George Bishop

How did you become a writer?

I had a late start as a writer. I studied English Lit in college and wrote a little here and there, but I didn't have enough confidence in my writing to go at it full tilt. So after I graduated college I--weirdly enough--moved to Los Angeles to become an actor. I lived there for eight years, doing commercials and theatre and bit parts on bad TV shows, and writing occasionally, before traveling to Czechoslovakia as a volunteer English teacher in the early 90s. It was there that I finally got serious about my writing. I worked diligently at writing stories during the next six years living abroad, and then returned to the US to enter the MFA program at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington. While I was at UNCW I began to publish a few short stories, but it took me four (four!) novels before I wrote one that was deemed salable. That was LETTER TO MY DAUGHTER, which came out in 2010 with Ballantine.

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

I credit my great teachers at UNCW for showing me how to be extra-meticulous in editing and crafting sentences: Wendy Brenner, Rebecca Lee, Clyde Edgerton, Sarah Messer. As for other authors, early and powerful influences were the usual lot for guys of my generation: Hemingway, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Salinger, Joyce. And then Tolstoy, Flannery O'Connor, Maugham, Greene. More recently, Orhan Pamuk . . . I wish I had a more original or exciting list.

When and where do you write?

I have the luxury of writing full time now, but it's a very demanding sort of luxury. I try to write six days a week. I wake up early, put on coffee, and go to work. I write until lunch, taking frequent breaks, and then maybe put in another hour or two in the afternoon. Repeat every day. A very dull life, actually.

What are you working on now?

I just turned in the final edits for my new novel, THE NIGHT OF THE COMET, coming out in August 2013. Now I'm getting back to work on another novel I started last year. Like COMET, it's set in Louisiana in the ’70s. It concerns four kids during the summer between their graduation from high school and the start of college, about how their lives intersect and change. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No, not really. If anything, I suffer from having too much I want to write about. It's often a struggle to write, of course, but I don't consider that writer's block. I call it laziness.

What’s your advice to new writers?

That's easy: Read, read, read. Write, write, write. Along the way, get what help you can. 

George Bishop, Jr., earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he won the department’s Award of Excellence for a collection of stories. He has lived and taught in Slovakia, Turkey, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, India, and Japan. He now makes his home in New Orleans.

C.M. Mayo

How did you become a writer?

Ever since I knew how to write I've been a writer. Though I took a writing workshop in my early 20s, I did not take it seriously until I was about 30, by which I mean I signed up for several summer writing workshops (Iowa, Bennington and others) in fiction and creative nonfiction, started to educate myself about publishing, and got the gumption to start sending things out.

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

Paul Bowles, whose workshop I took in Tangiers, was my first literary writing teacher but I learned far more from reading his books than from him personally. The Canadian novelist Douglas Glover taught me more than anyone about the novel, and in a one hour session, believe it or not. Much of what I've learned is from reading and rereading, actively, pencil in hand. Some key influences: V.S. Naipaul, Bruce Chatwin, Nancy Marie Brown, Sara Mansfield Taber, Truman Capote, John McPhee, Ian Frasier, Edward Swift, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Wharton, Flannery O'Connor... it's a long and ever-growing list.  I've also relied heavily on books on craft-- I read John Gardner's The Art of Fiction so many times, it fell apart and I bought another, and then that fell apart. For my workshops students-- and anyone else who surfs on in-- I maintain this list of recommended books on craft: http://www.cmmayo.com/workshop-rec-read-craft.html

When and where do you write?

At my laptop, wherever that may be. Sometimes ideas just fly into my head; I ever and always keep a notebook handy to capture those.

What are you working on now?

A travel memoir, tentatively titled World Waiting for a Dream: A Turn in West Texas. Apropos of that, I'm hosting a 24 podcast series, "Marfa Mondays: Exploring Marfa, TX and the Big Bend," and I invite you to listen in anytime. www.cmmayo.com/marfa

I'm also working (very slowly) on a novel and revising and expanding my introduction to my translation of the secret book by the leader of Mexico's 1910 Revolution, that is to say, Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist Manual. It's available on Kindle now; the updated edition and a paperback will be available soon. Read all about that here: http://www.cmmayo.com/SPIRITISTMANUAL/Spiritist-Q-AND-A/1-GENERAL-DESCRIPTION.html

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Who hasn't? Oh, Joyce Carol Oates. I always wished I could figure out her secret. Though I am not anywhere near so prolific as Ms. Oates, I have managed to write several books and I am happy to share my simple trick: just keep at it, bit by bit, always, always, speaking to yourself kindly, and keeping your focus not on the past (regrets) nor the future (wishing and hoping), but in the present. When it gets really gnarly, turn to the literature on sports psychology.

