A Class of Leaders is a wonderful novel. It’s well told, moves briskly, has a moral, and looks back at a time (1969) and place (South Central Los Angeles). A great read! I could see it as a Showtime movie. —Gary Turchin, author of The Silly-Verse Universe

Many writers have asked me, “What should I do if I have to write something, or feel like writing something, but don’t know what to say?”

My answer to them is, “An idea will eventually come to you if you keep on writing.”

Julia Cameron, a woman who makes you want to write if you read her many books on writing, says, “It is the act of writing that calls ideas forward, not ideas that call forward writing.”

If you have a deadline to meet or an inclination to write but don’t know what to say, should you think before you write or write before you think?

I say, “Don’t think, but keep on writing until an idea comes to mind.”

Let me give you an example. Many times, since I began this project, I’ve said to myself (and I’ll probably say it again), “What am I going to write about today?” What I do is sit down to write and invariably, if I keep on writing without thinking, an idea will float to the surface. If I try to think about what I want to write, most of the time nothing materializes.

So, if you don’t have an idea to write about, keep on writing without thinking. I swear you’ll come up with an idea.

I thoroughly enjoyed A Class of Leaders. The students’ voices, in their speech and written notes, are exceptional. It’s Joseph Sutton’s best. —Gerald Rosen, author of The Carmen Miranda Memorial Flagpole

While teaching at Fremont High School in South Los Angeles, I wrote in my journal, every day, for four months, and used those notes to produce a novel about a white teacher in a black ghetto high school. I called the book A Class of Leaders.

When I was a young writer living in Berkeley, my girlfriend and I broke up after living together for four years. Soon after the split, I witnessed the death of my father in Los Angeles. To overcome those two losses, I decided to hit the highways of America in my VW bus. I wrote in my journal, every day, on that three-month journey. After I settled down in Portland, Oregon, I used my journal entries to write my second novel, Highway Sailor: A Rollicking American Journey.

For my third novel, Morning Pages: The Almost True Story of My Life, about a writer overcoming writer’s block, I wrote in my journal, every day, for three months. Again, I used my daily journal entries to write that novel.

Do you see a pattern of how those novels came into being? I wrote in my journal, every day, for three or four months.

I’m not saying you should follow my pattern. What I’m saying is, if you write in your journal, every day, for a month or two or three, it’s one way to get a writing project off the ground. At the very least you’ll have plenty of material to work with.