Writing Advice from 17 Authors of Minnesota Books

An accidental podcast side quest!

Hello! Thank you for being here. There are now over 100 subscribers to Read Minnesota Books! If I invited you all over to my house I wouldn’t have enough chairs for you to sit in.

I hope you are having a decent summer. Here in Minneapolis we had a lovely and mild June, perfect for bike rides, picnics, outdoor concerts, and ice cream cones at the Lake Harriet Bandshell. Then in July the air turned wildfire sooty, heat dome hot, and spongy humid. My father-in-law died. The Boundary Waters burned. My kids’ Youtube streams filled up with primary election attack ads. It wasn’t great. August has been better. My family took an epic road trip out West and I read a bunch of books, including some forthcoming novels from Minnesota writers I’m really excited to interview. I know that a lot of the country is back to school already, but here in Minneapolis, the State Fair’s barnyard births and deep-fried curds and all-you-can-drink udder juice rule our city’s school calendar, so we still have three solid weeks until the first bell rings.

I’m planning a fantastic season 2 of the Read Minnesota Books podcast. Besides reading, I’ve been preparing by listening again to the first season. My number one change? I’m dumping the favorite Minnesota writer question because making authors pick their fave isn’t fair. There are too many to choose from, and authors who live here have too many friends to offend by omission. I’m thinking about asking, instead, “What’s the last Minnesota book you’ve read?” But I’m open to suggestions. If you have another Minnesota book question that’s better than that, comment below or send me a direct message.

I started the podcast as a service to readers, to offer an expansive view of what qualifies as a Minnesota book and to recommend new things to read. But in my re-listening, I realized that I’ve also been collecting writing advice. Below, I’ve compiled some of the best writing lessons from the first twenty episodes of Read Minnesota Books.

To write, read widely

You can’t be a writer without first being a reader. Read widely, and outside of the genre in which you write. When I asked my first poet guest, Mark Nowak, “Who’s your favorite Minnesota writer?” I expected him to name another poet. Instead, he introduced me to Meridel LeSeuer, a novelist and essayist who wrote in a completely different style from him, but with some of the same themes about labor and dignity and fairness.

Reading work that’s different from yours can also help you find effective and surprising structures. Duluth musician and memoirist Gaelynn Lea talked about reading memoirs when she was working on her own. She was smart and didn’t stick to music memoirs. Instead, she found the right structure for her book through analyzing the format of Russian spy Alexei Navalnei’s autobiography. Navalnei began his memoir with his poisoning, the thing everyone knows about him, which inspired Lea to begin her memoir with winning the NPR Tiny Desk Concert, her most well-known achievement.

The pen (or pencil) is stronger than the blank page