Chloe Mortier is a current graduate student at Rowan, working towards getting her master’s in Writing Arts. Mortier is a media editor for Glassworks, Rowan’s graduate-level literary magazine. She is also an intern and admin for Singularity Press, a student-run publishing service.
Mortier enjoys exploring and challenging themselves by writing different genres. Currently, she is working on a novel for her Master’s program, titled Icarus’s Son, a contemporary retelling of the Greek myth.
This will not be the first novel Mortier has written. While she has written many short stories, poems, and creative nonfiction works, Mortier has also co-wrote three novels with one of her friends. Mortier’s work has been published in both Glassworks and Avant, Rowan’s undergraduate literary magazine.
While writing has been a lifelong passion of Mortier’s, their initial plans when coming to college did not focus solely on creative writing and publishing.
“I first got into writing back in elementary school. That’s when I realized I wanted to be a writer. But it didn’t take into effect until high school, where I think I focused more on wanting to be an author,” Mortier said. “And then coming to Rowan, I had no idea that they had a Writing Arts major, I was just going to go into English and see what was going to happen. I had absolutely no plans.”
Uncertain of what Rowan had to offer, Mortier attended the Club Fair her freshman year in hopes of getting involved. That is where they found the Writing Arts club and started making connections with Writing Arts majors. Realizing this was exactly what she wanted to do, Mortier switched her major and added a minor in Creative Writing with a concentration in Publishing. In the same year, she discovered Avant and became their Layout Editor.
“It was just a really great opportunity to learn about editing in a magazine format,” Mortier said. Morter encourages new writers to be unafraid of revising their work.
“I struggled with revision. Until I took creative writing, where the professor pushed us to revise. We wrote three different projects throughout the year. And by the end of it, she had us choose heavy revision plans, not just light edits. Back then I was attached to my work and my words, and I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to ruin what I have’ because I thought it was good. I was like, ‘You don’t get it. She’s not seeing my vision, but after doing those revisions, my work got better,” Mortier said.
While this is something that has taken Mortier some time to fully accept, she accepts that it’s part of growing as a writer.
“You can never stop perfecting your work. It’s never going to be this perfect thing, which is a bummer when you think about it, but it also allows you to grow,” said Mortier.
For comments/questions about this story DM us on Instagram @thewhitatrowan or email the.whit.arts@gmail.com
