Ask the Author: Sally Armstrong
Answered Questions (7)
Sally Armstrong
Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly
A Disappearance in Damascus by Deborah Campbell
Uprising by Sally Armstrong
Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly
A Disappearance in Damascus by Deborah Campbell
Uprising by Sally Armstrong
Sally Armstrong
As a journalist I have been covering what happens to women and girls in zones of conflict for 25 years. I haven't had a good news story to tell. About four years ago I began to feel the earth was shifting under the status of women. At first I thought maybe it was wishful thinking on my part but I did the research and found out that all the work women have done in seeking equality over all the years (indeed centuries) was finally paying off. The experts in my research claimed that altering the status of women would reduce poverty, cut conflict and even improve the economy. I wanted to dive into that data and find out exactly what it meant. The result - Uprising: A New Age is Dawning for Every Mother's Daughter.
Sally Armstrong
I love writing. Some people ask me if I do most of my writing at my summer cottage because the view of the ocean is so beautiful. While I certainly love gazing out at the ocean, writing for me is something else. It happens inside - it comes from ideas and even opinions. I think you need to give yourself permission to write - just write what you're thinking. That permission allows you to come back and "fix" the work latter. The other thing that inspires me - is the anxiety of missing a deadline.
Sally Armstrong
I'm just back from an assignment in Afghanistan so am writing to deadline. But a couple of new book ideas have surfaced - one would be fiction based on a true story and another would be the a story that came about because of something that happened in my book Uprising.
Sally Armstrong
The best advice is to write and to read. Keep reading the work of excellent authors. Notice how they use language, set up a story, sometimes tell a story within a story. Then write away. Keep a blog or a journal or diary. Once in a while select a piece of it and edit it carefully. Work on a single paragraph over and over again. You'll be amazed at how much your work improves - even with one paragraph when you keep examining it.
Sally Armstrong
I'm a journalist. Most journalists like one part of the job more than others. For example you may prefer interviewing or researching or editing your work or - writing. I like all of it. The writing is the best part though. To me the process is something like doing a jigsaw puzzle; you have all the various pieces on the table and now have to pull them all together so they fit.
Sally Armstrong
This is when research gets done. I hunker down and figure out what pieces I need to know more about (one time I even went on an assignment to find the answers). Eventually the writer's block problem is solved but by then I have a new problem - I'm invariably so caught up with what I just discovered I want to continue writing from that data. Mostly though I think writer's block happens because you're missing info you need.
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