Story & Lesson Highlights with Cierra Martinez of Los Angeles

We recently had the chance to connect with Cierra Martinez and have shared our conversation below.

Cierra, so good to connect and we’re excited to share your story and insights with our audience. There’s a ton to learn from your story, but let’s start with a warm up before we get into the heart of the interview. What makes you lose track of time—and find yourself again?
Writing makes me lose track of time. Every writer has their own process and mine occurs only at night. Within the deep hours of the night, I lose track of time writing my story. It is easy to get lost within a story and lose myself in my characters but that is also where I find myself again. Through the writing process, I learn more and more about myself each time I dive into it and sometimes it surprises me what lessons I learn through my characters.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I write Young Adult Contemporary coming-of-age stories for teens. While others write fantasy books I really like to write about what is real. I think there is value in finding yourself in a character or a book that I hope others can relate to when reading my work. My work deals with the struggles that teens face when going through adolescence. I have four books all on these topics and am currently working on my fifth one. My goal is to keep writing about these topics in hopes that they will reach more people and touch their lives.

Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
I was always the weird girl who had a too active imagination. At an early age I loved reading books and found myself in characters that resembled me. I constantly loved to read and eventually I wanted to see if I could make up stories like the ones I read about. This lead to my writing and love of storytelling. I knew this was my path at an early age but as I grew older the world tried to tell me who to be. There were a lot of people telling me to choose a different career path since there was no way I could make one out of writing books. There were a lot of doubts and insecurities there but I learned to stay true to who I am and always was before the world told me who I should be.

What did suffering teach you that success never could?
The issues that I write about in my books come from a real place of suffering that I had been through though it is largely fictionalized. When going through suffering, it is impossible to see a way out but luckily writing has always been there. What suffering has taught me that success never could is that you don’t need that validation from everyone to know what you went through was real. With success, it is easy to compare and get caught up in the height of it all. Through writing, I worked through my suffering and hoped it could help my readers know they are not alone in their situation. Though it is easy to want immense success for my books, what I truly love most is that my writing has helped me through many tough times and will hopefully help others. I always told myself that if at least one person read my books and related to them then it would be worth it.

Alright, so if you are open to it, let’s explore some philosophical questions that touch on your values and worldview. What are the biggest lies your industry tells itself?
The biggest lies my industry tells itself is that you have to write everyday. In the writing industry, we tend to focus on hitting a specific word count and writing even when we feel burned out. There are many lies the writing industry tells itself especially with the presence of social media. Social media tells writers that it’s all about how many followers you have and how many books you have written. It’s all about how many books you read in a week and what project you are currently working on. This can be harmful especially to aspiring authors who believe in this notion that one has to write constantly or have a big social media presence in order to be an author. Being an author is not about these things but only about having a deep passion for the craft.

Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. Could you give everything your best, even if no one ever praised you for it?
Definitely. I think that is how it always should be when working on a project. The minute you realize that people might praise something you do is the minute you are doing it for the wrong reasons. You have to believe that nobody will ever see your work and most importantly not do it for them but for yourself. Writing is a deeply personal process that I never share with anyone until the book is out. When writing, I rarely think about my readers but I think that is what makes it work. I write for myself first and once it is done then I believe it can go out into the world. Many people might think authors get praise all the time for their work but the truth of it is that it can be a lonely process. Even when a book does come out, it is rare to see that praise or have many people read it. That being said, I believe that one should still try their best if not for others than definitely for themself.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: cierramauthor