Author Tay Reem On The Main Empowering Messages She Wants Readers To Take From Her Writing

Writing is rewriting. The first draft is just a start. Rewriting isn’t really starting over, it’s building a better story out of the terrible one. If it’s not perfect the first time, don’t take it to heart. Write it again and again. It’s easy to get too close to your work so take a break doing something completely different, and then come back to it. You’ll find that you’ve either figured out exactly how to fix the horrible thing you’ve written or that it actually wasn’t as bad as you originally thought.

As part of my interview series on the five things you need to know to become a great author, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tay Reem.

Reem is a former Industrial and Organizational Psychologist turned author. Her debut poetry novel, Tales of Woe, is loosely based on a true story about her parents’ marriage and what it was like growing up in an abusive home. She’s not only an author but a savvy business woman as well, taking complete control of her work by starting her own publishing company.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you share a story about what brought you to this particular career path?

Sure! When I was in the 7th grade, my English teacher asked the class to make up a story using one of the provided pictures as a prompt. I remember feeling this surge of energy coursing through me as I wrote my first thrilling short story. Before then, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. After that day, I knew I needed to be an author.

Can you share the most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your career?

As I was trying to figure out how to publish my book, I first settled on Amazon as my main platform. One thing bothered me about it though — in the product details, it would say “self-published” and I wanted something different. I remember thinking “hmm, well I guess I’ll just start a…