Reading time: About 2 minutes
A desire to connect the words and ideas in her head to the heads of others is the most powerful incentive that Shari Graydon has ever known…
Shari Graydon has written newspaper columns, broadcast commentary and political speeches. Her best-selling, award-winning media literacy books for youth include Made You Look, and In Your Face. She edited and contributed to the collection I Feel Great About My Hands – and Other Unexpected Joys of Aging. As CEO and Catalyst of Informed Opinions, she self-published OMG: What if I Really AM the Best Person?
I was excited to talk to Shari about how she approaches writing.
Q. Roughly how much time do you spend writing every day?
It depends. When [the non-profit organization] Informed Opinions is in busy workshop-delivery season (September through November, and January through May), I’m lucky if I find half an hour to write — although the volume of interaction I have invariably inspires lots of ideas! In the summer months, I’m sometimes able to find up to three hours, but not consistently.
Q. What’s a simple activity or habit that makes you a better writer?
Reading content that aims to enlighten and provoke from reliable, fact-checked sources (including The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian). I’m also a keen consumer of literary fiction that exposes me to other worlds — both interior and exterior — and different ways of framing a sentence or paragraph, or interpreting a life or event.
Q. What interferes with your writing?
Running a non-profit that’s working to ensure that the voices of women and gender diverse people are contributing to public conversations, and delivering the training programs and keynotes that generate the revenue necessary to support our research and advocacy work.
Q. How do you persuade yourself to sit down to write on days when you really, really DON’T feel like doing it?
Because I currently have less time to write than I would like, and many other competing responsibilities, this is not a problem I currently have. But mostly, what drives me is the desire to connect the words and ideas in my head to others — I’ve always found that to be a powerful incentive.
Q. Is there a particular motto or saying that you’ve found helpful for writing?
Nope.
Q. Which stage of the writing process do you enjoy the most: researching, writing or editing/rewriting and why?
I love both the writing and the revisions process… Seeing my ideas take shape and make sense in black and white, and then playing with words to make the paragraphs tighter, the sentences stronger, the lede more engaging…
Q. What’s the best book you’ve read (either fiction or non) in the last five years?
Impossible to pick one! I thought Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead was brilliant; I found Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet beautiful and heartbreaking; and Elizabeth Strout‘s insights into how humans feel and interact in multiple books completely captivate me.
Q. What book are you reading right now?
Erasure by Percival Everett
Q. What do you think is the biggest misperception that new writers have about the act of writing?
I’m not interacting with “new writers” on a regular basis, but here’s what I notice through my work helping subject-matter experts translate their insights into commentary that will arrest and be accessible to others: Almost all of us are inclined to overestimate other people’s awareness of and interest in the stuff that we’re passionate about. And that’s a critical error, because it means writers don’t work hard enough to make clear why others should care enough to keep reading.
You can see more about the non-profit organization Shari Graydon helps lead, Informed Opinions, here.
