Hello Inklings!

This month’s Ink Splat Author Interview features award-winning author and journalist, Jonathan Merritt. Jonathan has a wealth of knowledge of the publishing world through his own writing, his ghostwriting, and also his work as an agent and editor. Jonathan has contributed to The New York Times, USA Today, Buzzfeed, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast and Christianity Today, and his books have landed on numerous best-seller lists including the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal.

Jonathan shared with us about his newest writing adventure, which posed surprising challenges and opportunities by stretching his word-wrangling and storytelling skills in a new direction. The resulting picture book, My Guncle and Me, is delightful and not-to-be-missed.

Learn more about Jonathan at jonathanmerritt.com.

Writing Challenge

Experiment with a Word Bank

First of all, what is a word bank?

In Jonathan’s interview, he encourages us to begin our own word bank, a collection of off-beat words, mesmerizing turns of phrase, and unique metaphors that we come across in articles or books. You can keep your collection anywhere you like, as long as it is close at hand when you sit down to write.

So, how might you use your word bank?

A word bank can start a piece of writing with a mind-bending combination of words. Scan your collection and choose three words or phrases that seem completely unrelated. Then, use your innovative imagination to connect them into a surprising story idea.

A word bank can also solve a problem. Sometimes you feel stuck and simply have no idea how to make your writing sparkle and sing. Consult your word bank for a metaphor or a phrase that you can use as a lightning rod to electrify your otherwise lackluster sentences.

Ready to start?

Jonathan also reminds us to watch out for puny verbs and to replace them with strong ones. Here’s a kick-start for your word bank, filled with powerful verbs.

• rumble
• leapfrog
• shiver
• bounce
• careen
• sizzle
• bubble
• waltz
• blunder
• snicker

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it is:

Choose three mismatched verbs. Use them to spark a story idea, and see if you can craft your story’s beginning, middle, and end all within 500 words or less. Are you up for the challenge? 

How do you approach the process of choosing the just-right word or phrase? 

I think the process of finding the just-right word or phrase begins long before you are searching for it pen-in-hand. Whenever I come across off-beat words, mesmerizing turns of phrase and unique metaphors in articles or books, I file them away in a running document I have on my computer and phone. It’s helpful to have a work bank from which to pull when writing. Often times nothing from this document will do, however. In these cases, I begin perusing other resources, such as my handy thesaurus and metaphors dictionary, which can be helpful in supplying the just-right word. If this doesn’t work, I refuse to allow myself to spend too much time growing frustrated. Instead, I highlight the portion of the manuscript I’m struggling with and set it aside for a while. Often the just-right word or phrase comes to me in the course of living my actual life rather than when I’m banging my head against the sheetrock trying to force it. 

As an award-winning journalist, how did it feel to turn your attention to the art of writing a picture book? What new challenges did your project, My Guncle and Me, invite you to take on?

Being a journalist has taught me the need to write concisely and to opt for strong verbs rather than puny, weak ones. Both of these skills are necessary when writing a children’s picture book. But the experience was also quite challenging because the genre is so vastly different. Writing a children’s picture book felt like trying an avant garde workout class that required me to stretch and flex entire muscle groups that I’ve never utilized before. So much of it felt strange and new. I wrote My Guncle and Me in rhyme, for example, which is not something a journalist would ever do and required a lot of research and practice. And even though the book is heavily inspired by my own life as a guncle, it’s a fictionalized story, which could not be more different from facts-based journalism’s that never deviates from the fixed who, what, when, where and why of a real event. Any time you attempt to crossover into a new genre as a writer, you will encounter challenges, which I like to think of more as “growth opportunities.” 

What aspect of the writing process brings you joy?

 If I had to choose, I’d say that I love the process of storytelling as much as anything else. A great story can mesmerize an audience and entertain the masses, sure. But it will also be remembered. Research shows that human brains are specifically wired for storytelling and that we remember narratives more easily than other ways of packaging information. A logical argument or some astounding statistics can be persuasive, and everyone loves a wise axiom. But none of these ways of communicating is as memorable as a well-told story.

A special thank you to Jonathan Merritt for sharing with us! 

Jonathan Merritt is an award-winning author and journalist, and wears many other literary hats as well, including ghostwriter, agent, and editor. Jonathan’s newest release is a picture book titled My Guncle and Me. This book is his first foray into kidlit and was just released this week. We strongly encourage you to check it out–we know you’ll love it!  

Visit jonathanmerritt.com to learn more about Jonathan and to follow his literary journey.

Check out Jonathan’s book and all of our recent Ink Splat authors’ works at our Bookshop.org Store.