An Interview with Shari MacDonald Strong

Read an interview with Senior Editor and Zen and the Art of Child Maintenance columnist, Shari MacDonald Strong in, Mom Writer’s LITERARY MAGAZINE.
Shari talks about spending her days juggling her work as a writer and editor and “being a disorganized and highly affectionate mom.” About writing as a mother she says,

“As a group, moms (and mom writers) wield a lot of power. I think the most important and effective thing we can do is to stop reading and watching crap. We are an enormous consumer block. My advice? Don’t watch shows (political and otherwise) that focus on the shallow, the inconsequential. Demand that journalists ask the hard questions; turn off the fluff. Write to talk show hosts and politicians and remind them that we’re a smart, savvy group, that we want to know where politicians stand and specifically what they intend to do. Tell them to stop the name-calling and act like grown-ups. Vote not only with our ballots, but with our TV remotes and our letters-to-the-editor and our consumer dollars.

And, of course, we ourselves have to be willing to do the same hard work: on our blogs, in our columns, in our books. We need to wrestle with the hard issues and put ourselves out there, even if it might make our mothers-in-law mad. We must ask questions, explore possible answers, keep our minds open to ideas from all sides. We have to speak up – at the PTA meeting and online, with our voices and with our pens and our computer keyboards. Speaking truth to power doesn’t always sell, but what sells is far less important than what really matters.”