Stephen Romano

How did you become a writer?

I don’t think you really become a writer. Not if you’re the real thing. Sure you can learn how to put words together. Sure, you can learn to write things down. But being the real thing means you’re an artist with some sort of drive to create stuff. That drive is the magic X-factor that differentiates a true professional from some weekend warrior. Drive to create is something that finds you when you are very young, and it matures as you grow better at communicating through words and/or (in my case) other forms of art. That drive not only is the key tool of being any sort of creative person, but it also sustains you through the day-to-day life of a writer which can be lonely and desperate and full of struggle and heartbreak . . . but also great success and reward, if you’re talented, fortunate and (above all) persistent.  (A lot of very untalented people got very fortunate because they were persistent.) So the short answer is that I’ve always been a writer, since I was old enough to understand my ability to bring something—anything—out of the abyss. If what you are asking is how did I break into the business . . . well, see above. Drive is everything. I got my first stuff published and my first screenplays sold by being a DIY guy, then by working with small publishers on labor-of-love projects . . . then graduating to the big leagues, by introducing myself to film directors in Hollywood, editors and agents in New York and seeing if they liked what I had to offer. They liked me and so here I am. In every case, drive is what will sustain you. It will make you finish that all-important first novel when you are very young and move on to the next one, without being published right off. It will give you the perspective to spend months—maybe even years—creating something you feel is great, and allow you to set it on the back-burner while other projects percolate. It will make you brave enough to promote your own work. It will scorch you with the desire to be better every day, and that desire will translate into very good writing eventually, if the muse that chose you was even halfway worth a shit.  That’s what I believe anyway. As writing creatures, all any of us have are our own beliefs about this stuff. But none of this is an exact science—there are exceptions to every rule, of course. And bear in mind that us high-minded professionals with such lofty ideals—every single goddamn one of us—could be totally wrong about everything we know. 

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

As far as actual teachers go . . . well, let’s just say that academics who are also writers have never really impressed me. I think you have to be motivated to learn this stuff for yourself, even in a scholastic environment. Read, read, READ. My favorite scribe of all time is William Kotzwinkle. Look his stuff up. He is a genius and a master. Reading him automatically makes you a better writer, no matter what genre you work in. He wrote my favorite book of all time, which is THE FAN MAN. Also NIGHT BOOK, JACK IN THE BOX (made into a lousy movie called BOOK OF LOVE), FATA MORGANA, and THE BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN. He also wrote one of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET sequels. Number 4. The one that Renny Harlan directed. I also like Don Winslow a lot. Stephen King was an early influence. Chuck Palahniuk. Early Frank Miller. And I get into films a lot, too, being a screenwriter as well as a print author. I like a really bad movies. (See above.) STARCRASH is one of my all-time favorites. Being a fan of schlock in film has the effect of keeping a serious fellow like me grounded and less pretentious about his art. I have less patience for bad writing, though—that’s a whole other ballgame. I can feel my brain rot when I realize I’m reading a really ineptly-written book. And that happens a lot. One thing any decent writer does is osmosis—meaning that when you read the good stuff, it rubs off and you go into “Really Great Writer Mode.” Stephen King says in his remarkable book ON WRITING—which I love and think should be required reading for anyone who is doing or wants to do this stuff for a living—that we can learn as much from bad writing as we can from the good stuff. And I agree with him totally. It’s just that there’s only so many hours in the day. Watching a bad movie takes less than 2 of those hours. Reading a really bad book takes days. You turn into a snobby schoolteacher correcting term papers. “Ugh, this guy can’t fabricate a metaphor to save his miserable SOUL!” Who needs that?  Then again, the older you get, the less patience you tend to have with anything—even the guys you really like! That may just be the curse of a magician, knowing how all the tricks are done. I generally despise a lot of mainstream “thriller” guys—most of them are just awful prose stylists.  But I was VERY surprised by the fairly recent bestseller GONE GIRL. Just my speed, actually. Thought it was really well-written. A little hard to swallow, plot-wise, and all . . . but style and worldview are important to me. It’s what hooks you in the first paragraph. GONE GIRL had me at the bottom of the first page with it’s voice and point-of-view. This type of thing can be very difficult to master, or even define. Lots of people go their own way with it. But, getting back to trashy paperbacks again, you know you’re probably in heaps of trouble when you open a novel called SQUIRM and it starts off with “The night was sultry.”

