Member Spotlight: Ashley Shelby

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? Joan Didion spoke for most of us writers when she said she wrote “entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” The written word, when used to this purpose, is important to the world because it allows others to participate in that effort (which is universal) and feel connected, perhaps see the world in a wholly different way, and to be moved–to joy, to anger, to fear, or even to transcendence.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? I don’t experience writer’s block. I experience the dreaded disease of writing too much to no effect. For every page that has appeared in the books I’ve published, I’ve written twenty (conservative estimate). It takes me years to finish a book because of this lack of mental discipline. At the same time, my inability to stay on the path has allowed me to chase rabbits that have led me to places I would never have found before. I’ve learned to be patient.

What is your favorite time to write? Whenever I can. I’m a parent with kids still living at home, so my time is not always my own. I find it difficult to write when people are present in the house, even if they are quiet, so I typically try to work in quiet public places.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? Bad writing is essential to good writing. Too many of us labor over a sentence in the first draft of a book, eating up precious hours to achieve perfection when all we need to worry about at that stage is getting the raw material on the page. So many writers have an internal editor imposing themself on the early stages of the writing process when they aren’t wanted or needed. That can keep us from taking the kinds of risks essential to good writing. At the beginning, write as if no one is reading.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? I am a research-intensive writer, probably due to my earlier life as a journalist, so being able to find vast amounts of obscure information online excites me, even if it also distracts me. I also find the rise in inclusivity and curiosity in publishing to be one of the best things that’s ever happened in mass communications. Having worked in publishing in the early aughts, I remember the conventional wisdom that books by underrepresented writers were “niche.” Thank god independent publishers understood the hunger among readers for diverse perspectives and authors.

Ashley Shelby’s Honeymoons in Temporary Locations is out now with University of Minnesota Press.