Meet Judith Lindbergh

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.

Judith, we’ve been so fortunate to work with so many incredible folks and one common thread we have seen is that those who have built amazing lives for themselves are also often the folks who are most generous. Where do you think your generosity comes from?

My generosity and compassion come from so many places: from my own struggle to create stories worthy of sharing with others, from the loneliness and dedication required to write, and from my longing to be heard. Because I know how hard it is. In the publishing world, it’s very difficult to get attention. There are so many writers, and so many wonderful novels, short stories, memoirs, poems…. No one can possibly read them all! But we all have the right to be heard and to have our thoughts and words cherished. Every writer wants that–indeed, every human being. While most of us will never become bestsellers or perhaps even publish at all, I want all the writers I work with to have a safe space to share their words and to grow. I realize the vulnerability, anxiety, and passion that goes into getting words on the page. To honor that, I listen. Listening, guiding, and supporting other writers through the struggle to create are generous acts that we can all give for one another.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am a novelist and the founder/director of The Writers Circle, a creative writing center offering workshops and special events in suburban New Jersey and online. Since 2010, our mission has been to nurture a love of creative writing in students of all ages, from age eight to over 80.

I never planned to run a business, only to teach a few classes while I worked on my second novel. But selling that book took far longer than I ever expected. (AKMARAL, about a woman warrior on the ancient Central Asian steppes, published in May 2024.) Meanwhile, I had to do something to make a living. Who knew that I would discover a love for teaching and a talent for business that I never imagined I would?

When I teach, I focus on being true to each student’s voice, vision, and craft. I encourage them to commit to the uncertain and sometimes messy process of getting ideas onto the page.

From our earliest school days, 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 experience—simply doesn’t work that way. You have to throw down a bunch of half-baked ideas and choppy, ill-formed sentences. I call it making the clay, which is just a pile of sticky, red-brown yuck. 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 refine them, draft by draft, until they are ready for others to read.

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, who behaves and expresses themselves in a way that is authentic to them so that they do things that propel a narrative forward. This is how a story slowly takes form. And it takes countless revisions and a lot of determination to polish our raw-clay words into a masterpiece.

All of the instructors at The Writers Circle are published writers themselves. They understand viscerally the struggles and joys of writing and use that personal experience to guide others. 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 that journey with our students, cheering and supporting them from first messy draft to whatever “The End” means to them.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I’ve always been a perfectionist, which has been both a blessing and a curse. There’s a great quote from Anne Lamott’s classic BIRD BY BIRD: SOME INSTRUCTIONS ON WRITING AND LIFE: “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people.” And she’s right when referring to a first draft, which is the context of the quote. You have to allow yourself to be completely open and to make wrong turns when you’re discovering what your story really wants to be. But later, when you’re revising the third, fourth, or even fifth drafts, perfectionism is what makes the difference between a decent manuscript and a really polished story.

At the same time, I’ve had to learn to be flexible. Life rarely goes the way that you plan. Flexibility and adaptability are keys to running any business, because you never know what new problem or opportunity awaits. The same is true when you’re writing. You think you see where the plot and characters are going, but then they do something unexpected. Do you let them? Or do you force them down the narrow path that you’ve already mapped out? In my experience, being open to the unexpected makes for far more interesting writing. And it works just as well in real life, because you’re able to shift and reposition, navigating tricky situations like the pandemic when our entire business (and everyone else’s!) went online in a matter of hours. I don’t have a big IT department here to help me. It was just me and my tiny, decentralized team. But we pulled it off and our writing community not only survived, but thrived, growing from hyperlocal to welcoming national and even international students who are writing with us still.

Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?

I believe that we all have many strengths, but we rarely have the time or opportunity to development them. Our educational system encourages specialization, narrowing our focus to ensure that we have deep knowledge and skills, but not broad. However, I could never have sustained The Writers Circle without the countless skills that life thrust upon me. I worked for a number of years in the IT Department of a major media company. It was yet another “job-job” I took for income rather than love like so many artists maintain by necessity. But I learned so much there—from web design and Photoshop to how to manage teams. Before that, I worked as a legal assistant at a corporate law firm. I hated the job and felt completely trapped there, but I learned how to read and eventually mimic “legalese” which definitely comes in handy in my business.

No, I didn’t seek out any of these skills, but I am so grateful I have them. While they stretched me out of my comfort zone, I never let them compromise my greater literary objectives. At one point, I was offered a job as a technical writer, but I turned it down. I knew that if I spent all day writing technical manuals, I wouldn’t have the energy I needed for my art. For me, writing was simply too precious. By making that choice, I ended up in IT doing very different work that expanded my skillset while allowing me to preserve what was most important to me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://writerscircleworkshops.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writerscircleworkshops/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WritersCircleWorkshops/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-writers-circle/

Image Credits

The Writers Circle