Member Spotlight: Laurie Hertzel

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? I’ve been a writer all my life–a newspaper journalist, a magazine writer and editor, and a memoirist. The written word is maybe the best way to understand the complexities of the world–through story, through example, through explanation, allowing a person to sit alone with the words and their thoughts until they come to some kind of understanding.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? I was a deadline writer for most of my life, so writer’s block is a luxury. When I am stuck on a piece of writing, if the deadline is not imminent, I walk around and think about what it is I want to say. Sometimes I go to the kitchen and get a cookie. Sometimes I leash up the dog and go for a longer walk. Getting away from the page is very helpful.

What is your favorite time to write? I wrote my first memoir, “News to Me,” over breakfast in very small chunks of time, because that was all the time I had. I was working full time at the newspaper, and by the time I got home in the evening I was pretty tapped out. I still prefer to write in the mornings, though now the chunks of time are as long as I want them to be.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? Just get it on the page. Get the clay on the table, so to speak. And then you can start molding it. You can’t edit a blank page, so get some words down.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? I have always been excited by writing, my entire life. I’m a reader from way back, and the idea of someone else being captivated by my words the way I am captivated by others’ words is really a thrilling thought.

Laurie Hertzel’s Ghosts of Fourth Street: My Family, a Death, and the Hills of Duluth is out March 31 with ‎University of Minnesota Press.