When and where do you write?

My routine when the throttle comes down hard is like most writing creatures. You gotta have a routine or it usually doesn’t work out well.  I get up, get the sleep out of my head, check emails, crank the music up loud, then work at my Mac until a certain amount of words are done. For me the average is anywhere from 4-7 thousand words a day, because I’m super devoted to my craft and get really caught up in it. Though some days I’ll produce much less. I never write for less than 1 hour or produce less than 1 thousand words, though. Short stories are almost always written in one sitting. I’ve been known to write an entire novel in 18 days, a whole screenplay in less than a week. I knocked out a film novelization in 8 days. Last year I actually developed a physical condition called coccydynia—which is an aberration of the lower tailbone—from sitting too much and working too hard. I topped my own perverted record last year and wrote three novels in a row. I literally busted my ass writing! So I’m trying to slow down some these days. Take more of a breather between projects. Because I also am a pro illustrator and screenwriter, I have other obsessions. But writing is my main muse.

What are you working on now?

I just finished a book-length novella for Amazon Kindle, which is a prequel to the best-selling WAYWARD PINES series by Blake Crouch. It's about a homeless private detective who stumbles on some very weird stuff in Texas. WAYWARD PINES is being made into a Fox TV show that will be out next year, but you can read my new book on in just a few weeks---October 15th, 2013. It's a cool project I like a lot.  I also just took a gig doing tie-in novels for a major television series, which will be announced soon. (Guys like me tend to get work like that because we produce really fast.) And I have several original projects in the works, too. I took a much-needed breather from writing earlier this year to do some cool illustration work for B-Movie legend Charles Band, which is really fun and therapeutic. Charlie did the PUPPETMASTER films and about every sleazy video movie you ever saw if you were kid in the 1980s. I’m always on some crazy project. Really don’t know what the fuck to do with myself when I’m not working, actually. So I collect weird stuff, like old super-8 movies.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Not sure what that means, really. I think “writer’s block” may be just a euphemism for “being scared” or “being lazy.” Harlan Ellison once said he couldn’t bring himself to write for more than a year, because (and I’m paraphrasing) he just couldn’t bring himself to work. I think that might be a perfect example of just being a little bit terrified to . . .well you know, just get in there and see what happens. But I don’t know Harlan personally, so that may be a terrible example. When it’s time to work, I work—no matter what. It might be shit, but I gotta do something. Don Winslow calls it an addiction, and, yes, that is exactly what it is. But I did once get really, really indecisive in the middle of writing a novel, which might have a different classification. I don’t generally plot things in advance—or if I do, I always end up throwing away the outline once I get started. I just take off where the muse wants me to go and see what comes. A lot of guys like work this way, like William Gibson and Joe Lansdale. I find the spontaneity of just making it up as you go usually brings great things . . . but on this one damn book, which was really dark and personal and full of bad people doing bad things to each other . . . I came to one crucial juncture and had no IDEA what was going to happen. No idea at all. Aggravating. (I solved the problem by having a minor character come back from the dead and kill someone important.) But that’s what editors are for. (The lousy bums.) Seriously, though . . . always listen to your editor. ALWAYS. They are almost always right, even when you want to rip their heads off.  (Line editing is different, though . . . dammit . . . grumble . . .)

What’s your advice to new writers?

As far as actually writing a book goes . . . this might sound like I’m passing the buck, but Stephen King has a formula in ON WRITING that is super clean and logical and totally works. When I was first taking myself to school as a student of writing (which is all any of us are, even now), I absorbed his formula of first draft, second draft and so forth and it still guides me through the process. Once the book is “finished,” listen to your first readers, listen to your agent, listen to your editor. They’re all smarter than you. It’s a process, and though you are the commander, none of this happens in a vacuum. As for the rest, SEE ABOVE. And in case my points are not clear . . . let me say it a slightly different way (because we are all egomaniacs who love to blabber and repeat ourselves): Do not get in this business to look cool or make a lot of money. Do not do it to spite your ex-boyfriend or to “Show those fools who called me mad.” Don’t do it because you’ve tried lots of other things and failed at all of them. And DO NOT DO IT if you are not an artist—if you don’t comprehend the overriding desire to create something. This is a tough job with a specific skill requirement . . . and the competition out there is stiff. The true believers and hard workers blow away the weekend warriors and daydreamers every single time. So sit down and just do it. DO THE WORK. Don’t hide behind “writer’s block.” Don’t be intimidated by the empty page. Write what you feel . . . and the muse will come to you. It’s just that easy. And also just that hard. 

