Member Spotlight: Peggy Joque Williams

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? I have been expressing myself in writing since at least fourth grade. I find that writing helps me coalesce my thoughts, and the process of editing allows me to refine what I think and what I want to say. I have never been able to “think on my feet.” Writing is my communication superpower, thus I write in multiple genres, both fiction and nonfiction, and for various written media. As for the role of writing in the world, written media has always been a way to communicate from a distance, it allows for a potentially greater audience to be a part of the discourse and to respond either in writing or verbally, even without the presence of the author. And of course the written word is a way to pass the historical record down through generations, and a way to entertain, inspire, and broaden others’ perspectives. Someone recently asked me how they knew that King Louis XIV loved to dance ballet style as I have it in my book. My answer: there are written records, both court/government records and letters that people of the time wrote to each other and that were preserved.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? I don’t get writer’s block, per se. Rather I experience procrastination and sometimes a sort of writer’s lethargy, in which I have difficulty prioritizing my time to get the writing work done. When I do reach a block in my story, I pose a question to the universe just before I fall asleep at night, and most often an answer comes to me either that same night or in the morning. If at night, I have to write it down in my bedside notebook immediately, or I will forget I ever had the idea or solution to begin with.

What is your favorite time to write? My most productive time to write is the evening or late at night. I am a wannabe morning writer, but I am so not a morning person. I can’t get out of bed or think in the morning. I also wish I kept regular writing hours, but family life and my own crazy habits means that I write when I can.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? My best piece of writing advice is to read widely; don’t worry about first drafts, just get something on paper that you can work with; and write what you love to read or what is meaningful to you–in essence write from the heart and not for the marketplace.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? I think what excites me most about being a writer in today’s age is the variety of publishing options available. An author does not have to pin all her hopes on getting an agent and getting noticed by the few big publishers. She can go with a small, indie publisher, a hybrid press, self-publish. So many options. And while social media can be frustrating, it certainly makes reaching out to potential readers easier in many ways.

Peggy Joque Williams’s Courting the Sun is out now with Black Rose Writing.