What’s your advice to new writers?

There are different kinds of writing and different kinds of writer. I am a literary writer-- poetry, literary fiction, literary memoir and I specialize in big, fat, seriously researched tomes. So, speaking to the literary writer: Truly great books are an education of the heart-- and that is not something many new writers, enchanted with notions of fame, are prepared to seriously consider. At the nitty gritty level, though this is a gloriously creative path (revel in it!), the business of publishing your books is a lot like selling life insurance. Be prepared to persist. And be open to the new, for publishing as we know it is turning into a multimedia interactive I-don't-know-what. (That's why I took up blogging and podcasting and recently published an interactive ebook based on my one day workshop, Podcasting for Writers & Other Creative Entrepreneurs.) http://www.cmmayo.com/podcasting-for-writers/index.html It's probably also a good idea to get some chickens. I am not kidding.

C.M. Mayo is the author of The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire (Unbridled Books), a novel based on the true story and named a Library Journal Best Book of 2009. She is also the author of Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico (Milkweed Editions), and Sky Over El Nido (University of Georgia Press), which won the Flannery O'Connor Award. A long-time resident of Mexico and an avid translator, she is editor of Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press), a collection of 24 Mexican writers on Mexico, and she is the first English translator of Francisco I. Madero's secret book, Spiritist Manual (Dancing Chiva). She hosts two podcast series, Conversations with Other Writers and Marfa Mondays, the latter apropos of a travel memoir-in- progress. www.cmmayo.com

Meredith Maran

How did you become a writer?

I was born that way. No, really. I was writing stories under the covers with my Barnum & Bailey flashlight when I was five. I published a poem when I was seven, and that sealed my fate. 

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

My dad was an aspiring playwright, and he kept his rejected manuscripts in his bottom dresser drawer. I spent many childhood hours reading the rejection letters clipped to each one, and, being oppositionally defiant by nature, somehow this made me determined to write and to publish. I was profoundly influenced by the first book I loved, Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan, which is why Why We Write is dedicated to her. I didn't have any writing teachers except for the writers I love; I've never studied writing.

When and where do you write?

I used to write all the time--by day, by night. But then publishing, um, changed and the advances weren't enough to sustain my Hendrick's habit anymore, so I got a job at age 60. I have 3-day weekends and I'm learning to write in that more constricted space. I was also beyond overjoyed to have a month at MacDowell in September. My writing psyche must have sensed the urgency of the opportunity; I wrote most of a novel during that month. As to where: reclining, always. In the sun if I can manage it. One reason I moved to LA a year ago and love it here. My writing is solar-powered and the power is here.

What are you working on now?

Bringing the newborn baby, Why We Write, into the world. I'm just back from tour which was incredibly juicy. It's not "my" book; it's the 20 writers' book, too, so I get to do events with Susan Orlean and Terry McMillan, and with James Frey and Kathryn Harrison, and with a whole slew of writers I admire who aren't in the book: Julie Klam, Christina Haag, and Martha Southgate, most recently. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I have suffered from some shitty-ass first, second, and twelfth drafts, but never from writer's block. I don't believe in it. Although I don't believe in suffering, either, and that still happens. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

To paraphrase Jane Smiley from Why We Write: do it if you love it. Don't do it to make your mother love you, or your ex-boyfriend regret leaving you, or to make impressive cocktail party chatter. Goddess knows no one should do it for the money, unless one is David Baldacci--and in our interview, he too says he does it because he loves it. So there.

Meredith Maran (www.meredithmaran.com) is a book critic for People, Salon, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, More Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The author of eleven nonfiction books, Meredith published her first novel, A Theory Of Small Earthquakes in 2012. Her new nonfiction book, Why We Write, is just out from Plume. She’s on Twitter at @meredithmaran.