I am Scott Woods.

Writing is my art.

Writer |

Scott Woods Writes

---

---

"I’ve dabbled in just about every art form there is in an attempt to express ideas and stories, but I didn’t settle into writing until I left high school and most of the safety nets of my youth fell away. I had a burning desire to create and very few tools to realize the ideas. I learned that writing allowed me to bring in all of the things I knew and cared about and wanted to say in one fell swoop. So I focused on learning how to convey anything with words."

"I love proving people wrong about the power of poetry. I love making people laugh where they thought they would be bored, or agitated where they might otherwise be cool and dismissive. I love watching an art form that people were taught their whole lives to ridicule or ignore shake them to tears or debate or to build something of their own."

"Columbus exists in an artistic sweet spot: it has a lot of people who want art, and enough resources for artists to create their own opportunities to engage those people. If you’re able to work Facebook, you can make your art explode here without a lot of hustles and distractions that other cities sometimes suffer from. Columbus is a direct-to-audience sum game scenario."

"Be vigilant about the art that you like and support it. It doesn't take much to make a difference in a local artist's growth in Columbus, so a little goes a long way: take pics, share their event information and show up when you can."

"Along the way, I learned that there isn’t anything I can’t accomplish if I have the time and inclination. Writing is a self-reflective art, and because it’s made me acutely aware of my weaknesses as a person, it’s allowed me to chip away at those weaknesses and become not only a better artist that audiences can relate to, but a better person."

"Regarding process, I mostly fit in whatever writing I can outside of a full-time job and a lot of art event organizing, which is to say, I've learned to write very fast and very quietly in lots of very odd places on the backs of many odd things."

"Writing down words has taken me all over the country, has introduced me to thousands of people I would have never met otherwise. If I can write about it, I can make something in the physical world that seemed impossible a reality. So I guess my second job title is “wizard.”"

"I recharge by going out and living my life as unapologetically as possible. You can only make up so much. At some point you have to step away from the computer and actually smell or touch something you’re going to incorporate into your art."

"It's extremely important for artists to find creative communities to shore up their engagement with craft, values and new ideas, so I stay extremely active in the Columbus poetry scene. I run a regular weekly open mic and put on special shows that frequently intersect with other disciplines."

"Columbus has an enormous and diverse arts community that’s constantly trying to prove itself inside of a city that’s also constantly trying to prove itself as an urban center, and that built-in struggle between acknowledgement and independence defines the Columbus artistic experience in a lot of ways. Columbus makes you earn it a little, and many of the artists here rise to that challenge. That makes me work harder as an artist and an organizer on all our behalves."