Sue Halpern

How did you become a writer?

I became a writer by being a reader. I started visiting the library every Saturday from about the age of five on, having fallen in love with books. At some point I started getting interested in not only the story, but how the writer made the story work. I was the kid who read the last page first. 

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

In college I studied with John Hersey, who impressed upon us that writing was about voice and immersed us in different writers' voices. When we read Flannery O'Conner I decided I wanted to become a fine lady writer from the South. The only problem was that I wasn't fine, or a lady, or from the South or, at that point, a writer. But I kept reading for voice, even so. I loved discovering Grace Paley, Annie Dillard, the poetry of Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams.

When and where do you write?

I have a small office at home where I type, but I write by hand, in a notebook, so I tend to migrate to the living room, or the porch, and lie on my back and compose. But then I take the notebook back to my desk and basically rewrite everything when I am at the computer.

What are you working on now?

I'm poking around at a new non-fiction book--top secret of course--as well as a long piece for The New York Review of Books about how the quants are taking over and eliminating mystery and serendipity from our lives.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I haven't suffered from writer's block in any profound way, but I find that when I can't seem to "use my words" I pull a book off my shelf, something I love, and read that for a while and it always gets me going. Or I go out and walk the dog or go for a bike ride.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Go to the library or a book store and look around. Understand that many, many other people have written books, and you can, too. Then pick a realistic number of words you promise yourself to write every day--maybe it's 500, maybe it's 200--and stick to it. If you do that, the words will accumulate, and you will have something other than a blank page to work from.

Bio: My first published work, for which I received $75, was a poem I wrote as a high school sophomore. It took a while before I made that much money again. I graduated from Yale and went on to Oxford, where I received a doctorate in political theory. My first job after college was working with people coming out of prison. My second job was teaching ethics to medical students. I've written for a wide range of magazines, from Parade to The New Yorker, from Rolling Stone to Conde Nast Traveler to The New York Review of Books, and have published six books, most recently "A Dog Walks Into A Nursing Home: Lessons on the Good Life From and Unlikely Teacher," about working as a therapy dog team at a public nursing home in Vermont.

Marci Nault

How did you become a writer?

I was born a storyteller and by the time I was four I think my parents were ready to duct-tape my mouth because I had to share every detail about my world. In my teens, I spent hours in the woods penning ideas. Throughout my twenties, I was frustrated that I couldn’t make the words on the page match the vision in my mind. It took quite a bit of mediocre writing to finally find my style and voice.

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

I have a stack of books that I keep close when I’m writing: Stephen King’s On Writing, Anne Patchett’s Bel Canto, Joanne Harris’s Chocolate, and whatever book I’m currently reading that has inspired me to write stronger. But my mother was my strongest influence. Having learned writing and grammar from the nuns in the sixties, she’s been a harsh critic forcing me to work harder.

When and where do you write?

I wish I had a routine and I’m working to find one, but my writing comes to me at the oddest times: driving in the car, shopping, on airplanes, hiking in the woods, and unfortunately at four in the morning. Sometimes I write in bed because I have to get the idea down immediately. If I’m distracted I head to a coffee shop; I have about three haunts depending on my mood. I also have a home office that overlooks a park. This is my favorite place to write because I can stare out the window while I create my characters and scenes.

What are you working on now?

My second novel is still untitled. It deals with how our memory creates who we are, but since The Lake House hit the shelves there’s been a tremendous call for a sequel and I’m beginning to consider it.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

It’s more like writer’s fear. When I go into a scene I have no idea where it will take me and it’s an intense emotional ride. There’s also the worry that it won’t be good enough and I know that the ideas are right there if I’ll just open the door, but a part of me wants to keep it clamped shut. Sometimes it will take six hours to convince my mind that it’s okay to write.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Patience! Too many writers race ahead. Great writing takes time. Write, walk away, return, revise, and repeat as many times as necessary. Always read your writing aloud to someone else. Before you query agents get a professional critique. Many times these cost only a few hundred dollars and can make all the difference.

Marci Nault’s debut novel,The Lake House (Gallery/Simon & Schuster) is a Chicago Tribune, Cape May Herald, CBS and Amazon Premier Featured Summer read pick. It’s the story of the unlikely friendship between 74-year-old, Victoria Rose, and 28-year-old, Heather Bregman, set on a small lakeside community in New England.

Marci is the founder of 101 Dreams Come True, a motivational website that encourages visitors to follow their improbable dreams. Her story about attempting to complete 101 of her biggest dreams has been featured in newspapers and magazines nationwide, and she regularly speaks on the subject on radio and television. She loves to talk with book groups through Skype. More information can be found at www.marcinault.com or www.101dreamscometrue.com. 

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.