Leah Redmond Chang

How did you become a writer? Slowly, without realizing that it was happening. Like most writers, I came to writing through a love of reading, which I spent most of my childhood doing. Then, sometime at the end of primary school, I started to write poetry. In 6th grade, I had to write something for a creative writing class assignment, and I chose to write two poems. The teacher, Mr. Grantham, was gruff and stern and knew how to keep kids in line. I don’t remember ever seeing him smile.

When he returned the assignment to me, there was nothing on the page except an austere “See me.” In my mind, those letters were in red ink, but who knows. I was shaking in my shoes.

At his desk, Mr. Grantham looked through the poems, and asked me if I had written them myself. I could barely whisper “Yes.” He paused for a beat, then said: “Keep writing.” That was all. I went back to my seat, relieved. And, as you can imagine, I was also glowing inside.

Clearly, I’ve never forgotten that moment. The memory is very vivid. It speaks to the power that teachers have, doesn’t it? And when I think back on it, this was when I realized that writing was something I could do, maybe even do well.

Name your writing influences. There are so many influences. I’m always paying attention to craft, no matter what I read, so I guess everything is an influence and a teacher. That’s probably obvious, isn’t it? But it’s true. I try to read across genres, fiction, history, biography, memoir, essay. On some level, everything speaks to each other.

There are two authors that I’ll name here, though — Laura Ingalls Wilder and William Manchester. As a child, I was obsessed with Wilder’s Little House books. I’ve gone back to them recently, trying to understand why they were so important to me. I was a little taken aback when I revisited her prose. There is something in the cadence of her sentences that I think I’ve aspired to all these years; even my love of the semi-colon might come from her. Wilder’s novels are historical fiction, although they are written as if they are autobiographies – until adulthood, I thought they were non-fiction. Even so, she’s still telling us about the world she lived in, marrying storytelling to history. Unlike Wilder, I do write non-fiction, but that is what I’m going for: history that reads like a novel.

I read William Manchester’s A World Lit Only by Fire in college, just before I entered my PhD program to study Renaissance literature. That was the first history I remember reading that utterly gripped me. I couldn’t put it down. That history could be thrilling in a narrative way was a revelation to me.

When and where do you write? My writing times have shifted over the years. I used to write best at night, and I suspect that I still would, but with my kids at home, I find that evenings get too busy. Once everyone else is in bed, I’m ready for bed too. Now I write mostly in the mornings and into the early afternoons. I’ve shifted in my career from writing scholarly stuff to writing narrative history for a general reader, but my projects still require a great deal of research. When I’m in heavy research mode, I might write a little in the morning to keep working the writing muscle, but I’ll devote the rest of the day to research. Once I really commit to the writing, I’ll work for long stretches. I’ve found, though, that it’s best to force myself to stop by mid-afternoon to wind down. Otherwise, I can write myself into a corner that can be difficult to get out of.

I generally work at my desk in my study, but if the writing gets difficult, I like to move to a new place, like the kitchen table, or maybe go out to a café. I’ve found that I’ve never written very successfully in a library, which is too bad because I spend a lot of time in libraries.

What are you working on now? I’ve just published a narrative history, Young Queens, and am still in publicity mode. I’ll see that through, and then I’ll dive into the next project, although I’m still figuring out what that will be. I’m reading a lot, keeping my mind open for a bit; we’ll see which seeds ultimately germinate. Undoubtedly the next book will have something to do with the relationship between women and power because I always seem to be writing about that, one way or another.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Yes and no. Yes, in that I struggle at regular intervals; no, in that I’ve come to accept the struggle as part of the process. I’ve also learned that trying to write my way through it, no matter how bad or messy, usually works. I don’t know if that’s considered blocked? If I’m really not feeling it, I’ll leave the writing for several days, or move to a different part of the project, if that’s possible. But I’ve found that writing through usually works for me.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? Keep showing up at your desk (or wherever you write). And be at peace with the crappy first draft.

What’s your advice to new writers? Two pieces of advice. First, take your job as a writer seriously. When you first start, it’s so easy not to commit either to the work or to your identity as a writer. Personally, it took me a long time to accept that I am a writer. Why waste so much time? You are a writer!

Second, keep reading as much as possible. And dip into all sorts of genres. You never know where you might find inspiration and insight into ideas, themes, and craft.

Leah Redmond Chang writes narrative history and biography, and is the author of Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power (Bloomsbury, UK; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, US). She was trained as a literature scholar, and her writing draws on her extensive research in the archives and in rare book libraries. A former tenured professor of French Literature and Culture at The George Washington University, Leah has also been an Honorary Senior Research Associate at University College London. She lives with her husband and three children in Washington DC, and spends as much time as possible in London, her favorite city.