Sari Botton

How did you become a writer? I think I might have been born a writer. I've been taking notes on everything in my surroundings since I was a small kid. But I became a professional writer the summer of '86, between my junior and senior years of college, when I had a paid internship on the arts desk at Newsday/New York Newsday. I assumed they'd have me fetching coffee for reporters, but they threw me in the deep end, and I wrote about two short features a week. After some time in arts journalism and trade journalism, I focused on becoming an essayist and memoirist. I started publishing personal essays in the late 90s, and that was my jam.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies was the first book that made me want to write a memoir in essays. Joan Didion's personal essays have always knocked me out, especially Goodbye to All That, first published in the Saturday Evening Post, and later in her essay collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, about arriving in New York City starry-eyed at 20, and leaving bleary-eyed at 28. That essay was the inspiration for my bestselling anthology, Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving & Leaving NY.

When and where do you write? I write pretty much every day. I try to journal a little bit in the morning, shortly after I arise. I write frequently for my three newsletters, Oldster Magazine, Memoir Monday, and Adventures in *Journalism*. These days I do most of my writing at home, in my dining room. I have a home office, where I wrote my memoir, And You May Find Yourself...Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo, but for some reason I haven't felt like working in there since I published that book last June. I'll probably head back in there when I'm ready to work on my next book.

What are you working on now? In addition to my newsletters, I'm working on some personal essays I hope to publish elsewhere soon. I'm also beginning to work on a proposal for an Oldster Magazine essay anthology.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? I've had a few terrible bouts of writers' block. It can be very demoralizing. You feel as if you'll never be able to write again. Most recently, I felt blocked because I was a witness in a court case and my journal and several of my personal emails were subpoenaed. It was a terrible invasion of my privacy, and it involved the one place where it's always felt safe to express myself, and empty my head before writing drafts of essays. Until the case's recent resolution, I felt afraid to journal or write anything too personal. I'm glad that's over. Unfortunately, the only cure for writers' block is...writing.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? When perfectionism halts you (which it always does), lower the stakes and give yourself permission to write lousily. It also helps to write lousily while racing a timer. I'm a big adherent of the Pomodoro Method.

What’s your advice to new writers? Don't be in a rush to publish. Realize that all good writing takes time to develop. Learn from my mistake of, in the past, publishing half-baked essays I'm now so glad you can't find anywhere. Take time between drafts; put your writing away for a week or so before you come back to it, when you have added perspective. Give yourself time to change your mind, or have your thoughts shift about what you're writing about. It's natural to feel impatient, or competitive with other writers who are further along. But in the end, you won't regret having taken your time. 

Sari Botton is the author of the memoir in essays, And You May Find Yourself...Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo. She is a contributing editor and columnist at Catapult, and the former Essays Editor for Longreads. She edited the bestselling anthologies Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NewYork and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York. She teaches creative nonfiction at Catapult, Bay Path University and Kingston Writers' Studio. She publishes Oldster Magazine, Memoir Monday, and Adventures in Journalism. She is the Writer in Residence in the creative writing department of SUNY New Paltz for Spring, 2023.