Author Glenda D Shaw On The 5 Things You Need to Know to Become a Great Author

“You can observe a lot just by watching.” This is a line my husband picked up from Yogi Berra. It must work in baseball; it definitely works in writing. When you want to tell a story, the words are going to come out of what you’ve seen — the description of the place, the way one of the women fussed with her hands as she was speaking, the cast of the sunlight coming through the window. It’s all there, and if you pay attention to what’s happening around you, you’ll be able to recreate the moment later on your keyboard.

As part of my interview series on the five things you need to know to become a great author, I had the pleasure of interviewing Glenda D. Shaw.

Glenda D. Shaw has lived in three countries and eight cities, and she worked for many years in television and radio production. She is a member of the Writers Guild, the Producers Guild, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and was nominated for two Daytime Emmys. In her work, she has interviewed thousands of people from all walks of life, gathering insights about what each of us needs in order to thrive. It was this understanding that prompted Shaw to write her book on friendship: Better You, Better Friends: A Whole New Approach to Friendship.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you share a story about what brought you to this particular career path?

My writing career had shaky beginnings. I struggled to write stories and essays during my high school and college years; and I was even worse at grammar. So much so, that during a party in college, when a young woman who was touted for her palm reading skills said I could be a professional writer, everyone who knew me laughed.

Even so, throughout my life, I’ve always loved reading, and when I got out of school and started reading for the joy of it — just reading books because I was interested in the subject — I got a whole new relationship with the written word. I moved to London after I graduated, and, on my own, I began researching women who had done something wonderful with their lives. At that time I began journaling insights about these women and my own personal stories. One evening I read one of my stories to a friend — a story about my first lost love — and she was so moved that she started to weep. So, I knew then that I could write — but I had to care about the subject.

One the things I did with my film-making degree is to work as a producer for a television interview show — and this meant that I interviewed people we were thinking about featuring. I loved hearing people’s stories — and I always knew that if they interested me, they would interest an audience as well.

Can you share the most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your career?

I got to interview thousands of people — fascinating people — in the course of my work in television, and it’s hard to pick out “the most interesting,” but some of them are people I can remember to this day, decades later, so I think that qualifies here. There was one man, a psychologist, who spoke about the importance of honesty in a way that touched me deeply. I’ve always thought of myself as an honest person. I’ve always been an honest person. But this man spoke about never lying, ever — not to do the easy thing, not to soften a moment — and the sheer integrity of this was something I never forgot.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in your journey to becoming an author? How did you overcome it? Can you share a story about that that other aspiring writers can learn from?

As I’ve said, basic writing skills — like grammar — are not my strong suit. At one point decades ago, I was working as an entertainment editor for a weekly newspaper, selecting stories, and occasionally editing other people’ writing — work by people who were, unlike me, seasoned writers.

One day I edited a book review in which I changed “regardless” to “irregardless.” They sound almost the same, those two words, but there is a big difference between them, and I received a very angry phone call from the writer. He said — at a very high volume; we could say he was yelling — “Irregardless is not a real word!” Which is not entirely true. Every dictionary lists “irregardless” but then they call it a “non-standard” word — and that’s one way of saying that it is not a word a cultivated person would use… regardless!

So, my lesson here was that, not being a whiz at grammar, I needed to take a class in grammar. And — regardless of that — whenever I was changing someone’s written words, I needed to make sure that my changes were improvements.

What are some of the most interesting projects you are working on now?

Writing my new book — Better You, Better Friends: A Whole New Approach to Friendship — has been an incredible focus for my life in the last few years. Obviously, I’ve been writing down my own observations and stories about friendship and — at the same time — I’ve been investigating what various scientists are finding about the fundamental challenges of friendship. How honest should you be with your friends? Can you have friends across a political chasm? Is it possible to still be friends if one of you gets a promotion? How can you deal with money in a friendship? These are the kinds of questions that can get in the way of our friendships. So, I’ve been getting to explore in depth and then to contemplate my thoughts on a subject that I think truly matters in our lives.

Can you share the most interesting story that you shared in your book?

Wow, that’s like asking which of your children you like the most! I can select one story, though.

During the time I worked for the newspaper in Santa Barbara, the paper moved offices, and I threw out a lot of paperwork. A few weeks later, a man who had entrusted me with his poem collection for possible publication — a man who was living on the streets — showed up at our new location, asking for the writing he’d left with me. To my horror, I realized I had mistakenly discarded it before the move. I felt terrible, but he felt a lot worse and was furious with me — rightly so! — because this was the only copy of his writing that he had. I could sense the pain rising within him, and I felt an overwhelming sadness for my thoughtless action. What I had done was indefensible. I’d really screwed up. And I spent a long time talking with this man, conveying my sincere regret, and asking for his forgiveness. Slowly, he calmed down. He could see that this was truly a mistake on my part and that it hadn’t happened because I’d marginalized either him or his work. We parted company on reasonable terms.

I am sure that this very raw exchange that led to a healing between two people could never have happened online, whether it was via conferencing or phone, streaming or email. This man and I had to be together, in a shared physical space, eye to eye, in order to come to that heart-to-heart connection.

What I especially like about this story is that it shows how putting forward the effort to connect with another person can make a huge difference — can help the two of you find a deeper understanding — even if the situation itself is pretty bleak. For me, our exchange was a lesson I’ll never forget.

What is the main empowering lesson you want your readers to take away after finishing your book?

