Jesse Katz

Name your writing influences. I owe my writing life to the encouragement of Joe McGinniss, who taught at Bennington College when I was a student there in the early 1980s. He introduced me to creative nonfiction—once known as new journalism, now more often as literary journalism—which thrilled and inspired me. I felt with unexpected clarity that writing factual prose while employing the techniques of a novelist was exactly what I wanted to do. Joe’s own work would later come under scrutiny, but he believed in me when I knew so little.

When do you write? I’m a morning writer. Very early morning. Sometimes I wish I weren’t. 

What are you working on now? I’ve been busy promoting my second book, The Rent Collectors, a deeply reported portrait of immigrant Los Angeles and the gangsters who exploit the most vulnerable members of the community. I’m adding the finishing touches to a companion piece, a first-person essay about my relationship with the young man whose involvement in two botched murders frames the story: he’s the perpetrator of one, the survivor of the other. He’s currently in year 17 of a 51-year sentence, and without his courage and integrity, this book wouldn’t exist.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Not in any crippling sense. But it’s important to step away from the screen, especially when you’re struggling. I’ll typically go for a walk or a run after a day of writing, and whether it’s been a good day or a bad day, all sorts of ideas and memories and associations come percolating to the surface when I’ve dislodged myself from the keyboard and freed myself from the responsibility of being insightful and precise. I’ll jot down some of those unmoored thoughts, and they’ll be on a scrap of paper next to me when I’m ready to pick up where I left off.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? I’m a huge believer in the importance of what Anne Lamott calls “shitty first drafts.” It’s all too easy to succumb to your inner perfectionist—the fear that someone might peek over your shoulder and, seeing your under-construction ramblings, conclude that you’re a fraud. No work is born immaculate. Writing is a process, and getting something on the page, however imperfect, is the only way to begin.

What’s your advice to new writers? Talent is overrated. Inspiration is an illusion. Discipline, endurance, perseverance—the stubborn ability to sit in the chair and keep on challenging yourself, especially in the face of all the distractions the world throws our way—that’s the one tool every writer needs.

Jesse Katz is the author of The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LA. He previously spent 15 years as a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, where he shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, and nine years at Los Angeles magazine, where he earned the James Beard Foundation’s M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. Jesse is also the author of a memoir, The Opposite Field.