Simon B. Thomas is an established poet stationed in New York City. He mainly shares his works on Instagram but can be seen across many other social media platforms as well. As a way to draw in followers, Thomas often adds beautiful drawings to his poems, making his words even more appealing to the human eye. 

“To me, writing is a cartography of the soul,” Thomas stated. “When we look inward, we see a vast world with just as many mountains and valleys as our outer world. Writing enables people to make a map of that world—the peaks of ecstasy, the valleys of despair, the waters of sorrow, the roads of redemption.”

Thomas reflects this “map of the world” in many of his poems on Instagram. His works all range from encouraging and hopeful to deep and sad, but still encouraging because they tell you you’re not alone. They center on topics about loneliness and love; topics that many people can relate to. One of his deeper poems may strike close to home with those dealing with depression: “why am I cursed to cry more than I smile, to feel more tears than laughs, to bear more sadness than any human should endure.”

Getting into the mindset for writing can be challenging for anyone and different authors have different ways of accomplishing that. For Thomas, he writes early in the morning because his “mind, soul, or heart will be overflowing with feeling.” Thomas goes on to say,“It helps to write when I wake up when I’m still connected to the world of dreams and before I check my phone. In this connected world, it can be hard to get into the writing space. It can be a struggle resisting the siren song of social media and Netflix.”

The call of the internet can be our worst enemy. It’s easy to get lost in the world of electronics and spend multiple hours on the internet so writing in the mornings before you lose your connection to the “world of dreams”, as Thomas so eloquently put it, is one of the great ways to find your inner writer. 

Now while social media can be our worst enemy when it comes to writing, it can also be one of the best ways to share your works if that’s something you desire to do. Sharing your work on social media can be a great step to publishing a book. However, publishing a book isn’t for everyone. “I’ve thought about publishing a book. My struggle has been that my writing keeps evolving,” Thomas said. “Every time I feel I’m ready to start a book, my view on life changes. So what I’ve written before no longer feels relevant. That’s something I’m working through. Enough people have asked me to write a book that I’m prioritizing doing so. I plan to finish a book in the next year or so.”

Writing a book is always challenging but if Thomas chooses to write a book, it’ll be another amazing opportunity to share work with the world; especially work that hits close to home. Writing can also be something that grows with you. “I have been writing since I was young. My favorite part of school was creative writing assignments. When I was in middle school, I got an essay published in my local newspaper, The Oregonian, which was an early encouragement.” Thomas reminisced, “I began posting my writing to Instagram in 2016 as a daily discipline. I was in London at the time and processing a lot.”

As quoted earlier, writing is like a catharsis and being able to use writing as a way of expression when you have a lot to process or are simply trying to find yourself is rewarding. Everyone has a different way of expressing themselves and sometimes that expression becomes a passion in life. However, it’s still easy to lose the motivation to write because you think you’re not good enough or you simply feel disconnected from it. Writing can change that. 

“Explore. Explore like you did when you were a kid building sandcastles. Play with words and language,” Thomas advises. “Connect with your heart. Study the masters and the discipline. Read the great poets such as Neruda, Whitman, Dickinson, and Rumi. Read about poetic structure and form. Study the works of great painters. And then go deep—Deeper than you’ve ever gone before. There you will find your sunken treasure.”