Susan Orlean

How did you become a writer?

I began writing -- that is, telling stories in written form -- when I was a kid, and never stopped. I began publishing when I got out of college, having lucked into a writing job at a small magazine in Portland, Oregon. Then I learned on the job. 

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

My high school English teacher, John Heaps, made me believe I could write, and made me love reading and writing even more than I already did. Reading great fiction (Faulkner, Hemingway, Joyce) and great non-fiction (Wolfe, Didion, McPhee) made me dream of what writing at its best could be. My editors -- too many to name here -- have been great teachers, too, and I've learned something from all of them.

When and where do you write?

I write whenever I have a deadline looming, but my best time is mid- to late afternoon. I write wherever I need to be, but my favorite writing place is a little studio I built for myself about two hundred yards from my house. It's private and quiet and cozy and there are not that many distractions.  

What are you working on now?

I'm in the stage that's the most invisible to the observer: I'm thinking of new ideas. So I'm not writing or researching, but I'm percolating. I want to fall in love with a few story ideas and perhaps a new book idea.  

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I've been stuck, of course, but never experienced what would be called "writer's block." I have found myself confused about what I'm trying to say, and I've found myself tongue-tied because I don't really know my subject well enough yet, but I've never felt phobic or "blocked" when it came to actually writing.  

What’s your advice to new writers?

Write as much as you can; read as much as you can. Think before you write. Feel passionate about your subject or about the process of writing. Work hard. Have fun.  

Susan Orlean is the bestselling author of eight books, including My Kind of Place; The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup;  Saturday Night; and Lazy Little Loafers. In 1999, she published The Orchid Thief, a narrative about orchid poachers in Florida, which was made into the Oscar-wining movie, "Adaptation," written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze. Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, a sweeping account of Rin Tin Tin’s journey from orphaned puppy to movie star and international icon published in 2011, was a New York Times bestseller and a Notable book of 2011.

Orlean has written for Vogue, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Smithsonian, and has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1992. She has covered a wide range of subjects – from umbrella inventors to origami artists to skater Tonya Harding – and she has often written about animals, including show dogs, racing pigeons, animal actors, oxen, donkeys, mules, and backyard chickens. She graduated with honors from the University of Michigan and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2003. In 2012 she received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Michigan. She lives in upstate New York and Los Angeles with one dog, three cats, eight chickens, four turkeys, four guinea fowl, twelve Black Angus cattle, three ducks, and her husband and son.

Gay Talese

How did you become a writer?

I desired to be a writer from reading wonderful writers when I was in grade school.

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

Writers who influenced me included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Carson McCullers, John O'Hara and Irwin Shaw. These are writers I read between high school and college. Later, I came under the influence of writers closer to my own age: John Fowles, Philip Roth, and many contributors to The New Yorker magazine, such as Joe Mitchell, A.J. Liebling, E.B. White and John Cheever.  Finally, there was a history teacher of the French Revolutionary period, at the University of Alabama, Prof. Bernard C. Weber, who greatly influenced me in story-telling technique and scene-setting. He was a dramatic orator, and his retelling of the court life of the Bourbon kings prior to and during the French revolution so captured my imagination as a student that I wanted to write as Dr. Weber spoke: filled with visual detail, precise descriptions of places and artifacts and personal characteristics (the pocked skin of Louis 14th, and the power he used in an attempt to cover it up), etc…. This really is the way to learn: to listen to someone who not only knows the material, but knows how to communicate it. As a nonfiction writer, I try to do just that: really know what I'm writing about, and know how to make it clear and interesting in presenting it.

When and where do you write?

I write in a private place under my house (no telephone, no windows; a converted wine cellar that I call "the bunker.")  

What are you working on now?

I'm working on a book for Knopf on a fifty-year marriage (nonfiction)--my own marriage; also doing some magazine pieces, one a profile for The New Yorker on the manager of the Yankees, Joe Girardi.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No, but I write so slowly--and never rush myself because I try to achieve quality and never quantity . . . that some fast and facile people might think I'm blocked. But I'm not. I prefer writing little that I love to writing a lot just to keep my name in print.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Take your time. Your name is on it. It should always be your best.

Bio: Born in l932 in Ocean City, N.J. (13 miles south of Atlantic City); attended University of Alabama l949-53; worked for New York Times as staff writer (1956-65); have written many articles for The New Yorker, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine; have published eleven books, many of them translated into several languages. Married since l959 to Nan Talese, publisher with her own imprint at Doubleday; we have two daughters, Pamela and Catherine, both residing, as we do, in New York City.

Richard Walter

How did you become a writer?

I came to California for what I thought would be a couple of weeks, tops. That was forty-five years ago. I fell into film school at USC where my classmates were George Lucas, John Milius, Walter Murch, Randal Kleiser, Bob Zemeckis, Caleb Deschanel, and a host of other phenomenal, youthful talents. I enrolled in the legendary Irwin R. Blacker’s screenwriting course, wrote a feature length script. Never sold it, but it served as a worthy showcase, winning me representation at what is now ICM and a job as a staff writer at Universal. Never looked back!

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

The aforementioned Irwin R. Blacker, first of all.  Billy Wilder. Preston Sturges. Charlie Chaplin. Orson Welles. Charlie Dennis, my swim coach at Harpur College, who taught me not to fade in the stretch. Yetta Rosenblum, photographer and photography teacher, who taught me to look at the frame and that “photography” means “writing with light.”

When and where do you write?

Whenever I can (pretty much every day) at my aerie—a wonderful studio with preposterously beautiful, distracting views-- high atop my house in the Silver Lake Section of Los Angeles.

What are you working on now?

The working title is Richie’s Greatest Hits. It’s a memoir-ish collection of charming, sweetly frustrating lessons I’ve learned from forty years writing in Hollywood.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Only every minute of every day. Actually, I preach that there is no such thing as writer’s block. Writer’s block is the natural state of the art and the craft of creating narratives. Thanks to my position at UCLA there are few people who know as many writers as I do, and I’ve never known even merely one who flew eagerly to the word processor early in the morning, peppy and perky and ready to write.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Remember that every single successful writer, without exception, was once brand new and totally inexperienced and unknown. Contrary to one among the many myths about Hollywood, as I profess in my most recent book, Essentials of Screenwriting, it’s not connections, it’s not who you know but how well you write that drives success in screenwriting. The two biggest mistakes writers make is 1) we write too much – descriptions of action and lines of dialogue must clearly and constantly advance the story in a palpable, identifiable, measurable way and 2) we show our scripts too soon, before they’re truly ready. It’s wise, before exposing a new script to the industry, to engage the services of a worthy consultant who can provide notes, who can help you get rid of what you need to get rid of.

Richard Walter is a celebrated storytelling guru, movie industry expert, and longtime chairman of UCLA’s legendary graduate program in screenwriting. A screenwriter and published novelist, his latest book, Essentials of Screenwriting, is available in stores now. Professor Walter lectures throughout North America and the world and serves as a court authorized expert in intellectual property litigation. For more information and to order the new Essentials of Screenwriting, visit www.richardwalter.com. Contact Professor Walter at rwalter@tft.ucla.edu if you would like to subscribe to his monthly screenwriting tips newsletter.