How did you become a writer?

My supervillain author origin story is basically that I was bad at everything else. From a young age, I wanted to be an artist. But I simply wasn’t good at the various artforms I tried. I’m fairly tone deaf and never got the hang of any instrument. Didn’t have the eye for photography. I can’t draw and even my handwriting is near illegible scribbles. Etc. When I was in college, I started to write poems and stories and it just clicked. It made sense to me. I was good at it! Or at least good relative to the other artforms I’d failed at. 

Of course, I’d also been a voracious reader from a very young age so perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise that writing was the path for me. 

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

The first authors who really made me want to be a writer were Franz Kafka and Italo Calvino. I think most of my work still tries to imitate the dreamy unreality of the former and the inventive playfulness of the later. Other major influences for me are Kobo Abe, Shirley Jackson, Donald Barthelme, Octavia Butler, Yoko Ogawa, Joy Williams, Denis Johnson, and Jorge Luis Borges. I’ve been lucky to have some fantastic teachers, among them Diane Williams, Ben Marcus, and Sam Lipsyte. 

When and where do you write?

Any and everywhere. I’m not a creature of habit, or perhaps more accurately I change my habits a lot. When I lived by the park, I used to write in the park every day. Before the pandemic, I’d spend a lot of time at coffee shops. I edit on the subway. Revise on rooftops. Morning, afternoon, evening. I don’t mean that I’m a super writer who is always writing—indeed like many writers I’m a horrible procrastinator and time waster—but just that I don’t have a specific routine around time of day or location. 

What are you working on now

I’m finishing up what I hope will be my second novel, which I’m describing as Pale Fire meets Star Trek. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

On specific projects? Yes. But not in general. My ADHD brain makes me jump around projects and I always have a lot of things in the works. Right now I have a couple novel starts and a lot of short stories as well as a non-fiction idea and other projects. So when I’m stuck on one, I have others I can tinker with.  

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

When I was in college, I was randomly roommates with the son of a famous author. One time we got dinner with him and a group when he was in town for a book event. My friend (annoyingly) told his father I was an aspiring writer. The famous author turned to me and said only two words: “Finish things.” Then he turned back to chatting with his agent. I still think that’s the best advice. You have to finish things. Finish drafts, finish revisions, finish books. Sometimes they don’t work and you have to move onto the next one. But learning to actually finish things is one of the hardest lessons for writers. A lot of new writers get lost in the drafts and never publish. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

The first and best advice is to read widely. Read across genres. Read old writers and new ones. Read in translation. Read everything you can. My second advice is to lean into what interests you. Sometimes, young writers think they need to balance out their work or write toward what they think the market wants. But what will stand out isn’t another version of what’s out there. What will stand out is what is you unique to you. Take the ideas you think are insane or bizarre or scary or too darn weird, and then write them with the utmost seriousness and all the skill you can muster. That’s the book people will want to read. 

Lincoln Michel is the author of the science fiction novel The Body Scout (Orbit) and the story collection Upright Beasts (Coffee House Press). His fiction appears in The Paris Review, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Granta, NOON, and elsewhere. You can find him online at lincolnmichel.com and the newsletter Counter Craft.