Lev Grossman

How did you become a writer?

The same way Hemingway describes going bankrupt: gradually, then suddenly. I wasn't one of those precocious little children who was scribbling stories as soon as they could write. But I read everything I could get my hands on, and then, starting in college, I wrote reams of bad short stories that were never published. Later I wrote a couple of pretty-good novels that were. Then when I was 35, I finally wrote a novel I was proud of. There are lots of ways to do it, but that's how I did it. If you can do it quicker and less painfully and more profitably, definitely do that.

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

No teachers. I never took a writing class. Partly because I was rejected from all the MFA programs I applied to. But books: I study them very, very closely. The Sun Also Rises, Ulysses, Brideshead Revisited, Mrs. Dalloway. The Corrections. And on the genre side, The Once and Future King (hot tip: describe the past like it's the present), Larry Niven's Warlock stories, Fritz Leiber, Piers Anthony, the late Anne McCaffrey, Susanna Clarke, and above all C.S. Lewis. Along with T.H. White, he's one of the first fantasy writers who described fantasy using the language of a realist -- not full of sparkles and wonderment and special effects, but simply, clearly, concretely, as if it were actually happening.

When and where do you write?

Whenever and wherever I can. I have a full-time job and two young kids. So mostly in my study, but also on the train, at work, wherever I can string together a few uninterrupted minutes.

What are you working on now?

A new novel -- the third book in the Magicians trilogy. And also a couple of side-projects that I can't talk about yet. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Not really. When you only have five or six hours a week in which to get your books finished, writer's block becomes a luxury you can't afford. I'm not really complaining. That kind of pressure focuses the mind in wonderful ways.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read everything. If you haven't read everything, you'll never be able to write anything. Other than that, my advice is, don't listen to other writers. I don't mean don't take advice. Just don't listen too much. Writers have a bad habit of talking about how much we're writing and how well it's going and where we're appearing and how many words we wrote today and so on. Fuck 'em. If you listen to too much of that guff, you'll start to think you're the only person in the world who doesn't have a Guggenheim or whatever. But inside we're all weeping with despair and frustration, same as everybody else.

Lev Grossman is the author of four novels, including the New York Times bestsellers The Magicians and The Magician King. He is also the book critic for Time magazine.

Austin Kleon

How did you become a writer?

Like most of our kind, I started out as a reader. I just really, really love to read. My parents read to me every night, we’d make weekly trips to the public library, and my mom would buy me a new book whenever she went to the mall on the weekend and I’d sit in a chair and read it while she shopped. In elementary school, we had a young author’s program where we wrote and illustrated our own books, in sixth grade, I won a big national essay contest, and in high school I took English courses at the local branch of Ohio University.

When I went to college I started studying writing more intensely. I took a lot of creative writing workshops, wrote music reviews and other pieces for a few rags and zines, and studied literature for a semester abroad at Cambridge University. But my senior year I discovered comics again and realized that I needed to figure out a way to bring my writing and drawing back together again.

I joined a writing group in Cleveland after college, got a job at a public library, and started submitting stories to journals. I soon decided I wasn’t a short story writer and that I had no talent for fiction. So I started a blog, drew a lot, thought I might do a graphic novel, wandered a bit, and then I started making my newspaper blackout poems. Those took off big in 2008 after I moved to Texas and got a job as a web designer, and my first book, Newspaper Blackout, came out in 2010. Based on my work on that book, my web skills, and my modest success online, I got a job as an interactive copywriter in 2011. I worked as a copywriter for a year until the release of my new book, Steal Like An Artist.

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

I think when I was younger, I was shaped by movies, comics, and pop music more than anything else. I remember watching VCR tapes over and over, stuff like Back to the Future and Ghostbusters, reading comics from the bookmobile like Far Side and Garfield, and copying down song lyrics in my notebook, from acts like Beck and the Velvet Underground. As for books, in elementary it was Choose Your Own Adventure, in middle school, Orwell’s 1984, in high school, Howard Zinn’s People’s History.

When I got to college two people really influenced me: my writing teacher, Steven Bauer, and my good friend Brandon Abood. Steven turned me on to George Saunders and Kurt Vonnegut and helped me discover my sense of humor in my writing, and Brandon turned me on to writers like Charles Bukowski and Raymond Carver.

When I moved to Cleveland after college, my (soon-to-be) father-in-law was a big influence on me. He’s such an incredible writer and a mind. He’s been at it professionally for almost 40 years, and his chops are just so honed from a life or working. He just inspired me to not bullshit, to be a good family man and a mensch.

I also befriended a writer named Dan Chaon who teaches writing at Oberlin College. He invited me to see Lynda Barry speak and to hang out with her at a bar afterwards. That night literally changed my life. Getting to know Lynda and her work just kind of unlocked something in my brain, and I saw that there was a model for putting pictures and words together in your career. Then, a few months later I saw a Saul Steinberg show on my honeymoon, and I loved his autobiographical phrase “a writer who draws” so much that I decided to steal it for myself.

After that I found myself mostly influenced by really good blogs and bloggers online. People like Hugh MacLeod, Maud Newton, Jason Kottke, and the 37 Signals guys.

When and where do you write?

