How did you become a writer? 

From a very early age, I always wanted to be a film director. Movies have always been a big passion of mine. I enjoyed reading, but movies usually won over books. That changed my sophomore or junior year in high school. First, I had recently seen The Matrix, and besides being blown away from the visuals, I was intrigued by the ideas expressed in the film. Critics kept throwing a certain word around when talking about The Matrix, so I went out and bought a book called Philosophy for Dummies (a great primer!). I was just being introduced to Philosophy’s basic concepts when I had to read Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha for class. And that book changed everything for me. It was a perfect distillation of the internal world of philosophy, and the external world of a fictional story. And not only was it written in a way that I could immediately lose myself in the protagonist, but it was expressing the same ideas and questions I was learning on my own, and more in-depth than a movie could ever get within two hours. I knew right away this was what I wanted to do, make movies that existed only in your head. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). 

Hermann Hesse, George Orwell, Chuck Palahniuk, Amy Hempl, Margaret Atwood, Lucia Berlin, Bret Easton Ellis, Stephen Graham Jones, Susan Sontag, Brian Evenson, Raymond Carver, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins, and so many others. 

When and where do you write? 

I write any time and anywhere, because life will usually try to get in the way. That said, I prefer to write first in the morning, usually in my basement, usually with a cup of coffee nearby.

What are you working on now? 

I’m working on my second novel. I don’t want to divulge too much, but it takes place in western North Carolina on the Appalachian Trail. Two families are finishing the trail in honor of loved ones who were murdered on the trail years before. Unbeknownst to them, something is “unearthed” along the trail, and of course, all hell breaks loose. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I don’t know whether this was writer’s block or not, but there was a point in my writing where I could tell the way I was going about things was not going to last. I was very much someone who wrote whenever the mood struck me, or if inspiration struck me. I’d get the idea for a story, but I would let the story linger in my head until it was pretty much fully formed. That changed after a while. I’d get an idea for a story and wait for it to form in my head, but the sentences were few and far between. I found myself sitting down to write without a clue as to what I was actually going to write. It felt like the well I was drawing my creativity from was running dry, until it finally did. Now I would have the kernel of a story, but the words wouldn’t just snap into place like they did before. I had to change my approach to fiction, how I wrote, what I looked for in a potential story, for me to get back into the swing of things. And I had to get used to writing crappy drafts before the story would begin to reveal itself to me. Something that helped was something Chuck Palahniuk talks about, which is something he got from Tom Spanbauer: “Shitting out the coal.” In my own words, it’s basically the idea of pushing out that first draft, the piece of coal, and polishing it until it’s a diamond. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? 

The “best” is hard to pin down. I’ve lucked upon a lot of great writing advice, but the ones that stick out the most come from non-writer sources. Years ago, I read Legs McNeil’s oral biography of punk rock’s origins in New York and then London, Please Kill Me, and something that’s always stuck out to me was how the Ramones approached their music. They were sick of these long, meandering records with six-minute guitar solos and decadent compositions. When they would perform at CBGB, they would promptly take the stage, one of them would yell out “ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR,” they’d play their entire album in twenty minutes, unplug their guitars and get off the stage. They weren’t messing around with the frivolous elements of music at the time, and I just love that attitude. I use that example as the same approach to my own writing. I don’t want to write a chapter that’s maybe boring but conveys valuable information. I want the whole thing to sing as much as the fun parts sing, so it’s important to me that what I write is lean, purposeful, packs a punch, and unplugs before people can scream for an encore. 

What’s your advice to new writers? 

Don’t quit, and don’t despair. I’ve always reasoned to myself that published “bad” writers are just writers who never quit. So if I had any talent or not, if I was a “good” writer or not, it didn’t matter. All I had to do was never quit and sooner or later I would push through. I know a lot of talented writers who gave up because of one thing or another. It’s a matter of time, not strictly talent.

Also, find someone you trust who is also a writer to share and critique each other’s work. Find a writing group, or start one. Critiquing each other’s work provides two benefits: you’re getting feedback on your work, and you begin to develop a thick skin when it comes to criticism. I’m not saying you need to suffer through people bashing your work, but we’re all vulnerable when it comes to our writing, and by letting someone you trust or whose opinion you value read your work and give an honest critique, you’ll learn to see your work in a more objective light, making it easier to edit and revise later, because you won’t be so protective of it. 

Gus Moreno is the author of This Thing Between Us. His stories have appeared in Southwest Review, Aurealis, Pseudopod, and Burnt Tongues, an anthology. His essays and articles have been featured in Publisher’s Weekly, Literary Hub, and CrimeReads. He lives in the suburbs with his wife and dogs, but never think that he's not from Chicago.