Mason Currey

How did you become a writer?

After college I decided that I wanted to be a novelist, but that didn't go so well. I spent a couple years flailing around with different novel ideas, getting very little actual writing done, and working a day job that was leading nowhere. So I decided to switch directions and move to New York to work as a magazine editor. I figured that way I would get paid to work with words and stories, and also be able to do some writing as part of the job. And that's pretty much what happened, although not exactly in the ways I expected. I ended up becoming a magazine editor in a field—architecture and design—that I had only a cursory knowledge of (although I've since remedied that). Meanwhile, a blog that I started as a hobby led to my first book, Daily Rituals, which was published in April.

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

I took an essay-writing class in college that was definitely a big influence. Essentially, we worked our way through The Best American Essays of the Century and, periodically, wrote our own personal essays, about whatever topic we liked, in which we tried to borrow or steal techniques from what we'd been reading. It was great fun.

Working as a magazine editor has also been a major influence, for better and perhaps for worse. It's helped me learn how to structure nonfiction stories, how to effectively condense or expand ideas, and how to knock out copy on a deadline. But I sometimes worry that it's made my writing style a little more "magazine-y" than is desirable.

When and where do you write?

I try to write for a couple of hours every morning, starting at 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. and continuing until 8:00 a.m., when I stop to eat breakfast with my wife. Until recently, I always had a day job, so on weekdays my personal writing time ended at breakfast; after that, I would take a shower and head to the office and have a normal workday. Nowadays I'm freelancing from home, so I can often write after breakfast as well, although my schedule is unpredictable. As for the location, I pretty much always write at home on my laptop, sitting at my desk or, more often, on the couch.

What are you working on now?

My book came out about eight weeks ago, and since then I've mostly been fielding a variety of publicity-related writing assignments. I did a three-week series of daily articles for Slate and I've written several book-related essays for different venues. I've also been doing a variety of freelance writing and editing projects for a couple of design publications. Meanwhile, what I want and really ought to be doing, and hope to be doing more of soon, is researching a few half-formed ideas for my next book. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Yes, and for me it's a sign that there is some fundamental flaw in the project at hand—it means that I don't really know what I'm trying to say, or that I'm attempting something that's just not a very good idea. These blocks are miserable but probably necessary. And they end when I either decide to power through and write something so-so to get it over with (like when it's a paid assignment and I have a deadline) or else reconsider the idea entirely.

What’s your advice to new writers?

I still feel like a new writer myself, so I don't know if I'm qualified to dispense advice. I will say that having a deadline helps me a tremendous amount. I often need to feel that pressure and anxiety in order to buckle down and get something finished. Also, as one might guess from the topic of my book, I'm a strong proponent of having an established daily routine—I have to be in the habit of sitting down to write at a certain time every day, otherwise it just doesn't happen. And in my book research, I found that to be true of many successful writers. They need to make writing a predictable daily habit, not something that they only do when they feel inspired. As John Updike once said, a solid routine "saves you from giving up."

Mason Currey, author of the recently released Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, was born in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Asheville. His writing has appeared in Slate, Metropolis, and Print. He lives in Brooklyn.

Susan Wingate

How did you become a writer?

What a challenging question and this is only the first! LOL. Well, I always credit any urging to become a writer to my father. He was a writer. He wrote these funny romantic safari adventure tales. Of course, I wanted to be just like him and so tried to emulate his style of writing and failed miserably. At nine years of age, I remember my English teacher assigned us a writing exercise, a short story. I’d just read Black Beauty by Anne Sewell and my story was remarkably similar to hers. At nine, I hadn’t yet learned about plagiarism. When the teacher returned our stories, mine came back with a big diagonal line on the front of my paper and the words “Too Schmaltzy!” scrawled across it. I was mortified. It stopped me from writing until I was a teenager, a good six years later. But after my teen years, I just needed to settle down and write which I did not until my early thirties. I dabbled during my twenties but I wasn’t focused enough to get serious about writing.

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

My influences can be found by casting a galactic net. For writers, I have to say Kurt Vonnegut, Leo Tolstoy, Terry Persun, Joshua Graham, David Quammen, Carol Edgarian, Edgar Allan Poe and Shakespeare, but these few names represent only a sliver of a fraction of writers who have influenced me as a person and as a writer. For books, Anna Karenina, Keepers of Truth, Slaughter House Five, The Moon & Sixpence, The Three Stages of Amazement, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Breakfast of Champions, Mistake in Identity. Well, my list of books read is long and extensive too. For teachers, I was fortunate to have a mentor for two years in my beginning as a writer. His name is Michael Collins and he helped me incredibly. Also, Tom Jenks, a more recent teacher who cracked the curtain to my writing and who I will always thank for helping me understand how to develop a great story. But this is a very short list and not really representative of all works, writers and teachers who have guided me in my writing career.

