We were lucky to catch up with Skylar Daye recently and have shared our conversation below.

Skylar, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

I think it’s difficult to know anything certain about yourself until you’ve melted into the world. Not impossible, just arduous. Asking an 18 year old to decide what they want to do with the total of their life, feels a lot like asking a sapling to be a tree when it’s only a sapling. Some might have always known where the thing was, and others might have to look to find it. In opposition to the immediate demand of college, but alongside the encouragement of schooling, I believe we should encourage young people to do whatever living they can as a part of this search.

I’m the second oldest of six kids, and I was the first to go off to college. I never was great at school— meaning, I didn’t pay much mind to it. It was something I did but never really something I was a part of. A part of— meaning, belonged to. I was behind in most high school classes aside from the English classes I was in. That’s where my belonging was, with the books. I love to learn, oh I love to learn! I just didn’t know it then.

When I continued my schooling, I only studied at my University for two years. 16 months, really. My new experience with life started to shape my relationship to the world, and I was learning myself for the first time. I sat in the office of one of my Greek language professors, rambling and anxiously picking at a loose thread. After listening to my woes, with a sympathetic and furrowed brow, she gently urged me to leave school in pursuit of the learning I belonged to. She offered a permission of sorts, “I don’t think what you’re doing here is right for you.” A great sum of money lost later, I agreed with her.

6 years later, at the age of 25, when I think about the learning of my craft I’m excited and ambitious. Passionate and involved. I know now that with everything I dream of, the bulk of what I dream is to write. I wake up and I think about how I ought to be writing, I go to work and think about the next time I’ll be able to write, and when I write I think of nothing but. I don’t remember a time I felt any other way, but I learned this by living. By trial and error, by community and city, and by taking inventory over the thing in my life that never escaped me. When I changed, when life changed, it was the thing that never did.

Of the six of us, only one of my siblings is on track to graduating from college conventionally, timely. She is the second youngest, 20 years old, the first born of our set of twins. Emma is working toward her BA in Fine Arts with a concentration in Sculpture, and a Museum and Heritage Studies minor. I feel lucky that we grew up in a home with a father who is also an artist. Encouragement fell from him like rain and we were always able to find peace in the pursuit of the arts. In the pursuit of anything, really. This encouragement ultimately led me in my decision in leaving school when I did, and led Emma into continuing.

Letting the sapling be the sapling, knowing the soil and the wind. With the space for growth, the time will come when the sapling is the tree. Suddenly and surely.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m Sky Daye, a writer and artist living in Nashville, TN. I am a poet and creative non-fiction writer, and the writer and founder of DAYE Magazine.

A lot changed for me when I started actually saying I was a writer. Now when people ask me what I do, that’s how I respond. It is what I do, it is what I am.

When I first founded DAYE, it took form as a poetry & arts magazine. I launched knowing that it might shape shift. I made a lot of space for that. My first releases were from my series titled SISTERS- each named after and inspired by my three sisters. Each cover shot by my younger brother, I aimed to make DAYE’s origin a family affair. After these releases, DAYE stepped into somewhat of a whisper as it had started to take on some other forms. I’m really thrilled about the projects I’m taking on. We have loved watching DAYE evolve.

As this shift has happened, I’ve started writing more earnestly as Sky. I am always writing and often sharing with the internet. A lot of pieces can be found on my Instagram page. I have a really beautiful little community there. I’m so grateful to those who read and share my work.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I think we all feel a lot of the same things, and I think in a lot of ways we’re searching for others to validate those feelings. If just one other person has thought the same weird thought, or felt the same dark thing, or felt the same small joy, it’s human. When I’m writing, I’m writing what it is that I need to read. It’s the thing that lifts something inside of you, causes you to draw out a pen and underline, dog-ear the page. So when I’ve written something that another person resonates with, it’s an act of bridging a gap, “Sit with me here, I feel this too.” That’s the rewarding thing, the human thing.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I wish I had known that being a good writer means ridding yourself of image—abandoning what I thought it might look like to be a writer. I think my early understanding of being a writer was limited to the fiction novel. Believing I needed to be prepared to build worlds, to sit somewhere in Maine working on a 1,138 page manuscript. It was only in my early adult life that I realized I admired the craft of world building, and would love to one day find myself there, but that I already had a world. One that was inspiring the way in which I wrote. Red chipped nails, and my summer legs sticking to the subway, and my young parents, and my siblings who are always there.

And I wish I had learned earlier, that I would still be a writer even if I had a day job with a 30 minute commute, and an old computer, and a shelf of books I still need to read.

Some resources that helped me in these discoveries include Several short sentences about writing by Verily Klinkenborg & On Writing by Stephen King. Klinkenborg’s book on tearing down the limiting beliefs of what writing should look and sound like, freed me into the walk of discovering my own writing voice. King’s On Writing, broke down the mystical act of writing and reminded me that it’s actually quite human. Humbling, teaching, growing, and so very human.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.blurb.com/b/10701909-daye-magazine-issue-01
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sky.daye/