Joan Steinau Lester

When people ask me what do you do, for the last twenty-five years I've answered, "I'm a writer." Sometimes I add, "An author." 

If the questioner still looks blank, I'll say, with authority, "I'm a professional writer."

I've learned to define myself in a powerful tone because so many people have odd assumptions about a woman writer. Several years ago, for instance, a chipper young teller at the bank window asked me, "What are you doing today?" 

Eager to get moving, I replied somewhat crisply, "I'm writing. Like I do every day. I'm a writer."

"Oh, how nice," she said, with syrup in her voice. "It gives you something to fill your time." Read More 

 I, who love words so much, am surprised to find myself newly enchanted with the sentence as a unit of language. Sentences in all their delicious variety, some with many clauses, dipping in and out, amplifying a theme before it brings itself, sharply, to a halt.

Or long sentences that make you think, having to puzzle out their meaning, like digging into a pomegranate to get the sweet, juicy seeds. Laborious, but usually worth it. Then there are the short, declarative sentences that command attention. Look up! they say.

The lowly sentence, which all of us use every day, is the building block of prose.  Read More 

If I had a nickel for each time a stranger has told me, "I know my life would be a bestseller!" I'd be wealthy. Sometimes they even offer their story, asking me to simply write it down. "My life has been so amazing, the book would write itself."

Well, not really. Books do not write themselves, and the record of lives is not laid out like a script, awaiting only transcription. A memoir, like any other book, is a deliberately created piece of art, using, in this case, one's life as the clay. But there are endless possibilities for shaping the raw material. What is the theme? The voice? Which events to include, which to highlight, how to connect them all? And why now? Read More 

What is the difference between being a writer and an author? I am sometimes asked. The process of writing a book (I have completed eight and sold seven) is so lengthy, so all-consuming, that it merits the separate designation. Author: a person who has completed a grueling, rewarding activity, composing a coherent narrative of some length—generally at least 60,000 words. Keeping track of all the threads over many years and tying them together, while maintaining some linguistic elegance, is quite different from the week-long task of writing an essay or article.

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So many people yearn for the inspired self-expression that writing provides. If putting pen to paper is the creative mode that makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning, bursting with ideas, plunge in. Some artists find exquisite pleasure in painting or sculpting. But if playing with words lifts your heart, there are multiple paths for you.

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Writing, for me, is pure: totally involving, pleasurable, existing only for itself, not the end product. In the same way I cherish hiking a trail in the woods early morning, eager to see cottontail rabbits leaping into the brush, or the joy I get pulling weeds in my flower garden--where the aromas of leaves and fresh dirt fill my nostrils--writing is an activity that fully absorbs me. When I finish, I'm flushed with pleasure.

Of course I learn a great deal about myself during the process: writing is a minute examination of some facet of living, subjecting it to the microscope. But while that is useful, it is the mental act of creating sentences and paragraphs or musing over structure that fills my heart with joy. I am a great rewriter, believing each revision only improves the draft; my heart lifts as each sentence receives its polish. Or even when I ruthlessly cut out phrases or larger chunks of writing. Read More 

In 1968, when I was twenty-eight years old, I suddenly heard a siren blare behind me. On my country road in West Tisbury, Massachusetts, it was a strange sound. Glancing in the rear view mirror, I saw a police car flashing red lights. Never imagining it had anything to do with me—a white, mostly law-abiding woman—I sped up. So did the screaming vehicle behind me. I continued to speed, trying to get out of its way.

Finally the patrol car drew parallel and then careened before me at an angle, forcing me to put my foot on the brake, hard. A cop strode to my window, looking grim. "License and registration please."

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In 1978 I discovered Audre Lorde through her startling poem "Power" in the Village Voice. I taped it inside my desk drawer, where my eyes lingered on it daily. It felt like a gut punch, but I couldn't stop reading it.

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On my drive into Berkeley's Tilden Park recently, I saw a white man of about sixty—twenty years my junior—standing by a black car. I paused to see if he needed help. He made a small hand gesture, which I took as a "go on" wave so I continued. But fifty feet later, troubled, I decided the gesture had been ambiguous. Brought up by parents who always stopped for strangers, I flashed my blinkers and reversed.

Rolling down my window, I asked, "Are you okay?" Read More 

“The opening sentence should be like an arrow shot from a bow: it will shoot through the entire text.” The late biographer Henry Mayer, a generous man, once gave me this advice. I’d approached him after a reading for his biography of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and when I asked him a question he offered to meet me for coffee.

Just beginning my own biography of civil rights icon Eleanor Holmes Norton, I was floundering, awash in data. Already I’d interviewed a dozen of her colleagues and family, pored through dusty boxes of newspaper clippings and legal briefs.  Read More 

I am the queen of revision. Every one of the five books I've published has taken years. I write, revise, and revise some more. Whenever I finish a draft I think, "That's it!" But alas, after my agent or writing partner reads it, they notice flaws and I'm off again, occasionally even slanting the entire manuscript in a new direction.

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How can we ever know that what we think we saw is what really happened? I've been fascinated by this question ever since I saw Rashomon sixty years ago: a film where four witnesses describe a murder, but each tells a conflicting version. Maybe one or more are lying, or maybe they simply saw divergent—competing—"truth" because of their different perspectives.

This came to mind when I saw today's shocking New York Times page one headline about yesterday's Democratic Debate #2. It read: FACE TO FACE, BIDEN AND SANDERS MAKE CASES FOR DUELING VISIONS. Read More