Member Spotlight: Noel Rubinton

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? For me, it’s an essential, wonderful chance to learn and to meet fascinating people. For the world, I hope that my writing can expand knowledge and help the world in a constructive way.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? Deadlines are the best. Short of deadlines imposed by others, I need to make them up to fool myself that there are real deadlines.

What is your favorite time to write? It is definitely the morning, when I feel freshest and less distracted by the world, at home and all around. Anytime will due when there’s deadline pressure, but the rest of the day is best for editing, and daydreaming about writing.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? Well, it has to be from John McPhee, who my current book is about. Structure, structure, structure, before you try to start writing. A good structure, expressed in some sort of outline, makes all the difference. He learned this from Olive McKee, his Princeton, NJ, English teacher in the 1940s, and I too now owe a lot to her.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? The chance to tell fresh, important stories and to harness all the incredible sources for research, in terms of people, libraries and archives, and the internet.

Noel Rubinton’s Looking for a Story: A Complete Guide to the Writings of John McPhee is out now with Princeton University Press.