Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Judith Lindbergh. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Judith thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
I was probably eight years old, at overnight summer camp for the very first time. I remember passing one of the buildings, hearing music coming out of the open doors. There was one of the counselors, dancing by herself. Her movements and the music were unlike anything I had heard before—fascinating, glorious, and deeply emotional. I walked quietly into the room, took a spot in the corner, and joined her.
From that moment, I knew that I had to dance. And I did, professionally, for about seven years. But you cannot be a dancer forever. Bodies change, injuries happen, and eventually I knew that I would have to move on. I tried acting for a while, but didn’t get terribly far, mostly because no one would take me seriously with a resume full of dance credits.
Eventually, I was working in offices, doing temporary, fill-in gigs just to make ends meet, and honestly, bored out of my mind. To look busy, I started writing. First, letters that I mailed in actual envelopes with stamps. After I ran out of friends who hadn’t heard from me in a while, I started writing random thoughts, and then stories. Eventually, one of the stories kept growing and growing until I realized I was writing my first novel.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am the author of two historical novels. My latest, AKMARAL, is about a nomad woman warrior on the ancient Central Asian steppes. My debut novel, THE THRALL’S TALE, is about three women in Viking Age Greenland. Clearly I love writing about women in ancient times and obscure places! I am also the founder/director of a creative writing center, The Writers Circle. We’re offer workshops and classes in suburban New Jersey and online. Our mission is to nurture a love of creative writing in students of all ages, from eight years old to over 80.
I never planned to run a business, only to teach a few classes while I waited for my second novel to sell. But publishing is a fickle business and my timing was terrible. I submitted the first finished draft of AKMARAL to my agent in 2009, right in the middle of the Great Recession. The publishing industry was contracting along with everything else, and no one was willing to take a chance on a literary historical novel about a place and time most people had never heard of. But I had to do something to make a living while I waited for publishing to shake out and open up. Who knew that 1) it would take over a decade, and 2) I would discover a love for teaching and a talent for business that I never imagined I would?
When I teach, I rarely focus on publishing. I always talk about being true to each student’s voice, their vision, and their craft. You must commit yourself to the process and the discovery that comes with getting ideas on the page. And trust me, it can get messy.
From our earliest days in grade school, we are expected to write efficiently. We are given a rubric, taught to make an outline, and apparently, if we simply follow the plan, we’ll produce a successful piece of work. But creative writing—all writing, in my opinion—simply doesn’t work that way. You have to throw down a bunch of messy, half-baked ideas, and choppy, ill-formed sentences. I call it making the clay, which is just a pile of sticky, red-brown dirt. It has no shape, no expression, no meaning. Like a sculpture, a writer must take time to work with the clay, to discover their own ideas and ways of expressing them.
I never trouble even my youngest writers about grammar, spelling, or even whether their ideas make sense. We talk about intention—what a character wants—and world building, backstory, emotions, and relationships. We talk about how all those things combine to create a character who takes action, behaving and expressing themselves in a way that is authentic to them and propels a narrative forward. This is how a story slowly takes form. And it takes countless drafts and a lot of determination to polish our raw-clay words into a viable novel.
All of the instructors at The Writers Circle understand and teach this way because they are all published writers, too. You have to understand viscerally the struggles and joys of creativity before you can guide others to do the same. That is the key to what we do at The Writers Circle. Creativity is not a formula. It is a journey. At The Writers Circle, we share the journey with our students, cheering and supporting them from first messy draft to whatever “The End” means to them.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
My publishing journey started out with a bang. I found my agent for THE THRALL’S TALE a week after I queried her and the novel sold two weeks later. My advance allowed me to quit my day job and stay home writing—and raising my two sons—for years. Yet success came with tremendous pressure—pressure I didn’t understand and had no idea how to harness—to sell more books than my challenging, literary novel possibly could.
I remember one well-known author telling me that publishing was a rollercoaster. I didn’t understand then that she didn’t mean that it was fun. After such an amazing high came a serious fall. My editor rejected my next novel. My agent dumped me. I found a new agent, but she couldn’t sell the next book. I wrote another novel under her chapter-by-chapter guidance, but she couldn’t place that one either. Years passed. My kids grew up. The Writers Circle also grew. I resigned myself, half-heartedly but in earnest, to nurturing others. Still, every day, I sat down for several hours and wrote for myself. And I continued to submit my finished novels to agents and publishers.
I still have a completed novel that is looking for a publisher. And yes, I could always self-publish. Perhaps someday I will. But for now, I still believe in the support of a traditional press, no matter how small. After such a tremendous start and, years later, the enduring support of my author-friends, I value to respect and recognition that comes with traditional publishing.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
After everything I’ve been through, I’ve done a lot of soul-searching. Why am I writing? What am I trying to achieve? I know writers who are most interested in numbers—how many books they sell at each event, how big their next advance is, or how quickly they can get their next book out, no matter what method they use to publish it. I respect their choices, but that’s simply not me.
My goal has always been to try to be an artist in whatever creative work I do. If I only publish one or two more books in my life, or even if I never publish again, I want my writing time to be spent challenging myself to dig deeper and take more chances. I want to delve into worlds, characters, and struggles that take my own breath away. And I don’t want to compromise for the market by writing yet another version of whatever was hot last month. Writing is simply too slow and laborious, and life is too short. I want my writing always to be an authentic expression of my creative soul.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://judithlindbergh.com and https://
writerscircleworkshops.com/ - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
judithlindbergh/ - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/
judith.lindbergh - Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/
judith-lindbergh-5a6b724/ - Twitter: https://x.com/JudithLindbergh
- Other: https://judithlindbergh.
substack.com/