Member Spotlight: Margot Clark-Junkins

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? I’ve always loved to write though I’m not sure I understand why I write. Certainly, there’s something magical about stringing words together on paper; before you know it, you’ve created a whole new world. Research of any kind is fun for me, whether I’m writing fiction or non-fiction. Understanding characters…that’s a pretty fascinating window into other people, into different ways of thinking. The greatest reward for writing–when I’ve done it well–is that I get to make contact with another person, someone who is interested in what I see, in what I think.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? I walk outside, it clears my head. Movies take me out of myself. And prompts are helpful; I prefer snippets from songs and poems.

What is your favorite time to write? I am pretty low-functioning in the morning. I might begin around 11am and by 2 or 3pm, I am finally in the zone. Then, inevitably, life gets in the way.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? This was a piece of life advice, but it applies to writing too: Say less.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? With the advent of the internet, we reach more readers than ever before. Writers read too. We are exposed to an almost limitless range of ideas and viewpoints and, presumably, this enters our writing.

Margot Clark-Junkins’s Following the Front: The Dispatches of World War II Correspondent Sidney A. Olson is out now with Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.