Dave Hill

How did you become a writer?

My sister, Miriam Hill, is a journalist. Way back in the late nineties, I lived at her house in Cleveland. She had just gotten the Internet and for some reason we failed to understand that you could have more than one e-mail address—we figured an e-mail address was kind of like a landline telephone where you just had one for the whole house and everyone shared it. As a result, she regularly saw my e-mails and began reading them for entertainment (It didn’t feel like snooping because I didn’t have nearly as many secrets back then as I do now). Eventually, she suggested I try freelancing for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where she was working at the time. I began writing human interest pieces, reporting on neighborhood bars and stuff like that. Once I got a few articles under my belt, I began approaching other places about doing some writing and started writing pieces for Salon, the New York Times, and whatever magazines would have me. I even wrote a few pieces for XXL, a hip-hop magazine, even though I haven’t paid much attention to hip-hop since the early nineties, when I was still street.

Also—backing things up a bit—I am proud to report that I totally have my very own e-mail address now. I’ve come a long way.

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

As far as teachers go, I learned a lot from my sister, who read a lot of my early writing and really encouraged and pushed me to get it right (or at least as close to right as I was capable). Two of my high school English teachers, James Toman and Art Thomas at St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland, were really great too. I learned the basics of composition from them and it’s been a huge help to this day.

Whenever possible, I try to avoid thinking about other writers when I write because otherwise I’m afraid I would just quit altogether. That said, I’ve probably tried to steal from people like Calvin Trillin, Oscar Wilde, David Rakoff, Joan Didion, Gore Vidal, Woody Allen, David Sedaris, Truman Capote, and Jack Handey the most. Most of the time, though, I find reading stuff that I enjoy pushes me to try to be myself as much as I can. For example, someone like David Rakoff, who was a close friend, was such a linguistic acrobat and so unique in his perspective that I knew I could never approach the kind of stuff he did. I’m a bit of a knucklehead in comparison, so I instead of fighting that I try to just embrace it and be the best Dave I can be, profanity-laced tirades and all.

As for books, I enjoy writing essays and shorter form pieces (at least so far, anyway) the most so those sorts of books, especially by the people mentioned above, probably influenced me the most. I tend to like writing that feels like conversation. Once something veers into elaborate descriptions of clouds and things, stuff no one would ever say out loud, I tend to lose interest.

When and where do you write?

I write at home usually, though occasionally I’ll go sit in a coffee shop if it’s not too loud or crowded, just to mix things up a bit. I prefer quiet and isolation, though. If Coldplay or some other music I don’t like comes on at the coffee shop, my concentration is completely shattered and I just spend the whole time thinking about giving the finger to whomever I perceive to be in charge of the iPod. I write in the late morning the most but pretty much any time before about 7pm is fair game. After that, my head gets too blurry.

I used to lock myself in my apartment all day and try to get as much writing done as possible only to find most of the time was spent checking e-mail, screwing around on the Internet, playing the guitar, or fighting the urge to go back to sleep. Then one day I asked (Warning: namedropping alert) Malcolm Gladwell, who is a friend and lives in the neighborhood, how much time he spends writing each day. I would see him writing in coffee shops and restaurants all the time so I just assumed he wrote twelve hours a day or something. But then he told me he writes just two hours a day because it forces him to really focus and make the most of that two hours. Hearing that was a relief and let me off the hook a bit. I started doing that pretty strictly—two hours of writing with no Internet, no phone, no guitar, no anything- and found that I got a lot more done in those two focused hours than when I would sit there all day mostly just pretending to write. I started to feel like I was achieving something each day that way too—like if I got my two hours in I had done my job for the day and didn’t need to feel so guilty and worthless. It made me stress out less, which, of course, also helped me write more and better. If I’m feeling good, sometimes I’ll go longer than two hours, but I try to stick to just two as it seems to really work for me.

Getting back to the namedropping, Malcolm also told me about another writer whose name I can’t remember who writes exactly 1500 words a day. As a result, he usually found himself finishing in mid-sentence each day. This might sound a bit stressful, but the reality (for him anyway) is that he can just pick up where he left off the day before, kind of like stopping a ball in mid-air and then just taking a swing at it right where you left it the next day.

What are you working on now?

