Member Spotlight: Howard Gardner

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? I am very fortunate. From an early age, I liked to write, In second grade, around 1950, I decided to create a newspaper, and I even set the type on an ancient printer. Since then, as a social-scientist-and-writer, I have published over 30 books and 1000 articles. And in the last few years, I’ve created scores of blogs. If I were more artistic, I might create in a different medium– but I’ve instead followed the Latin slogan Nulla Dies Sine Linea (no day without a line.)” And no matter how smart machines become, there will never be an adequate replacement of human writing.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? I am risking the revenge of the gods–because I don’t suffer from writer’s block. If anything, I write very easily and am tempted to publish or post quickly. Fortunately, my family and my friends are excellent critics, and in almost all cases, the writing is improved by apt criticism… and some days’ rest.

What is your favorite time to write? Often, as I am falling asleep, or taking a walk early in the morning, some ideas and some words occur to me. So as soon as I am near a writing implement–pen or computer– I start to write. (I often carry paper and pen with me). I can write later in the day but fatigue is not a friend of fluent and worthy wording.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? Don’t ever complain– or even think– that you are bored. Instead, fill those vacant minutes or hours with ideas , images, riddles, aspirations, anxieties that you would like to explore and how eventually you would communicate those to others– what are the most powerful words, what’s the appropriate format, how will it read at some time in the future.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? Being in my 9th decade, I am grateful that I am still able to write and that I can still find readers–and I especially value those who write back to me– even if they are critical, so long as they are not malicious. Never has there been so much knowledge– as well as so much nonsense- readily available. To be able to bring clarity, and to separate the worthy from the baloney, is a privilege which those of us with a literary flair should cherish and share.

Howard Gardner’s The Essential Howard Gardner on Mind is out Friday with Teachers College Press.