Today we’d like to introduce you to Scott Burton.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’ve always been drawn to art and creative expression. Not just as a way to communicate, but as a way to shift perspective, to make sense of what feels unspoken, and sometimes even to reshape the course of a life. Writing, film, and more recently, painting have all been outlets for that instinct. Whether through words, visuals, or brushstrokes, I’ve always been pulled toward what feels honest and emotionally true.
I’ve lived with kidney disease my entire life. I went on dialysis at 12, and much of how I understand the world has been shaped by what it means to live with uncertainty. That kind of reality can narrow your experience, but it can also deepen how you see things. Creativity became a lifeline. Writing especially felt like something that simply flowed out of me. I didn’t plan it or try to shape it at first. I wrote in journals, on scraps of paper, in the notes on my phone, wherever I could find space. It was how I coped, how I processed what I couldn’t say out loud.
Over time, that writing became more than a release. It became a kind of therapy. A place to explore grief, fear, survival, and hope without needing to clean it up or explain it. The process was deeply personal, and it stayed that way for a long time. Eventually, though, I started shaping the work and sharing it. The heart of it hasn’t changed.
Alongside writing, I’ve worked in film and video for years. I’ve always been drawn to the way visuals can carry emotion that words sometimes cannot. I continue to take on video projects when I can, especially when there’s something meaningful behind the story. In recent years, I also began painting. It started quietly, as a personal extension of what I was feeling, and has become another way for me to explore mood, memory, and emotion through color and texture.
In 2022, after almost 20 years on dialysis, I received a kidney transplant. That moment gave me more than time. It gave me perspective. I began revisiting years of writing and slowly began shaping it into something larger. Whether through writing, painting, or film, everything I create comes from the same place. It is grounded in emotional honesty and the belief that expression can heal, connect, and remind us we’re not alone.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It hasn’t been smooth. Most of my life has been a balance between survival and purpose. I’ve always felt a deep pull to create something meaningful, but I’ve had to do it within the unpredictability of living with chronic illness.
Dialysis at 12 changed everything. It shifted the way I thought about time and shaped how I approached the future. While most people were thinking in semesters or five-year plans, I was learning to take things day by day. My life didn’t move in straight lines. It moved around treatment schedules and moments of physical and emotional uncertainty. But creativity stayed with me. It gave shape to what felt overwhelming, and it became a place I could return to when everything else felt fragile.
At 17, I received my first kidney transplant. I started college and began building a future that felt like it had more room to breathe. But just shy of the four-year mark, that transplant failed. I had to leave school, move back home, and return to dialysis. It felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. I had allowed myself to believe in forward momentum, and suddenly I was back at the beginning. Only this time, I knew exactly how heavy the road would be.
Eventually, I returned to school. I completed my undergraduate degree and went on to finish my MBA, all while managing dialysis. It wasn’t easy. Every class, every assignment, every semester had to be navigated around a reality most people never see. But I kept going, mind over matter. Because I knew education, like creativity, was part of how I kept building something for myself despite the interruptions.
That kind of instability takes a toll. Not just on plans or projects, but on your personal life. On your ability to trust in relationships. To make long-term commitments. To believe that people will stay or that you’re not somehow too much to carry. The fear of being a burden, of being left behind, or of disappointing someone because your body changes the plans. These are wounds that don’t always show. And those moments changed me. They made me more guarded at times, but also more tender. More aware of the weight we all carry silently.
In May of 2022, after almost 20 years of waiting, I received a second kidney transplant but it didn’t come without emotional complexity. By the time it happened, I had begun to accept what the end might look like. I had started making peace with the idea that the call might never come. So when it finally did, I not only had to physically recover. I had to emotionally readjust to a future I wasn’t sure I believed in anymore. That kind of shift is not instant. It is ongoing.
Looking back, I can see how those experiences shaped the way I move through the world. And if I’m honest, there were times I held myself back. Times I made things smaller than they could have been. Not because I lacked drive, but because looking too far ahead started to feel dangerous. I think I stopped trusting the future. I started building safety into everything, even my dreams. It is something I’ve had to work through. Slowly, I’ve been learning to give myself permission to hope again, even if the ground still feels uncertain.
The one constant through all of it has been my creative work. I’ve let it anchor me, even when everything else was shifting. There were projects I had to pause and paths I had to reimagine, but I never stopped creating. I never stopped writing. The struggle didn’t silence me. It reshaped my voice. It gave it depth. It gave it purpose.
The road has been hard. But it taught me to be adaptable, to stay aligned with what matters, and to keep creating from a place of truth. It reminded me that even when everything else is uncertain, the work is still worth doing.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Some of my earliest work was written while I was hooked up to a dialysis machine. No structure. No plan. Just quiet desperation turning into language. Over time, that instinct—to turn emotion into something tangible—evolved into a creative life centered around writing, video, and painting. These have been the ways I’ve carried what felt too heavy to hold alone.
