How did you become a writer?

Accidentally. I had no intention of becoming a writer – it’s such hard work! I love researching and in my twenties I was very happy to work as a Fortune magazine reporter/researcher. I had all the fun of digging into stories without the pain of writing them. Then I was assigned to work with a new writer on his first story and when I did all the reporting for a sidebar, he innocently suggested that since I’d done the work, I write the piece. I loved doing it, though the editor’s refusal to give me a byline diminished the pleasure a bit. The writers were mostly men and the reporter/researchers were almost all women, and I was told, “If we give you credit, everyone else will want to do it.” He was right. After that, I did too.

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

I assume all writers are readers, so probably everything I’ve read has influenced me in some way. One of my favorite genres is comedies of manners because the authors are such astute observers of human behavior (and misbehavior). The most important person in my writing life was my beloved friend, Deirdre Bair, who died this April. She was a role model in more ways than I realized until after she was gone. Perhaps most important were her energy and her integrity. Deirdre worked so tirelessly that I dared not slack off myself – I’d have been too embarrassed. And she never compromised on the truth as she saw it. I saw her walk away from a work she had spent more than a year researching and writing rather than see it watered down to the point of distortion. 

When and where do you write?

I mostly write at my computer in my home office, looking out onto the Hudson River. Sometimes I am on the floor with pages spread out, cut up into pieces and moved around. And when I’m deep in a project, I’m writing in my head all the time.

What are you working on now?

My dual biography of Hollywood screenwriter/director/producer brothers Herman and Joseph L. Mankiewicz was published last fall and I had started work on a new idea. But with Netflix’s release of Mank, David Fincher’s biopic about Herman, I’ve been writing pieces about the experience of seeing one’s subject on the screen and talking to reporters about what is real and what is fiction. I’ll get back to my next project when Mank-Madness wears off.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I have hit a wall many times and cannot count the trips to the refrigerator, drawers rearranged and now, escape into the Twitterverse, a rabbit hole of distractions and entertainment. If I’m writing a book, I occasionally just abandon the problematic chapter and work on something else. I know I’ll have to return to it eventually, but sometimes the break makes for clearer thinking. 

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

It wasn’t addressed to me personally but without it, you can’t write anything: “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” As far as I can tell, feminist/writer/activist Mary Heaton Vorse originally said it to Sinclair Lewis in 1911.

What’s your advice to new writers?

At first let your thoughts flow and don’t edit as you go along (easier said than done, but try). Then be ruthless, including and especially those artistic, poetic phrases with which you’re in love. Read it out loud in your head. Rewrite rewrite rewrite. 

Sydney Ladensohn Stern’s most recent book is The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics. After working as a reporter for Fortune and Money magazines and writing a column, “Suburban Exposure,” for the Scarsdale Inquirer, she freelanced for numerous publications including the New York Times. Her first book was Toyland: The High-Stakes Game of the Toy Industry, and her first biography was Gloria Steinem: Her Passions, Politics, and Mystique. For more, see sydneylstern.com.