There has been some interest from the show business types in developing my book, Tasteful Nudes, into a television show, so I’ve been noodling with that a bit. We’ll see. I’m also finishing a screenplay that’d been gathering virtual dust, and trying to get in the swing of writing some new essays. Also, my book comes out in the UK in October, so I’m gearing up to go over there and tour/beg everyone to buy it. I’m excited because the cover for the UK version will be a bit different, something special for just over there. Also, I had to add the letter “u” to some words. It feels exotic. I’m hoping my book comes out in Germany some day. That way I can get crazy with the umlauts, which would be great for me.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Not too much. I might have a bad day or two here and there, but nothing too crippling. About nine years ago, I got into the practice of filling at least a page in Word each morning as a sort of exercise to just get me writing. I’ll write about anything—what I had for breakfast, something I watched on TV the night before, those damn cops, or whatever else comes to mind. I found once I got into the habit of doing that, it took away the stress and anxiety of writing since I didn’t worry about what I was writing—it was the act of writing itself that mattered. And I often find that just sitting down to write whatever comes to mind can lead to new ideas that I am excited to explore a bit further.

What’s your advice to new writers?

I’m guessing this is what everyone says, but I think writing every day—or at least close to every day—is a great thing to do. It keeps you in good writing shape and lessens the stress of staring at a blank page. And, of course, reading a lot is good too. It keeps your brain working and reminds you of some of the other words out there that you might not have in your arsenal yet, like dystopian, for example. I’ve yet to use that one, but dammit I can feel it coming on strong. It could be any day now, really.

Other than that, I think it’s important to just be yourself, “find your voice,” and just say what you want to say. It’s easy early on to get caught up in just imitating other things you’ve read, but the more you write, the more quickly you can get away from that. It’s kind of like drawing—if you want to draw your hand, for example, it’s easy to make the mistake of just drawing what you think a hand is supposed to look like instead of drawing what’s really in front of you. Over time, you learn to draw what you are really seeing—your hand instead of a hand.

And about the whole “finding your voice” thing—the truth, I find, is that your voice is staring right at you. It can just take a while sometimes to clear out all the weeds and all that so you can finally make use of what’s been there all along. You just gotta keep at it, as they say, and get in touch with your inner weed whacker. Or something like that anyway.

Dave Hill is a comedian, writer, and musician. His first book, Tasteful Nudes, was published by St. Martin’s Press on May 22, 2012. Dave has written for The New York Times, Salon, and The Huffington Post among others and is a regular contributor to public radio’s This American Life. He has also appeared on Comedy Central, BBC America, MTV and is a regular host on HBO and Cinemax. Dave has his own variety show, The Dave Hill Explosion, at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatres in NY and Los Angeles, and London. Dave plays in several rock bands and is so good at the guitar that most people can’t even handle it. He also smells really nice. Ask anyone.

Sonia Taitz

How did you become a writer?

I became a writer right about the time when my childhood ended. I was about to turn thirteen. My father was European, the old fashioned type of father, the suit and tie type, to whom no back-talk was even remotely acceptable. My brother and I would jump up to greet him formally at the door when he came home from work. My father’s days were hard. He had come over to America the worst way – as a survivor of the Holocaust death camps, arriving here with no English, no money, and no family. He needed all his strength to build a new life, and his home was to be his sanctuary. Beseeching, opinionated American children did not fit into this picture. If we had something interesting to share, fine. Something we had learned in school, a grade to make him proud. But we were never to presume to question him as equals.

The day came when I really needed to open up and challenge my father. I was a now a teenager, with a teenager’s necessary hubris. Despite my new status (as I alone saw it), my father remained strict, almost autocratic. So I broached the subject of his treating me more like an adult. Like a peer. He demanded respect (his tragic life had denied him this over and again); I wanted some too. But even as I began to open the subject, my father’s face reddened and his eyes flared. I saw that he was on the brink of losing his temper. His anger was dangerous on all scores: He would explode in volcanic rages that I feared would kill him, or give my brother and me long silent treatments that made us feel annihilated.

I took the middle ground between my own rage and silence. I began to write. I wrote my feelings out, my dreamed-of conversations, my arguments logical and my arguments whimsical. “I’m a person,” I wrote, “and I’ll say what I think from now on.”

And from that time, I have said – and written – what I thought.

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

My first influence was a high school English teacher, Mrs. Edith Schrank. Her motto was, “fall in love with words.” She trilled the imperative so passionately, I remember, that her curls shook. Some of the kids made fun of her – a middle-aged woman in a kind of artistic ecstasy -- and mocked her catchphrase. But Mrs. Schrank opened a door inside of me. Increasingly, I saw language as the most essential human gift – allowing us to connect not only to each other but through time.

