Writing 101 A Day In The Life: Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
Writing 101 A Day In The Life: Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
Writing 101 A Day In The Life: Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
I’m so honored to have Joanne Leedom-Ackerman return for this Writing 101 Q&A for this substack discussing topics not in a normal Q&A. Joanne’s novels and short stories: The Far Side of the Desert, Burning Distance, The Dark Path to the River, No Marble Angels. Joanne is also apart of PEN International which helps persecuted writers from around the globe!
Q: What is your routine when you write daily?”
A: Not every day allows the same routine, but my ideal day has me writing from 9 or 9:30 till around 3 or 3:30. Frequently I write in restaurants because I can get fed, can concentrate, never get drowsy and someone fills my coffee cup. Ideally the restaurant serves breakfast and lunch, and my staying doesn’t take a table they need. And I know where the plugs are for my computer. I also occasionally overhear interesting conversations that keep me connected to the dramas of people…and in Washington DC where I live, the dramas of the political scene.
If I’m in the country, I write in a chair with a lap desk looking out on a river with my dog often in the chair facing me just waiting for me to take a break.
Q: This next question was inspired by Haruki Murakami’s memoir Novelist As A Vocation where he sets a timer and that when the timer goes off he stops writing no matter how much he wants to write. Do you have a similar technique to Murakami where you set a time limit on how long you write each day?
A: Life usually sets the time limit—a meeting or other obligation determines I need to stop, or I’ve come to the end of a scene. I like to end the day on my own small cliff hanger, eager to see what happens next.
When I had young children, people used to say: you’re so disciplined to be a writer, and I would answer, no, I’m so disciplined to be a mother because I could just go on writing, but instead I stopped and went to pick up my children from school, which I also loved to do. Life usually sets a timer for me.
Q: Some authors are plotters, and other authors are pansters meaning they write as they go along and discover the story as they write. Do you consider yourself a plotter or a punster?
A: I’m somewhere between, but most accurately I’d say I’m a pantser. I know certain points in the future of the book and a rough outline, but in the writing of the novel, the story unfolds itself, often with the help of the characters who begin talking to me and telling me what’s up ahead.
It took me several books to quit worrying if I didn’t know everything and to trust that I’d know when I needed to know. I find that’s rather like life which happens with and without our outline. We think we know what is ahead for us in future days; we have calendars, dates set, but then life happens, often incorporating what we planned but also surprising us.
Q: Who are your favorite authors?
A: It is always difficult to choose since there are so many authors I admire for all sorts of reasons, some for depth of characters, others for clever stories, others for the magic of their language. I most prefer those who include a larger framework of society in their novels. All-time favorite book is War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. The book is a masterpiece of characters, story, and history. Graham Greene weaves this fabric too, Philip Caputo, Nadine Gordimer, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison. Of contemporary authors I must give an admiring shout out for my son Elliot Ackerman.
Q: What is most difficult for you in the writing/editing process
A: Dialogue comes easily for me, perhaps because I began my career as a journalist, taking down what people said. I must resist just running the novel all in dialogue. I need to go back and add texture, setting and backstory, etc. I also find I can slip tenses if I’m not careful so that I’ll be writing away in the present tense and then find I’ve slipped into the past tense in another scene. Ultimately, I must determine which is the tense of the story and make certain I’m consistent.
Q: Are there any tropes in fiction that you find too tiresome that you try to avoid while writing?
A: Write what you know is a slippery one. I think the writer needs to give a wide berth to that one and realize how much you may or could know, at least emotionally. even if you haven’t lived the experience or character’s life. I resist the idea that a writer can only write within his/her own limited experience. A man should be able to write (and has done successfully) the voice of a woman even as the central narrator and a woman can write a man. One needs to be clear and respect the bridges crossed when writing from a point of view or experience one hasn’t lived, but don’t be afraid to try. What is important is whether you can do it well. The important impact of writing and reading is to expand experience and empathy.
Q: What’s one piece of writing advice that you give to future authors that you also struggle to follow yourself?
A: Read. Read. Read. I am always reading but never enough. It is difficult to write and read all the books I wish I could.
When a person tells me that he/she wants to be a writer, my question is: what are you waiting for? Write. Write something every day if you can. The only way to be a writer is to write, write, write, get very comfortable getting ideas into words. You don’t watch tennis tournaments to be a tennis player. You must play and then watch the other players too, preferably the great ones, but you have to be on the court. Reading is like watching and learning from others, but to be a writer you must write, but to get better, you also must study and read and most of all enjoy your craft every day!
Q: Last year when we did the Behind The Book discussing The Far Side Of The Desert, you spoke about your travels to Morocco, Gibraltar & Santiago de Compostela Spain! Would you say that travelling is vital for anyone wanting to write a novel like you have done?
A: Travel by itself isn’t necessary. It depends on the book a writer is writing. But allowing your mind to range with ideas and vistas is important. My life has taken me to many places, and I’ve enjoyed using many of these in my fiction, but the center of fiction is the characters so it’s important to know the landscape of your characters’ minds even if they have only ever lived in one place. The writer needs to know the place in detail. So many writers were the master of just one place but probed and revealed it and the characters to us with passion and verisimilitude even if the place itself was fictional. William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County is a whole world.
Q: Out of all the characters written in your books, which characters do you think you are most alike & why?
A: Writers will tell you that some of them are in each character, even if not literally. A writer needs to understand emotionally something about each character to bring them alive on the page. I don’t know if there is one character in my books that I see as me, but I do see parts of me in the decision-making and conflicts of many of them. I began my career as a journalist, so it is easy for me to relate to Samantha Waters in The Far Side of the Desert. I’m an older sister so that also connects me to that character and to the character Jane in Burning Distance. Both Samantha and Jane were older sisters and journalists. Miriam, the mother in Burning Distance, was also a driven journalist and editor. But I also knew the voice and intelligent innocence of Lizzy in Burning Distance.
Q: Where are you travelling for your next book?
A: I’m not traveling specifically for my next book. I just finished a draft of a novel that is set primarily in New York City where I’ve lived and am often in. New York is almost a suburb of Washington, D.C. (or the other way around) if you consider how many Washington residents commute between the two cities. And I’m always up for another book set in London where I’ve also lived. Many interesting settings in the world, and I look forward to where my imagination will live for the next journey
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