Interviewing an author has always been something I wanted to do. After having the privilege of interviewing author Joni Cole, I want to dedicate my visceral appreciation to her in this article.  After having messaged dozens of authors sharing something I loved in their work, she was the only one who replied. It was like witnessing water in a desert. Joni wanted to interact, and I wanted to learn her charisma and skill. That’s how I found myself sitting on a chair and staring at a Google Document. And yes, Joni, if you’re reading this, you probably already have shaken your head analyzing my word choice, literary decisions, metaphors, and structure. Let’s not forget she runs a writing workshop where she analyzes and scrutinizes drafts upon drafts.

I have had four conversations with Joni, each one building upon the prior in terms of enjoyment, preparedness, and camaraderie. As I do want to dedicate the bulk of this article detailing her tips and tricks — we should all want to learn something from a Dartmouth creative writing instructor —I will only briefly describe each of my conversations. During October I interviewed Joni about how she views the drafting process and tips on how I could improve my drafts. Three words encapsulate it all: it is organic. With that theme marinating in my mind, two months later, in December, I asked her about sentence structure, word choice, adverbs, and idioms. In January, I changed the theme to how she views the author-reader relationship; I’ve always wondered if authors accommodated readers in writing scenes. The answer is no. Lastly, just last week, my mind was relling me “book publishing,” and I got book publishing advice. Did you know Joni has seven books with five contractors? To my level of satisfaction, where 90s with an English teacher will produce a smile, Joni has only been an inspiration.

Here are several tips Joni abides by when writing:

1. Whatever is on the mind, write it down. Writer’s block is real. Instead of focusing too hard to transplant the perfect masterpiece from the brain to the A4 document, just write it down.

2. Draft, Draft, Draft. Some people hate editing drafts upon drafts. Do you want to repeat after me? Your first draft is not perfect. Continue, continue! Read it out loud. Let it ferment.

3. Don’t use fancy words to make your work sound eloquent. Fancy words and it really fits in your particular circumstance? That being said, Joni recommends that you make the definition abundantly clear from the surrounding context; readers hate typing ‘loquacious’ into Google. Be your own Google for the reader. Using a fancy word to aggrandize your lexical erudition kills your reader’s belief in you. You really think that normal people go to the store asking the cashier, “Aggrandize my bank account, do you have any coupons?” The word aggrandize, and all the others that make you sound like a replica of George Washington or a big ego person, sounds weird.

Since I know a teenager’s attention span is less than 60 seconds given how the TikTok algorithm prioritizes its age group, and I want to give Joni’s advice without yawns, distractions, or eye-tiredness, I will resume the second part of this article at a later date.

You can contact Joni at jonibcole@gmail.com. My past interviews with Joni are included in this article, and I recommend you watch the most recent one about book publishing.