Jill Watts

How did you become a writer?  

I think the first step in becoming a writer is to become a reader. My mom encouraged us to love reading. And I hadn’t thought about it until recently but from the time I was small I was fascinated by books. When I was really young, I made illustrated books mostly of people working in factories. I think this was because there was an electronics manufacturer near where we lived and you could see the people working through the large windows that faced the street. What drove me as an adult to become a writer was my desire to learn, teach, and contribute to the greater social good. I went to graduate school at UCLA and was fortunate enough to be hired as a History Professor at California State University San Marcos. What they say about universities is true, you must publish. But I enjoy writing and welcome the opportunity because my goal as a historian is to write to support change for the better.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

In addition to my mom, I had two terrific high school English teachers. Betsy Scarborough and Crandallyn Graham drilled us on smart writing and analysis. In college, I took courses from Professor Edward Reynolds who, at the time, was working on Stand the Storm, his book on the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. From him I learned the importance of “Sankofa,” which in Akan means “return and fetch it.” This gave me the understanding of the urgent need to recover the stories of the past for the benefit the present and future. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s political histories, Blanche Wiesen Cook’s multi-volume biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, and John Lewis’s autobiography Walking in the Wind have all inspired my recent work. When I need a change of pace, I read Raymond Chandler. Chandler is problematic in our time but he weaves suspenseful tales and paints gripping portraits of Los Angeles in the 1930s and 1940s.  

When and where do you write? 

Since I teach at the university full-time, I mostly write at home during winter and summer breaks. I recently set up a writing space at home that is separate from where I work on my teaching. That has helped me focus. I like to write in the mornings or at night when everything is quiet. Writing with a view is great and turning off email even better. 

What are you working on now? 

I have started a biography of Mary McLeod Bethune. She is a major figure in The Black Cabinet book that I just finished. Few people know that she was the first African American woman to be appointed as an administrator of a federal program. And almost no one remembers that she was not only the most influential African American woman of the first half of the twentieth century but that she ranked overall as one the most important women in the United States at the time. There was so much about her life’s story that I couldn’t include in The Black Cabinet. She rose from the cotton fields of South Carolina to become the founder of Bethune-Cookman University. That trajectory allowed her to emerge as one of the most significant civil and women’s rights activists of the period that preceded Martin Luther King. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I was blocked for several months at a really critical time a number of years ago. What I learned was first that you can’t force writing. Second, I came to the realization that you have to have something you need to say. Third, you have to clean out the clutter in your head before writing. Talk to someone. Meditate. Do yoga. Play or listen to music. Take a walk. Eat desserts but not too many. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Sit down and do it. But even more helpful was the idea that writing just to write is the best place to start. It commences an internal dialogue that allows the ideas to flow and take form as they compete with each other on the page. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

First, write what you know. It is authenticity that reaches readers and allows you to make your contribution. Do your research if the nature of your work requires it. Second, make sure you are writing for the sole purpose of writing. The end goal needs to be selfless. If you are writing for any other purpose—like money or fame or even to settle a score­––it will undermine the work. Third, find a mentor—someone who is familiar with your genre and can give you good honest advice. But most of all, enjoy writing. If you love what you do, it will show. 

Jill Watts (https://jill-watts.com/) is the author of The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt (Grove). She has also published three other books: Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood (Amistad), Mae West: An Icon in Black and White (Oxford), and God, Harlem U.S.A.: The Father Divine Story (University of California Press). She is a California native and is a Professor of History at California State University San Marcos where has served as department chair and is currently the coordinator of the History Graduate Program. Her books on Hattie McDaniel and Father Divine have been optioned for film.