Member Spotlight: Laura Bonazzoli

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? Writing is the key way that I explore what it means to be human: to strive with the certainty of imperfect results, and to love with the certainty of loss. It’s important for the world because reading awakens and sustains our empathy. Through stories, we learn how others experience being human. My favorite authors are those who dig deeply into the human psyche, like Anita Brookner, Toni Morrison, or Annie Ernaux. When I read such authors, I feel closer to others, to our shared dreams, values, heartaches, and mortality, and I appreciate more fully each individual’s complexity. Could we commit violence against another if we perceived them as fundamentally similar to ourselves? This is what stories–fiction, memoir, biography, etc.–can give us.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? Usually for me, writer’s block is procrastination. So I set a timer for one hour and tell myself I have to sit at the laptop with the doc open and simply imagine. If nothing comes after an hour, I can accept that I tried. This rarely happens. Typically, once I sit down and let my imagination play, I begin to see scenes and hear dialogue. In short, words come. However, occasionally I do become blocked over a plot point, characterization, or other issue. When that happens, I try to stay open to my imagination–such as by inviting my characters to come talk to me–and trust that, at some moment when my mind is less directed, such as while I’m washing dishes or walking outdoors, a solution will emerge. It’s about staying open to the world, to the possibility that the answer isn’t going to be created by your effortful mind, but is going to be discovered by your receptive mind.

What is your favorite time to write? Any time when I know I have at least a few hours entirely alone. The precise time of day does not matter. The only essential ingredient for me is solitude, and a certainty that this solitude is going to last for at least a few hours.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? I once read somewhere that: “An idea is not a novel.” Of course, one understands immediately. It’s similar to Thomas Edison’s observation that success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. “An idea is not a novel” reminds me that writing is disciplined effort, which means many hours (for me, over many years) at the laptop, running experiments, setting things aside that don’t work, excavating the landscape of my characters and their actions, and ensuring that every word in the final draft belongs there.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? I write fiction, but I see myself as a truth-teller. Certainly fiction writers invent the details of plot, characters, and settings, but fiction is successful only when it communicates universal truths of the human condition, sparking a recognition in readers: “Yes, I have experienced this, felt this, know this to be true.” This type of truth, the truth of fiction, is especially vital in our current climate of “alternative facts.” I see creative writers and reputable journalists, therefore, as colleagues, acolytes in service to Truth.

Laura Bonazzoli’s Our Share of Morning is out now with Sibylline Press.