Since my parents were immigrants to whom English was not a first language (I think it was their fifth), I’d always seen the relativity of words. By the time I was five, I spoke European Yiddish, the American English I heard on TV, and Hebrew, which I started to learn at my Jewish Day School. It was a great blend, and knowing that each idea could be said in at least three ways was fun and inspiring.

Years later, in college, I read verbally acrobatic authors like Joyce and Nabokov. My sense of possibilities grew exponentially. Both were exiles with agile, connective minds; both were geniuses who inspired me with their linguistic play and versatility.   

When and where do you write?

Unlike those worthies who write by the light of the rising sun, I rarely start before mid-morning, and I write, even then, in bursts. Sometimes, I write late into the night, and others, I peter out and feel utterly stranded. It’s wonderful to write something with scope -- a novel or play – something to which I can return. It gives my days a continuity of purpose. Before a project ends, too, I try to think of a new one, so that I can get started soon after. Otherwise, there is a sense of bereavement along with the joy of completion.

As for location, I need a quiet place, a corner in which I can be completely alone. I need solitude and silence, no music, no background hum. Having that, I can write facing the wall or facing the window, on a wooden desk or a bland piece of formica. I used to write longhand, but now compose on a keyboard, which seems versatile, quick, and forgiving. A pen and notebook come outside with me, and I jot ideas on them. Sometimes, I’ll draft out chapters on index cards. But the computer is my closest creative ally, and I like to disappear into it. That’s my room with a view.

What are you working on now?

I am currently revising my next novel, which tells the imagined story of an anti-Semitic movie star, suggesting how he got that way. Was he besotted, long ago, by an unattainable Jewish woman, and does he still want her? The working title is DOWN UNDER, alluding to the secrets of the heart as well as to this celebrity’s Australian background.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I don’t get “writer’s block” as much as I get “broken heart.”  When manuscripts are rejected, or books reviewed harshly, I want to retreat into a corner of a soft bed, my head barely visible among the pillows and the aptly named comforter over the rest of me. Even critical success has emotional battery in it – the wistful way writers peek to see if their book is on the shelf, or on its way to disappearing. Come to think of it, the shelves and stores themselves are disappearing! But powerful words never really disappear. The fact that writers put them together in the first place is the true and enduring miracle.

What’s your advice to new writers?

My advice to new writers is to read, both fiction and nonfiction – in as many different styles as they can find. They should also take the time to observe, think about, and respond to the world around them. Do they have something urgent to say about it? Is their command of language such that they can say it? Once all that is in place, pour it out on the page without regard to any result. Edit ruthlessly when that is done. Put it away. And if you can stand to read yourself after a break of a few weeks, share it with someone kind whose taste you admire. Only listen to those who understand your voice and what you are attempting to say or do.

Remember that no one can take writing away from you. You don’t need permission.  When you’re ready to write, consider that impulse to be permission granted. And there is no time limit. Great books have been written by elders. Writing gains by practice, and experience often buffs and shines our words and lives into wisdom.

Be patient and modest. You’re lucky if, in a lifetime, 1,000 people love your words. Each reader is an invaluable friend – someone who has taken the time to see your vision, to hear your voice. There is no higher compliment. If you can touch someone else — if your creative impulse transmits through your words — you know you have come to deserve the title of writer.

Sonia Taitz is a playwright, essayist, and author of MOTHERING HEIGHTS, IN THE KING’S ARMS (nominated for the Sami Rohr Prize), and THE WATCHMAKER’S DAUGHTER (nominated for an ALA Medal).  Her essays have appeared in The New York Times and The New York Observer, and she has been quoted by PBS, O: The Oprah Magazine, and ABC’s Nightline. Her books have earned praise from The New York Times Book Review, People, ForeWord, The Jewish Book World, and Kirkus.

Her website is www.soniataitz.com; follow on Twitter @soniataitz.

Rick Reilly

How did you become a writer?

I always wrote. When I was a kid we had our own little Home Run Derby league and I wrote a little newspaper that went with it. I made us all sound like Mickey Mantle, with lurid tales of nightclub visits and movie-star dates and heroic building-on-fire deeds. I don't know why. Don't ask. I was always writing stuff and had no idea it could be a career. I was always the guy in high school who wrote the one-act play or the skit while everybody else got to go drink beer by the creek. Finally, I won the high-school sports writing contest through my school newspaper. The guy who judged it -- anonymously -- was the assistant sports editor at my hometown Boulder (CO) Daily Camera. That summer, I got a job working as a bank teller and who was working next to me but his wife. So I bugged her every day for months. Finally, exhausted, she came in one morning and said, "Go see him." And he hired me!  

