James Scott Bell

How did you become a writer?

I always wanted to write. In fact, always wrote. Made up stories all through elementary school. But then I got into sports in junior high and that took over. But a great high school English teacher got hold of me and told me I had talent and to keep writing.

In college I got into some writing classes, including one taught by Raymond Carver, and got convinced I didn’t have what it took. I mean, Raymond Carver? And I couldn’t plot. I thought writers just sat down and great plots flowed from their fingertips. I believed what I now call The Big Lie: you can’t learn how to write fiction.

I believed that for a long time. Then one day I realized I had to try to learn to write, that it was what I wanted to do, and I was darn well going to give it a go. And lo and behold I did learn. It took time and effort, but I began to figure it out. And sell my work.

And once I started selling I never stopped.

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

Early influences were The Hardy Boys and Edgar Rice Burroughs. In high school, believe it or not, Richard Brautigan. He, to use the argot of the time, blew my mind. In college came William Saroyan, Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Chandler.

Later, learning the craft, I turned to first to Dwight Swaine, Jack Bickham and Lawrence Block. I still love to read books and articles on the craft. My philosophy is if I pick up just one thing, or get a new spin on something I already know, it’s worth it.

When and where do you write?

I start at my home office in the early morning hours. I love getting up while it’s still dark and making the coffee for me and Mrs. Bell. Then I try to do what I call a “nifty 350” number of words. Sometimes a “furious 500.” That makes the writing day (and reaching my quota) so much easier.

What are you working on now?

I am one of these writers who has several projects going at any one time. I just turned in the third book in a zombie legal thriller series to Kensington. I have several projects in the works for self-publishing (I love that shorter fiction is back), and a thriller I’m developing with my agent.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Never have. I attribute that to what I answer in your next question.

What’s your advice to new writers?

The best piece of advice I got, right at the beginning, was to write to a quota. I write six days a week, and aim for a weekly quota of words. That way, if I miss a day, I don’t get riled up. I can do extra on the other days.

You do that day after day, week after month, you look up and there you’ll have a completed novel. That’s a very good feeling. Lather, rinse, revise and repeat.

James Scott Bell is the author of several bestselling books for writers, including Plot & Structure and The Art of War for Writers. He is an award-winning suspense author and a finalist for a 2012 International Thriller Writers Award for One More Lie. His website is: www.jamesscottbell.com

Todd Purdum

How did you become a writer?

In some sense, I suppose, through a failure of imagination, or at least a failure to choose any other course. I had always enjoyed writing, in elementary and junior high school, and in my eighth-grade year, I won an award for writing an article about the courthouse in my small hometown in Illinois. A friend of my family's sent me a note of congratulations, asking, "Do you plan to be a writer? It would seem that you could be!" No one had ever suggested that before -- and I'm sure I didn't know any professional writers. But something must have stuck in my head. I became the editor of my high school newspaper, and in college was a campus stringer for several newspapers, including The New York Times, which I joined as a copyboy upon graduation. I figured I might have to go to law school, or get a real job, but eventually I got promoted and the rest, as they say, is history.

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

I'm sure like everyone else, I was terrifically influenced by E.B. White, and his elegant brand of heightened conversational English. That is to say, he wrote very naturally, and engagingly, in the way we'd like to hope that the most entertaining people talk but seldom do.

When and where do you write?

Any time I have to, and over the years, I've done it on laptops and legal pads, on buses and planes, in hotel ballrooms and aboard Air Force One. But mostly I write at my own desk, in our bedroom at home, or in a small office in a building in downtown Washington that I recently rented.

What are you working on now?

At the moment, I'm occupied with my regular work for Vanity Fair, which now involves a monthly print column on politics and another online weekly column on the same topic. I'm also at work on a book about the 1964 Civil Rights Act to be published by Times Books/Henry Holt in 2014, in time for the law's 50th anniversary. It's been inspiring to learn about a time when Washington could still accomplish something great.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Yes, any time I lack a firm deadline!

What’s your advice to new writers?

Just write, and then write some more. Put a lot of periods in the paragraphs. Avoid stuffy Latinisms, as The New York Times used to advise me.  Mary McGrory, the great Washington columnist, once said that the secret of her brilliant and heart-rending columns about the Kennedy assassination was to "write short sentences in the presence of great grief." I've always thought that was a good formulation. I also admire the maxim of Red Smith, the Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist: "Writing is easy; you just open a vein and bleed."

Todd Purdum is the National Editor of Vanity Fair, based in Washington, where he mostly writes about politics and politicians, with an occasional detour into pop culture and Hollywood. He spent 23 years at The New York Times, starting as a copy boy, and covered New York and national politics, the White House and the State Department, and served as chief of the paper's Los Angeles Bureau. He is a native of Macomb, Illinois and a graduate of Princeton University. He lives in Washington with his wife, Dee Dee Myers, the political commentator and former White House press secretary, and their two children.

Jonathan Gottschall

How did you become a writer?

I don’t know precisely. I don’t think I ever really set out to be one. It would have seemed like way too much to wish for—like wishing to be the shortstop for the Yankees. I never had any sense that I was destined for it, or had any real suspicion that I might be good at it. What I set out to be was an English professor. And that entailed a lot of writing. And I found that I enjoyed it, and that I actually was pretty good at it. For the last decade or so, I’ve been writing books and articles. But it’s only recently that I started thinking of myself mainly as a writer.

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

I never had a great exemplar really, a writer that I fell in love with and tried to emulate. I actually had a lot of bad models. Academics—especially in the humanities--are encouraged to write in a way that violates ancient wisdom about what makes good writing good. I tried writing that way for a while, and then realized it was a mistake. To unlearn my bad habits I started reading good books—reading them slowly, and really paying attention to what makes them work. When I read something that I like, I always ask the same question: “How exactly has the author pulled it off?”

When and where do you write?

I write almost exclusively in the mornings, at home. In the morning, my mind is fast and the words come relatively quickly. As the day wears on I get dumber and slower. I can almost feel my mind emptying out, and by early afternoon I’m only capable of drudge work. Sometimes I try to write in the evenings but it’s always a disaster.

What are you working on now?

I’m doing a lot of small writing projects as publicity for my new book (The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human). And I’m deep into the research of the next book, which I think will be called Monkey Dance. This will be a book about the culture of cage fighting, but it’s also going to break out into big philosophical and scientific questions about men and aggression. For the book, I spent a year and a half training at an MMA gym and trying to learn to be a fighter myself.  So there will be a participatory journalism element.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Yes, I’ve suffered from it terribly, but not recently. Like many other writers, I’ve found that I can avoid [writer's] block by committing to a really hideous first draft. I find that once I’ve written a rough draft, no matter how horrendous, the psychological pressure is off. I’m much less likely to bind up once I have something on paper.

What’s your advice to new writers?

That there’s no great mystery to it. It’s just like any other domain of skill. Success is at least as much about doggedness as talent. Writers sit at desks. And they just keep on sitting at desks until they whip the badness out of whatever they are writing.

Jonathan Gottschall writes books about the intersection of science and art. He is one of the leading figures in a new movement that is trying to bridge the humanities-sciences divide. His most recent book, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, draws on the latest research in neuroscience, psychology and biology to argue that storytelling has evolved to ensure our species’ survival. His work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Scientific American Mind, New Scientist and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. He is the author or editor of six books, including The Rape of Troy: Evolution, Violence and the World of Homer and Literature, Science, and a New Humanities.