it because I was going through a lot in high school, a lot of stuff that I didn’t understand and writing was like the one thing that allowed me to process because I didn’t go to therapy or anything back then. It wasn’t as common to go to therapy, so writing was my therapy. I wrote a lot of journals and I started getting into poetry. I got really into music lyrics and confessional music. That became a way for me to put words to things that I was feeling at a time when I had a hard time processing what I was going through.”
What advice would you give for other writers?
The times where I’ve been the most productive is when I had deadlines, even if they’re self-imposed. Something that I did when I was at Sarah Lawrence is we did Open Mics every week, so I told myself that every week I was going to read something and it had to be something new.”
How has it been so far being the new creative writing director?
I love it so far. I mean, I’m coming from a very public school background where I started teaching just regular English and history and so I didn’t get to really focus on creativity at all. It was all academic essays, writing arguments, informative essays, and teaching kids how to research, which is stuff I love, but I very rarely go to do creative writing work with my kids. And so getting to focus on that has been amazing. All the kids here are so talented and getting to hear all of your guys’ work and getting to hear the kind of stuff that you guys write about and getting to see what you guys care about in terms of what kind of classes you want to have next spring has been amazing. Then I also love that I still get to teach. The fact that I get to do a lot of outside of school work, like running the events, getting master artists, and checking on classes has been really fun.”
What are you looking forward to most this year?
Sugar Pine. I think I worked on the literary journal at Sarah Lawrence when I was a student there and so I know how much and how much I don’t know how enlightening it can be to get all of these submissions from all of these different students and go through them and decide what goes in and then having this product at the end where a bunch of our students get to say, ‘Hey, I was printed in this really beautiful book.’ It’s such a good feeling and I’m excited for that.”
What future plans do you have for Creative Writing?
I’m hoping to do smaller publications through throughout the year. I want to do a horror- zine next month and in addition to doing the bigger Sugar Pine thing, I want to do a bunch of smaller self-published work. Do some more magazines with different themes and where the kids submit pieces and it’s not as edited.”
Anything else you want to add?
It’s been about a month of school so far already and it’s been so far already and it’s been so fun. I love being on campus here and we had the Open Mic night last week and getting to see all your work was super fun. It’s just getting to spend time with you guys and get to know you guys and understand you as writers and it’s been really fulfilling, so I’m excited.
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