The point of my book is that greater self-awareness leads to good company. And that process starts with you becoming more aware of your own unconscious behaviors — behaviors around your biases, your envy and anger, your fears. Throughout my life, working on my friendships has offered me amazing experiences — experiences from which I’ve grown. I can see that now more than ever, we need to find mutually supportive confidantes in our lives. These are the people with whom we share understanding, love, and support. And these are the people on whom we need to focus our time and energy. Popularity does not stave off loneliness, but having close friends does. We need to cultivate these close relationships in our lives. We need to recognize which of the people we know are most nourishing for us, and we need to maintain these vital friendships.

Based on your experience, what are the “5 Things You Need to Know to Become a Great Author”? Please share a story or example for each.

• “You can observe a lot just by watching.” This is a line my husband picked up from Yogi Berra. It must work in baseball; it definitely works in writing. When you want to tell a story, the words are going to come out of what you’ve seen — the description of the place, the way one of the women fussed with her hands as she was speaking, the cast of the sunlight coming through the window. It’s all there, and if you pay attention to what’s happening around you, you’ll be able to recreate the moment later on your keyboard.
• You can hear a lot just by listening. And this is how my spouse adapted the Yogi Berra line above. Listening is foundational to friendship, as I say in my book. A Harvard study found that when you listen to others and ask good follow-up questions, people will actually like you more. And listening is also foundational to writing — listening to what people tell you, listening for what they mean, listening for what’s underneath what they say to you. People speak in words, and you write in words. If you listen to what people say, their way of putting things, their word choices, the rhythm of their speech — all of this will help you a lot with your writing.
• Think counter intuitively. I learned how to cook from my writing mentor and how to write from my art teacher. It was my art teacher who explained how I could see and capture an image with only a few strokes. He called these “gesture” drawings — quick sketches that capture a figure in motion. I didn’t quite get this concept until I went to an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. That’s when I saw how one artist used a few small brushstrokes to evoke a peasant wearily walking home, exhausted after a long day of harvesting. Those few well-placed lines caught the peasant’s whole life. This was a game-changer for me; it showed me how a few evocative adjectives could say a lot in an extremely brief space.
• Trust your own voice. Early in my writing career and still dubious about my skills, I heard from a neighbor who was launching his own writing career, “You speak well. Just record yourself and write that down.” Which is the same advice I used when I taught a theater class at a high school in Watts, California. The school had packed classes and a lot of socio-economic challenges. These teenagers were highly creative, and they had big life stories, but they were embarrassed by their writing skills. So, I had someone join our class to record the students’ stories and to transcribe them. Then he and I worked with the students one-on-one to structure their — powerful! — words into a play. What a success! Three plays were performed coming out of this process. So, find a way that works for you to get your voice into writing — by any means possible!
• Gather a team around you. I always like to read the acknowledgments that authors put into their books. It’s often pages of people who have helped this person put their book together. It seems like being an author would be a lonely sort of endeavor, but that isn’t the way it is. It wasn’t that way for me, and I don’t think it’s that way for anybody else, either. With my book, I started out working with a friend. That’s logical, isn’t it — a book on friendship; it could be written by friends. But then her career suddenly took off, and she really needed to pursue that. So, as an act of friendship, she released me to work on the book myself. She gave all of our discussions, our early work, to me as an act of friendship. And then, by the time I’d finished the book, I had gathered around me a whole team for support — editors, beta readers, designers, proofers, the works! That’s what it takes, not just for a book on friendship; for any book.

What is the one habit you believe contributed the most to you becoming a great writer? (i.e. perseverance, discipline, play, craft study) Can you share a story or example?

Tenacity and resilience. Several years ago, I thought my book was ready to go, and I mailed the manuscript to someone I’d heard was a good copyeditor. She pointed out a number of ways what I’d written could be improved, and we worked on that together. Then when this editor and I both felt my book was ready to go — fingers off the keyboard — I reviewed lists of agents and emailed fifty-eight letters, tailoring each query to match that agent’s area of interest. A few wrote back to say that, even though they liked my voice, the book wasn’t a good fit for their current line-up; one even got back to me to say she didn’t like my voice. Finally, one sunny Friday morning, an agent contacted me to ask for more information. Shortly after I’d delivered that, we signed a contract. Within a few months, an acquisitions editor at Rowman and Littlefield decided publish my book. My point is that it wasn’t a slam-dunk, and I had to keep making my best effort.

Which literature do you draw inspiration from? Why?

When I go to the library or bookstore, I love the “recent releases” section. I prowl through these fresh-off-the-press books written by authors I don’t recognize — especially the ones from different countries. What I’m looking for is writers who hold a perspective that’s different from my own. Some of the books that have drawn me recently are The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi and The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi. My guilty pleasure when in the midst of writing deadlines, are reading spy thrillers by Daniel Silva, or mystery writers such as Sujata Massey. But when I’m relaxed and in a more thoughtful educational mode, I feel nourished by such books as Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

A great friendship starts with you. The word “friend” is derived from the word “to love.” And my definition of friendship is learning to love strangers. If we can explore our experience of loving strangers through understanding, mutual respect, listening, and growing, it’s the best antidote for divisiveness and hatred, which I consider is based on fear — often fear of strangers. Learning to treat others as you yourself would like to be treated is fundamental to our survival as a species. It’s the only way for our communities to thrive.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

You can reach me at:

Website: www.glendadshaw.com or www.betteryoubetterfriends.com;

Amazon: Glenda D Shaw;

Facebook: GlendaDShaw or betteryoubetterfriends;

Twitter: GlendaDShaw or betteryoubetterfriends;

Instagram: GlendaDShaw or betteryoubetterfriends;

LinkedIn: Glenda D Shaw

Thank you so much for this. This was very inspiring!