Bio: I am an author, illustrator and screenwriter. My novels are published by IDW, Simon and Schuster and Little Brown and Company. My screenplays include work for major Hollywood producers and a Showtime original series entitled MASTERS OF HORROR. My recent ultraviolent action thriller novel RESURRECTION EXPRESS is now available in paperback from Pocket Books. That novel is now officially in development as a motion picture from the producers of PLATOON and the billion dollar RUSH HOUR film franchise. Can't announce who that is just yet, as the ink just dried on the contracts . . . but stay tuned RIGHT HERE for all the dirt: www.stephenromanoshockfestival.com.

Brian Christian

How did you become a writer?

It seems incredible, but I decided to become a writer after a dream I had the summer after my freshman year of college. In the dream, I had returned to my high school to be part of an alumni panel on what to do with your life after high school, but I felt fraudulent giving the very advice I most desperately sought. At one point, I impetuously stood up and interrupted the proceedings: "Yeah, but how do I decide what to do with my life?" The question was rhetorical, meant to stump the faculty and expose the panel for the generic one-size-fits-all platitudes it was, but the dream version of my ninth-grade biology teacher met my eyes and replied without missing a beat. "Well, Brian, listen to your small thoughts. That's what you have to do." I woke up with a start and jotted "Small Thoughts" down on a Post-It. The next day I pondered what that phrase might mean, idly going over my class notes from that year. In the margins of my applied math seminar, my object-oriented programming lecture, my philosophy course, I discovered shards of poems, character sketches, ideas and germs for essays and stories. My small thoughts. "I have a writer's brain," I thought, discovering as I noticed the marginalia as if for the first time that literature was, it appeared, simply what my brain did when confronted with experience. I threw my weight behind the tendency.

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

At eighteen I read Gödel, Escher, Bach and have never quite been the same since. The latest book to have quite that brain-rewiring effect on me has been Finite and Infinite Games, which has effectively managed to become a permanent part of how I process and interpret the world. For the sheer prowess of the sentence, I go back again and again to Thoreau, Annie Dillard, David Foster Wallace. In verse, those who have most expanded my sense of what is possible in language have been Forrest Gander, Arthur Sze, Ben Lerner, K. Silem Mohammad. In drama: Caryl Churchill, Charles Mee. In fiction and in the imagination: Donald Barthelme, Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges.

When and where do you write?

In college, I remember stopping abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk and pulling out a notebook to scribble a thought before it fled. A passing professor cheered me on: "That's the idea that's going to put it over the top!" I still try to be that kind of person, but of course larger-scale projects require a deliberate approach as well as a kind of ready opportunism. As of late I'm working on a book-length collaboration and so much of my writing gets done across the desk from my coauthor. As anyone with a running partner or "gym buddy" can attest, few things so cut off the easy, ignoble escapes of energy and attention like the simple presence of another human being. No virtual collaboration technologies are ever quite the equal of thinking through a problem aloud in the same room.

What are you working on now?

The lion's share of my attention is going toward a new book, a collaboration with Tom Griffiths titled Algorithms to Live By, which I'm incredibly excited about. Meanwhile, I'm nurturing a host of other projects – essays, articles, and software – as well as editing the poetry journal Ink Node.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

For me, writer's block is an umbrella term that encompasses two distinct phenomena. The first is restlessness, lack of a fixed purpose. The second is procrastination: you have purpose but you're not seeing to it. I regard creation as a kind of inhalation-exhalation process. Or a four-stroke engine, if a mechanical metaphor suits more than a biological one: Intake, Compression, Power, Exhaust.

If you're feeling uninspired, you need inhalation / intake. Sally forth. Meet new people. Fill your calendar. Read. Converse. Get involved. Scavenge – as both creatures and cylinders must.

