Literature was not, in fact, my first love. It was music. I have been singing for as long as I can remember. In second grade, I proudly proclaimed to my class that my future career would be “the winner of American Idol!” Although I loved singing, I didn’t start writing until I was fifteen. I met a friend, another fifteen-year-old and a self-taught pianist. He produced melodies from his mind and asked me to write the words and sing. The first few songs were juvenile, but what would you expect from a couple of drama kids who loved Marina and the Diamonds and Melanie Martinez? I soon realized that my love for music was inextricably tied to my need to feel heard, to use my voice.
In high school, I began to seriously write and explore forms other than lyrics in my creative writing class. I remember how our teacher pounded this mantra into us: Be original. He disliked tired phrases more than illogical metaphors, which taught me to push the limits of my writing. I remember once describing the roof of a building, covered in fall leaves, as a crusted lasagna with parmesan cheese sprinkles. The class period was just before lunch, so I suppose that was the influence. Alongside creative writing, I fell in love with AP Psychology, and the scientific structures of the human mind.
After graduating, I moved from my small town in California’s Wine Country to Southern California for college. Alongside developmental childhood and abnormal psychology courses, I took poetry classes, expanding on what I had learned and observed through songwriting. For this reason, poetry has always felt safe to me. The phonetics, the rhyming—I had that down. But poetry, being ancient, experimental, and crossing so many boundaries, spoke to me, even if half the time I couldn’t fully understand why.
Eventually, I transitioned into fiction. This felt not only difficult, but humiliating, painful, and like downright psychological torture. We’ve all been there, sitting for hours pouring your guts out on a page, then realizing it’s too wordy, difficult to follow, and does not convey its themes well. I was lucky. I had fantastic professors who read my work, provided detailed notes, and gave me exercises to dissect the essence of my writing, pull it apart, and stitch it back up. My experience is far from that of a typical young writer—my first serious attempt at writing a short story won a local fiction competition, a feat which blossomed into a commitment to keep pursuing this passion.
Throughout these forms of writing, my central love for voice persisted. I want to be heard, as does everyone else, and art gives us that opportunity to speak to the heart. Music can captivate you with a catchy tune then make you cry during the bridge. Poetry can touch you in strange ways and lead you down its premeditated path. Literature masks reality within a story, often revealing ugly truths, stirring something from within.
Understanding the psychology of humans—our society, power structures, and culture—further fuels my writing. Capturing these nuances in diverse stories from diverse individuals gives us the power to produce empathy and, hopefully, justice for those our systems have failed.
It is an incredible opportunity to learn through Sundress Publications: to elevate bright, diverse voices, and to share their stories with the public. I hope the small role I play can help expose hidden truths, make us see what we try to ignore, and inspire human connection.
Claire Melanie Svec holds a BA in Psychology with a Minor in Creative Writing from the University of California, Irvine. She is a writer, poet, and singer-songwriter whose work focuses on mental health, morality, and feminism. She has won the first-place prize in fiction for The Ear Literary Magazine‘s Linda Purdy Memorial Prize. In addition to her editorial internship with Sundress Publications, she is currently serving as a fiction reader for West Trade Review.