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

I read "Ball Four" by Jim Bouton eight times. Practically memorized it. That life seemed so hilarious and glamorous to me. Loved Damon Runyon, especially all the "On Broadway" stories about two-bit criminals talking like Shakespeare. Must've read that 20 times. I think I've read every column ever written by Jim Murray, the great Los Angeles Times sports columnist, who was not just my hero but became my friend and mentor. Also: P.G. Wodehouse, Mike Royko, Blackie Sherrod, and Oscar Wilde, who changed my life when he wrote, "Never write a sentence you've already read." It hit me across the head like a 2-by-4 and improved my writing tenfold.

When and where do you write?

I do great on airplanes, in bars and in diners. I find writing so lonely that I need to be some place where I know life is still going on, people are still laughing, women are still sashaying. It comforts me that it will all be over soon. So I go to little cafes and coffee shops where they'll let me sit for three hours without yelling at me to move along and everybody knows not to come up to me and ask who the Minnesota Timberwolves are going to sign for their backup power forward.

What are you working on now?

Ha! Surely you jest. At ESPN? There's no time for working on anything but ESPN. ESPN is like Europe. TV is England and ESPN.com is Italy and radio is Sweden and the magazine is Germany and nobody cares about any other country but their own. They want their country to be the best country in history. So Italy doesn't care that England needs you to finish the script and England doesn't care about Sweden needing you to prep for the show. Meanwhile, Germany wants to know why you can't fly to Baltimore and do a story. ... So I've got a bunch of good movie and book ideas that sit and mope in my laptop.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No. Never. If I get stuck, I either switch diners or drink another macchiato or start in the middle and hope the lead comes bopping along later. I always tell young people who have trouble with writer's block the same thing: Write one sentence. Write the last sentence. Write a terrible sentence. Just get something on the screen and words will stick to it like hot socks on a hot towel.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Don't write for free. Why should any of these websites pay anybody if everybody's willing to write for free? And they should pay you. Huffington Post paid squat and then sold for $315 million. Associated Content paid bupkus and then sold for $100 million. You have a proven marketable skill. All these sites are starved for content and you know how to provide it. Get paid for it. Even if it's $25. They'll respect you more in the morning.

Rick Reilly, 54, has been voted National Sportswriter of the Year 11 times. He is a front-page columnist for ESPN.com and delivers television features for ESPN's Monday Night Countdown, for ESPN's and ABC's golf coverage, as well as for ESPN SportsCenter, which he also occasionally anchors.

       If that doesn't keep him busy enough, he's also the host of Homecoming with Rick Reilly, ESPN's one-hour interview show which has featured Michael Phelps, John Elway and Magic Johnson, among many others. He is also an occasional anchor for SportsCenter.

       He is the author of 10 books, including his latest -- Sports From Hell, My Search for the World’s Dumbest Competition (Doubleday). The book was a finalist for the 2011 Thurber Prize. It’s the account of his three-year search for the dumbest sport in the world. Not to give anything away, but a good bet would be either Ferret Legging or the World Sauna Championships. It also includes embarrassing attempts by Reilly to try Nude Bicycle Racing, Zorbing, Chess Boxing, Extreme Ironing, the World Rock Paper Scissors Championships, and an unfortunate week on a women’s pro football team.

       Reilly won the 2009 Damon Runyon Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism, an honor previously won by Jimmy Breslin, Tim Russert, Bob Costas, Mike Royko, George Will, Ted Turner and Tom Brokaw, among others. Three times his columns have been read into the record in the U.S. Congress. An astronaut once took his signed trading card into space.

       The New York Daily News called him “one of the funniest humans on the planet.” Publishers Weekly called him, “an indescribable amalgam of Dave Barry, Jim Murray, and Lewis Grizzard, with the timing of Jay Leno and the wit of Johnny Carson.”

       He has written about everything from ice skater Katarina Witt behind the Iron Curtain to actor Jack Nicholson in the front row, from wrestling priests in Mexico City to mushers at the Iditarod, from playing golf with President Clinton to playing golf with O.J. Simpson and back again. He was once President Obama's fantasy football partner for a week. He has five times had the disagreeable task of accompanying the models on the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. He was once featured in a Miller Lite ad with swimsuit cover girl Rebecca Romijn (Stamos). In July of 2010, he survived running with the bulls of Pamplona, Spain. Twice.