I like to write and draw in the morning at my desk. (I aspire to John Waters’ routine: make stuff up in the morning, and sell it in the afternoon.) I have an “analog” desk where nothing digital is allowed — and then, when I’m finished, I’ll go over to my “digital” desk and fiddle with whatever I’ve made. Sometimes I go back and forth between the two.

What are you working on now?

I’m writing and researching a little essay about forgery vs. plagiarism as different models for creating new work, and I’m also starting to think about my next book, which is going to be about marriage and creativity.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Yes! My newspaper blackout poems were a direct response to the writer’s block I had after college. The thing about creative writing workshops in college is that they’re the perfect, artificial environment for writers: your teacher is getting paid to pay attention to your writing, and your fellow students are paying to care about your writing. It’s what every writer dreams of: a captive audience. Then, you get out of school and you realize that nobody gives a crap about you. That really paralyzed me, and it took me a while to really be honest about what I liked and what I wanted to be writing.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Well, my whole book, Steal Like An Artist, is basically a big list of advice I wish I’d had when I was 19, but four things that are really, really important to me:

1) Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started. The way you figure yourself out is by making things.

2) Write the book you want to read. Don’t screw around writing work to please your teachers or agents or literary journals. Think about the books you love, and mash them up into something of your own. Think about the writers you love, and pick up the torch from them.

3) Do good work and put it where people can see it. That’s the only real secret. The internet is the major medium of our time, so don’t ignore it, embrace it.

4) Be boring. It’s the only way to get work done. Get a day job, find a regular hour or two a day to write, take care of yourself, and be a good friend.

How has the Internet influenced your writing?

Pretty much everything good that’s happened in my career has been the result of my engaging with the internet. Having a blog meant I felt like I needed to fill it with something which made me make a lot of new work. Both my books started on my blog. Blogging also meant I could post not just my own work, but I could point to the things I loved, and I gained a readership that valued me as not just a writer, but a kind of curator and thinker. Now, with Twitter, I find myself constantly being influenced by my readers — they send me good stuff just as much as I send it to them. I’m so happy to be alive and working right now.

Austin Kleon is a writer who draws.

http://www.austinkleon.com

Robert Masello

How did you become a writer?

I don't actually know when I wasn't a writer, or at least trying to be one. My mother gave me a toy typewriter when I was about six, and even on that I started to bang out ghost and horror stories.  What's odd is that my tastes haven't changed very much all these years later. My most recent novels, "Blood and Ice" and "The Medusa Amulet," for instance, are still gussied up supernatural tales, and I could swear I'm still doing versions of scenes, and going for effects, that I was striving to achieve on that little red typewriter in my bedroom in Evanston, Illinois.  

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

Boy, I had so many influences over the years, from terrific English teachers in high school  (Curtis Crotty, Ronald Gearing, Barbara Pannwitt -- thank you so much!) to various writers ranging from W. Somerset Maugham (who taught me how critical it was to create characters the reader cares about) to Ian Fleming (who taught me how to hold off the conclusion of an action sequence) to the great English writer of ghost stories, M.R. James, whose tales still give me the creeps every time I re-read them.

When and where do you write?

Anytime, but only in my messy little upstairs office. I have no set schedule, but I usually feel most creative at night when the phone stops ringing, the e-mails slow down, and the dog, my sole companion, goes to sleep.  

What are you working on now?

Right now I'm doing the copy-edit (a hard, but vitally important chore in the progress of any book) on my upcoming novel, "The Romanov Cross." And in any spare time I have, I'm working on the idea for the next one. I have a general arena for the action, and a main character I'm excited about, but the plot is still escaping me. Plot, for me, is far and away the hardest part of any project, and I so much admire writers -- from Dickens to Stephen King -- who seem to never want for one.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Not really. There are certainly times when the work is not going well, but I usually just turn to writing something else -- an essay, say, or an article -- until the big project (a book, or script) gets moving again. Sometimes, all it takes is a day or two away from the project to come back to it with fresh eyes and energy.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Stick to it, if you're serious. It doesn't necessarily get any easier, but you do get better at it. I know so many people who WANT to write, but very few of them can force themselves into a quiet room, for hours at a stretch, to get it done. It's lonely work, and isolating -- and that's, without a doubt, the most difficult aspect of it for me. I'm a sociable guy by nature, but much of the time I have to sequester myself in this little room (in need of a paint job) that I'm in right now. Thank god for the dog!

Bio: I grew up, as mentioned earlier, in Evanston, Illinois, studied writing under Robert Stone and Geoffrey Wolff (two marvelous writers) at Princeton, then moved to New York, where I wrote for magazines and newspapers for many years. I also turned out a few books in those years -- "Black Horizon," "The Spirit Wood," "Private Demons," "Fallen Angels," "Raising Hell" ---- which have now been reissued on-line by Premier Digital.  It's nice, but strange, to have those old titles available again.  It's like meeting up again, years later, with children  you had been forced to abandon. (I wonder if I have the nerve to read them again.)  I moved to Los Angeles in 1991, wrote for some TV shows (such as "Charmed" and "Sliders"), and then returned to my first love, books. The most recent, a supernatural thriller rooted in the Renaissance, is called "The Medusa Amulet," and it came out in a paperback edition from Bantam just last week.