Elizabeth Flock

How did you become a writer? As a kid, books were my refuge. I told stories to myself all the time in the tub. I wrote all my life and finally entered publishing by way of journalism. I figured it was the only way to get paid to write! And I had a strong interest in social issues and untold stories. A decade in, I found narrative journalism -- a wonderful hybrid between deep reporting and novelistic writing. That's what I do now, writing mostly stories related to justice and gender issues.

Name your writing influences. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's "Random Family," Katherine Boo's "Behind the Beautiful Forevers," and Sonia Faleiro's magazine pieces and books are all masterclasses in immersive writing / narrative nonfiction. 

When and where do you write? I write on my laptop anywhere and everywhere. I don't write well at desks. I finished THE FURIES while I was very sick from being pregnant, so I was on the couch for a lot of that. Sometimes I even edit best on my phone. I'm a firm believer in writing from wherever you are comfortable, at the times you seem to work best. For me, that's from 11am-4pm, when I'm fully caffeinated. I find the pomodoro method helps me get into deep focus in a world that's rife with distractions. I do 45 minutes of writing -- with no phone or internet or other distractions -- then take a 15 minute break, then do 45 more minutes, and continue on that way as long as I can. 

What are you working on now? I am adapting a narrative piece I wrote for The Economist's 1843 Magazine about two women who sabotaged a pipeline into a documentary film. I am also noodling over my next narrative nonfiction book project. I am very interested in writing about the fine line between loneliness and being alone with yourself, and also the relationship between motherhood and the climate.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? With journalism, I don't think writer's block is as much of a problem as in novel writing. The world is full of people and places asking to be written about. The bigger problem is how to tell it and what to leave out. I find that I am like a hoarder in my book projects -- collecting all the information and details I can -- and then spending a lot of time plotting out the most compelling, interesting and telling scenes. It is sometimes hard to know what to leave on the cutting room floor. The most fun is figuring out how to tell it. These days, journalists can tell their stories in books, magazine pieces, podcasts, documentaries or even fiction films.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? Somewhere along the way, I heard that a book is the answer to a question to which a writer desperately wants the answer. My first book was driven by the question of what makes marriages work or fail. My second book, THE FURIES, which just came out, was a quest to understand whether violence can be useful, what constitutes self-defense, and what happens when institutions fail to protect women.  

What’s your advice to new writers? Follow your interests, as weird as they may be. If you are interested in a subject, someone else will be too. Write the book you wish existed. Don't stop writing until, as a professor one told me, you're circling back on yourself, moving periods and commas around, coming back to the same scenes again and again, like a serpent eating its tail.

Elizabeth Flock is a journalist who reports on gender and issue and the author of THE FURIES, which tells the story of three real-life women who used violence to fight back.