Pete Beatty

How did you become a writer?

I was a creative kid, but not obsessed with writing more than anything else. Throughout college I wrote, mostly ultra garbage. But in my twenties I wrote infrequently, and often gave up for long stretches. I was avoiding failure by not trying, and also I was very depressed. Eventually I did therapy and gave myself permission to try, and started with short things, which led to longer things, and which led to an MFA program that afforded me enough time to finish a good draft of a novel. The novel is published now, but on a bad day I still don't feel like a real writer. I still get in my own head and go quiet. But now I sorta buy it when I tell myself I'm recharging my brain.

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

Nikolai Gogol, the different shapes and seasons of the Bible, Toni Morrison, Anne Carson, Charles Portis, gnomic detective novels. I try to read eclectically, although my current 39-year old version much prefers honest feeling to literary virtuosity. I am skeptical to the point of self-defeat when it comes to taking advice, so I tend to avoid books about writing. A few exceptions: Stephen King's On Writing, Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. Teachers: Michael Martone. A profusely generous reader and kind human being.

When and where do you write? 

At a coffee shop, early, under a baseball cap, sweatshirt with hood up, on an old laptop with the Wi-Fi card removed. The pandemic has not been great for my writing, as I am minimizing time spent indoors with randos.

What are you working on now? 

Just taking notes toward a very hazy idea.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

There are many different species of silence-inhibition, emptiness, fatigue, distraction, self-preservation, fear, etc. I have hung out with all of the species at length.

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

Ass in chair.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Ass in chair.

Pete Beatty has taught writing at Kent State University and the University of Alabama, and edits books for a living. His first novel Cuyahoga published in 2020, and according to the New York Times it is "a breezy fable of empire, class, conquest and ecocide."