My work lives in the emotional space between survival and reflection. It is how I’ve stayed present through years of uncertainty and how I’ve made meaning out of what I’ve lived through.
I worked in film and video for years and continue to take on select projects when I can, particularly ones rooted in human emotion and honest storytelling. Whether it is short-form documentary or story-driven branded content, I approach the work with the same intention: to connect. To express what cannot always be said directly. I also work with clients and collaborate on creative strategy, brand development, and messaging, especially when the project is personal, mission-driven, or emotionally resonant.
Writing, though, has always been at the center of my creative life. In the beginning, it was purely private. Journals. Fragmented notes. Lines typed in the middle of the night. It helped me survive. I kept writing even when I didn’t know where it was going, because it was the one thing I could control when everything else felt unstable.
Forever Is Tomorrow was the first book I released. It came before my transplant, during a time when I was still living entirely in survival mode. The work is raw and often dark. Many of the pieces were written at my lowest points, when I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be here. The book does not try to soften anything. It reflects the emotional and physical weight of living inside a failing body and the quiet, persistent fight to stay connected to meaning. In 2023, after receiving my transplant, I released a second edition that included new work written from the other side of the waiting. There is healing in those pages, but also uncertainty. A follow-up is planned for 2026, focused on life after transplant, what it means to live when you have already started preparing to say goodbye. How receiving transplant doesn’t mean the battle is over, just different.
After revisiting that collection, I began combing through my archives. Decades of writing across notebooks, folders, hard drives, and forgotten files. Some of it was untouched for years. Some of it was still too close to look at. But as I moved through it, I started noticing emotional throughlines. Patterns that connected moments I once thought were separate. That process became the Chaos series.
Chaos is a ten-volume collection that explores the full spectrum of human experience: grief, memory, identity, doubt, resilience, and the quiet work of becoming. Volume 1, Chaos: A Journal of Being Human, is out now, with the remaining volumes releasing through the end of October. Each book stands on its own, but together they form a larger arc. One that does not chase neat endings, but instead sits with the parts of life that are still unfolding. Chaos is not a brand or a product. It is the emotional record of a life lived in fragments and the slow, deliberate effort to make meaning from those pieces.
Much of the series was shaped from the archives, but also includes many pieces written for the series, mixed in. The volumes only represent a portion of what is there. I am still working through decades of writing—unfinished pieces, fragments that once felt too raw to share, or lines that have waited years to find their place. That excavation continues. Some pages resurface with clarity. Others still ask to be left alone. I listen and follow where the work leads.
In addition to my creative work, I also advocate for kidney disease awareness. After spending my whole life navigating the healthcare system as a patient, I care deeply about how stories are told, how people are seen, and how communities like mine are represented. I have consulted on campaigns, content, and strategy to help bring more authenticity to that space. My work in advocacy is personal, but it is also part of the larger creative thread, one rooted in empathy, purpose, and truth.
What sets me apart is not a job title or a niche. It is lived experience. I have spent most of my life navigating the in-between. Between illness and healing. Between silence and expression. Between fear and the fragile hope of what comes next. That tension informs everything I create. I do not chase perfection. I focus on presence. I want the work to feel real, and for someone else to see themselves in it.
What I am most proud of is not a release or a finished manuscript. It is that I kept going. That I kept writing even when I wasn’t sure I would live long enough to finish. That I created through pain, uncertainty, and silence, not for recognition, but because I didn’t know how else to survive. The fact that any of it now lives in the hands of others, that someone can read a page and feel even a flicker of recognition or relief, is something I do not take lightly. I have turned the hardest parts of my life into something people can hold. And in doing that, I have found something I wasn’t sure I would ever have—a sense of purpose that holds steady, even when everything else does not.
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
Most people who know my work assume I’m comfortable being vulnerable because so much of what I create is emotionally open. But what surprises people is how private I really am in my day-to-day life. I write through things I often still struggle to say out loud. The page has always felt safer than the room.
Another thing people don’t always realize is how long I’ve been doing this quietly. Some of the work being released now was written years ago, at a time when I didn’t believe anyone would ever see it. I never set out to build a body of work or a presence. I was just trying to survive. Everything that exists now came from that place—raw, unplanned, and deeply personal.
And maybe the most surprising thing is that, even now, I don’t always find it easy to call myself a writer. Not because I doubt the work, but because the act of writing has always felt more like a coping mechanism than a title. It still does. What started as a private ritual has slowly grown into something public, but at heart, it is still about reaching for clarity in the middle of uncertainty. That hasn’t changed.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ScottBurtonAuthor.com
- Instagram: https://Instagram.com/ks.bleeds.ink
- Facebook: https://Facebook.com/ksbleedsink
- LinkedIn: https://LinkedIn.com/in/scottburton-