       For nearly 23 years – from 1985 until 2007 -- his breezy, hilarious and yet often emotional style graced the pages of Sports Illustrated. For the last 10 there, he wrote the popular “Life of Reilly” column, which ran on the last page. It was the first signed weekly opinion column in the magazine’s long history. He is “the Tiger Woods of sports columnists,” says Bloomberg News.

       Reilly is the founder of the anti-malaria effort Nothing But Nets (NothingButNets.net), which had raised over $36 million (as of September, 2011) to hang mosquito nets over kids in Africa, where 3,000 children die every day of the disease. A partnership with the United Nations Foundation, every dollar goes to buying the nets. (NothingButNets.net) Wrote the Denver Post, “Nothing but Nets is one charity that scores big.”

       His last collection -- “Hate Mail from Cheerleaders" -- included 100 of his best SI columns. The foreword is by Lance Armstrong. It became a New York Times bestseller in its first week.

       His current novel “Shanks for Nothing” (Doubleday) is a madcap golf romp that cracked the New York Times bestseller list. It’s the sequel to Reilly’s cult classic “Missing Links” (Doubleday), whose film rights were recently sold to Steve Carell, star of NBC’s The Office. Both books revolve around regulars at the worst public course in America – Ponkaquogue Municipal Golf Links and Deli --  and the insane bets, pranks and camaraderie that goes on there. The New York Times hailed “Missing Links” as “three laughs per page.”

       In Reilly’s previous book -- “Who’s Your Caddy?” (Doubleday) -- he caddies for everyone from Jack Nicklaus to Donald Trump to a $50,000-a-hole gambler. It rose to No. 3 on the New York Times best-seller list.

His first collection of columns -- “The Life of Reilly: The Best of Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly” -- was also a New York Times bestseller.

       Slo-Mo: My Untrue Story, (Doubleday) is a farce on the NBA, which the Denver Post called, “a romp that could have been written only by someone who has seen the game from the inside.”

Reilly is the co-author of the movie "Leatherheads," the comic romance centered on the 1924 Duluth Eskimos of the fledgling NFL, starring George Clooney, Renee Zellweger and John Krasinski. It opened on April 4, 2008. MTV called it “a small, unassuming jewel.” And USA Today wrote: “Leatherheads is a real winner.”

       His ESPN interview show Homecoming, is a kind of cross between This is Your Life and Inside the Actor’s Studio, for sports. The show goes deep inside the life of America’s greatest athletes. Filmed in front of a live audience, usually at the guest’s high school or college, it’s full of surprises, with home video, interviews with old teammates and coaches, family, friends and rivals. Jerry Rice,  Dwayne Wade, Chris Paul, Emmitt Smith, Billie Jean King, Donovan McNabb and Tony Hawk have been guests, to name a few. "That was the greatest night of my life," soccer star Landon Donovan said of it. Magic Johnson called it, "The most fun interview I've ever done."

       Probably too curious for his own good, Reilly has flown upside down at 600 miles per hour in an F-14, faced fastballs from Nolan Ryan, jumped from 14,000 feet with the U.S. Army Parachute Team, driven a stock car 142 miles per hour, piloted the Goodyear blimp, competed against 107 women for a spot in the WNBA, worked three innings of play-by-play for the Colorado Rockies, bicycled with Lance Armstrong, driven a monster truck over six parked cars, worked as a rodeo bullfighter, and found out the hard way how many straight par 3s he’d have to play before he made a hole in one (694).

       Reilly has won numerous awards in his 30-year writing career, including the prestigious New York Newspaper Guild's Page One Award for Best Magazine Story. He is the co-author of ``The Boz,'' the best-selling autobiography of bad-boy Oklahoma linebacker Brian Bosworth; “Gretzky,'' with hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky of the Los Angeles Kings; ``I'd Love to but I Have a Game'' with NBC announcer Marv Albert, and the ``The Wit and Wisdom of Charles Barkley.''

       Reilly began his career in 1979 taking phoned-in high-school volleyball scores for his hometown Boulder (Colo.)  Daily Camera while a sophomore at the University of Colorado, from which he was graduated in 1981. He wrote for two years at the Camera, two more at the Denver Post and two more at the Los Angeles Times, before moving to Sports Illustrated in 1985.

       Reilly dabbles in magic, piano, mountain biking, SCUBA, back-alley basketball, skiing and snowboarding. He lives in Denver and Hermosa Beach, CA, with his wife -- The Lovely Cynthia -- and a putter he’s not currently speaking to.

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