How did you become a writer?

For me, it wasn't a process of becoming, I always was. I started inventing complicated stories when I was a toddler, much to the confusion of my parents, and in first grade I filled a notebook with a novel about a seadog named Ray who is constantly having to save his hapless captain. The process of becoming a writer as a career was really a process of letting myself be myself. It's what I always wanted to do--telling stories, trying to understand this strange journey of human life--and the decisions I made were to give myself no other options but to pursue it. Quitting my day job, living for a time out of my van, I've found that betting on myself in extreme circumstances is a way of showing confidence and self love. Saying, "Do what you want, what choice do you have?"

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

I was blessed to study with David Foster Wallace for four years at Pomona College, which was bar-none the transformative learning experience of my life. His voice guides me still, and he was the first person to truly believe in my work. He gave an incredible amount of time, effort, and dedication to all of us students, which I find even more amazing now that I'm older and have had students of my own. I have three writers of the modern west whose books I return to again and again: Denis Johnson, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Charles Bowden. They lit the path I'm fumbling my way upon, here in the mountains.

When and where do you write?

Wherever I am when the inspiration seizes me. I'm not a believer in writing every day in a certain place for a set amount of time. When I quit my last job, I vowed not to recreate the pressure of a fixed schedule in my own head--to essentially be the kind of boss I'd already had. I always imagine a cup full of words inside me, and when I empty it out, it needs time to refill. So there are months where I'm in a cabin on a lake and I write constantly, thousands and thousands of words, followed by a month or two when I won't write at all. Trusting my mind to know which story is mine to tell, and that it will emerge when it's ready.

What are you working on now?

A novel about the Unabomber entitled OLD KING. Really, it's more about the town of Lincoln where he lived, and how the west changed over the course of his bombings. His story has been in my head for so long. I was 11 when he was caught, having spent my early childhood playing in the Montana woods and imagining some great evil lurking there. Then, just as I was starting middle school and turning away from such games, he was caught. My imaginings had been true in a sense, and I was thrown sharply back into that wild, dark world. Complicated by the fact that the environmental issues he was fighting for were those I felt so strongly as well.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

No, I would never call it that. Again I have long periods where I don't write, but nothing is blocked, it's just refilling.

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

This may sound harsh, but it's stuck with me since college and I attempt to use it to shape my life: "Writing will always take more than it can give, so you need to find other things to sustain you." Getting my hands in the dirt, camping, hiking mountains, swimming in lakes. Being in the world. Writing is a journey into the mind, and a pouring out of what you find there. It can be isolating and dislocating, so I strive to find joy in the beauty of the physical world, and small daily tasks. Remembering I have a body as well as a mind.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Don't write down every idea or detail or story that you think of. Learn to trust your mind as your own best editor. When I started writing, I always carried a notebook and wrote down everything I thought of, and then I would end up with notebook after notebook full of ideas, totally overwhelming when I opened them, and I never finished any of the stories. Now when I have an idea I don't write it down. I wait, and if it's still there in a few days, if my brain has cared enough to remember and chew on it, I know it's a story for me, and usually I finish it.

Raised in small towns in the west, Maxim Loskutoff is the critically acclaimed author of RUTHIE FEAR and COME WEST AND SEE, an NPR and Amazon Best Book of 2018, a New York Times Editor’s Pick, and winner of the High Plains Book Award. His stories and essays have appeared in numerous periodicals, including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Ploughshares, and Playboy. He lives in the Rocky Mountains of western Montana.