Author Interview with Anne Blackburne: A Day in the Life

I recently had the opportunity to interview Anne Blackburne, author of Ruth’s Gingersnap Surprise and Mary’s Calico Hope. This is a three-part interview, and today we are wrapping up the discussion with a conversation about Anne’s work as a writer. In addition to authoring novels, Anne is also a newspaper writer and editor.

Day in the life of the author: What does a typical day look like, for you? Is writing something you carve out time for, each day? 

I’m a full-time professional newspaperwoman, and the managing editor of a weekly newspaper in SE Ohio. I write stories, cover meetings, manage my staff, slog through endless emails,  take care of our newspaper kitty, answer the phone and door, sell ads, etc. etc. Then I go home and write for an hour or two. I do this every single night, whether I feel like it or not. That’s what a lot of being a writer is about: slogging through even when you don’t want to. 

Oh, sure, there are moments of shining clarity and excitement, but there are also moments when I think — what was I thinking? So yes, I do carve out writing time, because unfortunately, my next book won’t write itself. 😉

For fun, I read other people’s writing. I go kayaking or swimming or hiking. I search for beach glass and old pottery sherds. I paint badly, but it satisfies me. I do short little trips to visit friends and family. I love to travel. 

What is an unexpected challenge you have encountered in your craft, which turned out to be a blessing? Or, can you share a funny story about being a writer?

I’ll share a funny story from my newspaper days. I wrote a big article about 15 years ago called “Snakes on a Trail”, about what kind of reptile life one might encounter while walking along our local rail to trail system. I worked very hard on it, and made sure it wasn’t alarming. I figured most people would like it, although I knew there would be a few people who just hate snakes who wouldn’t be able to enjoy it.

As it turned out, that article made everyone angry. Proponents of the trail claimed that now nobody would use it because they’d be afraid of snakes. Defenders of snakes were outraged that maybe I’d get some snakes harmed, having called attention to their existence. People who didn’t like snakes were angry that I told them there were snakes in nature. People who disapproved of the trail’s very existence came out of the woodwork and ranted about that. It was just crazy. The moral is, what you think as a writer will upset people never does. It’s something innocent and to your mind unremarkable that will set people off. My advice is to please yourself. And your editor, of course!

I understand that your day job is as a newspaper editor. Between writing for a newspaper and writing novels, that’s a lot of writing! Do you take a different approach to the two forms of writing, or is there a good deal of overlap between your processes?

To some extent, writing is writing. I take the same care crafting a newspaper story as I do writing a scene in a book. For the paper, I write in AP (Associated Press) style. For my books, I follow  the rules of the Chicago Style Manual. The two styles are similar. At the end of the day, what’s important is to get your facts straight, make sure you spell names correctly (and everything else if possible!), get your grammar and punctuation right, and communicate clearly. 

My first newspaper editor was always telling me to cut words. Oh! That hurt! But she was right; a story was always better at about half the length I started with. Creative writing is similar. Getting rid of words is called “killing your darlings,” because it’s really hard to cut out paragraphs of your brilliant prose! 

As far as my process goes, after all these years, I don’t procrastinate. If something needs to be done, I just do it. That goes for my writing, too. My process is just to get the job done so I can sit down with a cup of coffee and some shortbread cookies and relax!

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

When you are ready to show your writing to someone, please please please, before you do, check it for grammar, spelling, punctuation, verb tense . . . all the boring stuff. I just hate getting bogged down in someone’s writing simply because they didn’t take care to clean it up before showing it to me. It’s hard to appreciate a story if I can’t get past all the incorrect usages of they’re their there, for example. 

And don’t ask someone to read your work if you aren’t ready to hear the truth, the whole truth, even the ugly truth about their opinion. 

My advice is to brutally edit your own work before ever showing it to someone else. And if you are someone who struggles with such things, I advise you to hire an editor. It’s worth it in the  end!

Happy writing!