When and where do you write?

I am a morning writer so most of my new writing happens before the day gets going. I’m usually up by six o’clock. By nine, things have gotten a bit wild already and so writing gets more difficult but I usually push through until about one in the afternoon. I seem to have a great deal of trouble writing at night. My mind feels soggy then. And my answer to where I write is on my couch—feet up, laptop open.

What are you working on now?

A story called Way of the Wild Wood. It’s a tale about an eleven-year-old girl, Meg Nightly, whose mother died just months before the story begins. She now lives with her grieving and abusive father whom she calls Pa. After a particularly bad evening with Pa, Meg takes off on a journey into the woods that surround their home, a place called Fennel Forest at the crest of Whisker Ridge, and Meg gets lost.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No, not really. Story usually comes easily when I sit to write. What I suffer from are distractions. My husband and I live with one outnumbered dog named Robert, thirteen-and-a-half cats, and fourteen birds. Many issues spring up with that many critters. Someone is always getting into trouble somehow. I suffer from animals.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Don’t worry about how well someone else is doing. That’s their business. Your success will come if you focus on the craft of writing. Keep your nose in your story and see it to completion. Then repeat, repeat and repeat. If you produce inventory, you sell inventory.

Susan Wingate’s poem entitled “The Dance of Wind in Trees” was accepted for publication in the April 2013 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review. Her award-winning, #1 Amazon best seller, “Drowning” is now available in audio book version. Susan’s first book “Spider Brains” of the three-book “Susie Speider” YA Fiction Series is Available Now (Astraea Press). In 2012, two of Susan’s books made it onto the Top 10 Amazon Best Seller list, twice. Drowning (contemporary women’s fiction) won first place in the 2011 Forward National Literature Award for the category of drama. Drowning also won a finalist award for the category of Women’s Fiction/Chick Lit in the 2011 International Book Awards and reached #1 on the Amazon’s Best Seller list.

A vibrant public speaker, Susan offers inspiring, motivational talks about the craft of writing, publishing and marketing, and how to survive this extremely volatile ePublishing industry. She presents these lectures at writing conferences, libraries and book stores around the country. She also loves to visit with book clubs for more intimate chats. To learn more about Susan Wingate, you can go to her website at: www.susanwingate.com.

Rachel Bloom

How did you become a writer

I always loved English class, but I started to write as a hobby after I took a play writing class at age 13. I continued to write short plays and comedy pieces throughout high school, but these pieces were mostly for myself and never saw the light of day. That all changed, though, when I got to NYU and was accepted onto the sketch comedy group there. As part of that group, I learned the techniques of sketch comedy writing and spent the next four years writing two new sketches a week in preparation for our monthly shows.

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

I was really inspired by my older peers and directors of my college sketch comedy group who taught me the foundations of good comedy writing. In addition, I took a television writing class my senior year at NYU (taught by a man named James Felder) that taught me the television writing structure/technique that I still use today. My biggest writing influences today are my peers in the comedy community. Any time I see a show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater I am inspired. I also learn a ton from watching great television comedies like Arrested Development, 30 Rock, Frasier, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Dana Carvey Show. As a composer and lyricist, I look up to Stephen Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, Michael John LaChiusa and Trey Parker/Matt Stone.

When and where do you write?

I get most of my writing done at various coffee shops/cafes near my house. As long as I'm denying myself access to the Internet I get a lot of writing done.

What are you working on now?

I'm working on the second draft of a pilot and a full-length musical. I also have five new music videos that will be released online in the next two months!

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I suffer the most writer's block when I'm trying to come up with an entirely new idea for a piece. When this happens, I take a bath to clear my head and that usually unclogs whatever was going on. Even if the new idea that comes from the bath is a piece of crap, at least it gets my mind working again.

What’s your advice to new writers?

I'm sure everyone says this, but the only way to get good as a writer is to write constantly. It's easy to say "I'm a writer" and a lot harder (but more rewarding) to do the grunt work and actually WRITE. Any new writer also needs to know that, years from now, they will look back on most of the stuff they wrote in the beginning as pieces of crap--and that's OK! For comedy writing, it's important to put your work up in front of an audience so that you're not writing in a vacuum; have a table read of your pilot, put up a sketch show, or do stand up.

Rachel Bloom has written for the television shows Robot Chicken, Allen Gregory, The High Fructose Adventures of the Annoying Orange, The People's Choice Awards and the MTV Movie Awards. She performed at the 2012 Montreal Comedy Festival as part of the New Faces: Characters showcase. Her music videos have been featured on Funny or Die, Cracked, College Humor, Jezebel and in the LA times.