Scott Newstok

How did you become a writer?

Until How to Think like Shakespeare, I’ve felt stuck in some ruts that are endemic to academics. It’s really only now that I feel I can begin to claim to have become a writer.

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

As I gladly acknowledge in the book, my secondary school teacher Tim Blackburn first taught me how to think like Shakespeare. He assigned serious reading, crafted ingenious writing prompts, and gave us shockingly detailed and rapid feedback (often returning a batch of 60 marked papers the day after they were submitted). He made us think we had something to say. 

Some favorite essayists: Christopher Alexander, Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, John Berger, Jorge Luis Borges, Kenneth Burke, Willa Cather, Stanley Cavell, J. M. Coetzee, Lydia Davis, Emerson, Geoff Dyer, Ralph Ellison, Zbigniew Herbert, Pauline Kael, Montaigne, Zadie Smith, Edward Tufte, Robert Warshow, Virginia Woolf. With Emily Dickinson, I thank these Kinsmen of the Shelf.

When and where do you write? 

I used to think I wrote best late at night, but now in mid-life, my head seems clearest early in the morning, before my family wakes. 

Where do I write? Ideally, in silence, in seclusion, and surrounded by my books. All three are rare! But occasionally they converge: in my college office; in a basement closet; ideally, at lakeside cabin.

• In silence: like the cranky Arthur Schoepenhauer, I feel something akin to pain at the sudden sharp crack, which paralyzes the brain, rends the thread of reflection, and murders thought.

• In seclusion: as Virginia Woolf knew, all writers need (and women have chronically lacked) a room of [their] own, let alone a quiet room or a sound-proof room.

• Surrounded by my books: like Montaigne, without order, without method, and by peece-meales I turne over and ransacke, now one booke and now another.

What are you working on now? 

I just finished an essay on Ira Aldridge, whose stunning career took him across 19th century Europe. We remember Aldridge today as the first black Shakespearean to achieve international professional renown. In fact, he’s the first American actor to do so. 

I’ve long been fascinated by the career of Orson Welles. Last year I was lucky to have a fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library, where I explored their archives, as well as those at the Library of Congress, just across the street.

Other projects have been simmering off-and-on for over a decade: thinking through the multilingual roots of English phrases such as “love and cherish”; pondering the odd status of Duluth, my hometown, in the American cultural imagination.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Frequently. I love this advice from Alastair Fowler’s How to Write: “the best way to begin is not to. Or rather, to have already begun in the past.” When stuck, I delve into research. This can become a crutch; I know I read far too much in proportion to how little I write. But I can’t help it — I really enjoy it, and every time I chance upon a new insight, as we rub and polish our brains by contact with those of others, per Montaigne. 

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

Erasmus knew that the secret of style was no secret at all: write, write, and again write. Even something as banal as an email can be an occasion to think hard about the best way to phrase something. As Ta-Nehisi Coates reminds us: The intellect is a muscle; it must be exercised.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Little more than what Werner Herzog advises aspiring filmmakers: Read, read, read, read, read. Those who read own the world; those who immerse themselves in the Internet or watch too much television lose it. 

For more detailed guidance, I endorse what Lydia Davis enjoins: 

Go to primary sources and go to the great works to learn technique. . . .  Read the best writers: maybe it would help to set a goal of one classic per year at least. Classics have stood the test of time, as we say. Keep trying them, if you don’t like them at first — come back to them.  . . . How should you read? What should the diet of your reading be? Read the best writers from all different periods; keep your reading of contemporaries in proportion—you do not want a steady diet of contemporary literature. You already belong to your time.

Scott Newstok is professor of English and founding director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment at Rhodes College. A parent and an award-winning teacher, he is the author of Quoting Death in Early Modern England and the editor of several other books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.