If you know what you should be saying but aren't saying it, you need exhalation / compression / power. Steal away. Empty your calendar and embrace solitude. Retreat. Cloister. "Go up garrett at once," as Thoreau puts it.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Content matters as much as form; having something to say is at least as important as saying it with impeccable craft. To a college student, my advice would be double-major. Develop a base of knowledge and a line of passionate inquiry that isn't simply writing itself. Your writing will be the means of pursuing that inquiry. Make sure you're keeping yourself supplied with questions.

Brian Christian is the author of The Most Human Human, which was named a Wall Street Journal bestseller and a New Yorker favorite book of 2011, and has been translated into ten languages. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Gizmodo, AGNI, Gulf Coast, and Best New Poets, and in scientific journals such as Cognitive Science. Christian has been featured on The Charlie Rose Show and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and has lectured at Google, Microsoft, the Santa Fe Institute, and the London School of Economics. His work has won several awards, including fellowships at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, publication in Best American Science & Nature Writing, and an award from the Academy of American Poets.  Born in Wilmington, Delaware, Christian holds degrees in philosophy, computer science, and poetry from Brown University and the University of Washington. He lives in San Francisco and is currently at work on his second book of nonfiction, in collaboration with Tom Griffiths, titled Algorithms to Live By. 

David Vann

How did you become a writer?

Before I could write, I told stories about squirrels which my mother wrote down. She always encouraged reading and writing. And my father told lies constantly, about the size of fish and his fidelity in marriage and everything in between. The first stories I wrote were collections of our hunting and fishing tales, illustrated and with titles such as North To Alaska, given to my family each year at Christmas. I come from a family with five suicides and a murder, many divorces, mental illness on both sides, and beautiful landscapes, so it was wonderful material

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

I was very lucky at Stanford as an undergrad to study with Michelle Carter, who was a great young teacher, and with Grace Paley, who was visiting for a quarter, and Adrienne Rich. But the huge influence on me was John L’Heureux, who was a mentor to me for over twenty years. He was unreasonably generous and patient, and an inspiration in his great writing. Desires, an early story collection of his, was my favorite, but I also loved A Woman Run Mad and many others and read all of his books. I was also influenced by other former students of John L’Heureux, including Tobias Wolff, Harriet Doerr, Ron Hansen, etc. John had me read Flannery O’Connor, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Carver, Porter, Hemingway, Allison, Gibbons, etc. O’Connor and Garcia Marquez had the biggest influence on me, but the book he recommended that stuck with me most was Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. From there, I read other landscape writers, such as Elizabeth Bishop and Annie Proulx, leading to my favorite novel, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. I love literal landscapes extended into figurative ones, and I love stylists such as McCarthy, Proulx, and Robinson. I also had a Great Works course for a year at Stanford with Leslie Cahoon, who introduced me to Euripides, Vergil, Chaucer, etc. Because of that one course, I studied Latin, Old English, Middle English, write novels which are essentially Greek tragedies, have just written a novel about Medea, am translating Beowulf, titled Legend of a Suicide based on Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, etc., so Leslie Cahoon had an enormous influence over my academic and writing life. I also went to an MFA at Cornell, where Stephanie Vaughn and Robert Morgan were generous to me, and came back to Stanford as a Stegner Fellow.

When and where do you write?

I write every morning, seven days a week, and the momentum of writing every day is tremendously important to me, because I have no outline or plan and view writing as a transformation by the unconscious. I don’t know what will happen on the page each day, but there’s a shocking amount of pattern and structure that emerges, and I think this can happen only through a daily practice. It’s also a replacement for religion for me, so I need the daily practice for emotional and psychological reasons, to not feel that my life is about nothing.

Where I write doesn’t matter, as long as I have a room to myself. It can be a hotel room anywhere in the world, or on my boat in Turkey, or at home in New Zealand in bed, as long as it’s for two hours by myself every morning, without distraction (no human movement or voices, and I wear earplugs). I travel for about half of each year, with book launches and interviews and festivals in about twenty countries, so I’m happy that I can write anywhere.

What are you working on now?

I have a new novel, Goat Mountain, coming out now (September, 2013). This is the book that burns away the last of my family material, returning to the setting of the first short story I ever wrote, more than twenty-five years ago. It’s my best book, and a strange one. An eleven-year-old boy on a deer-hunting trip in 1978 in northern California with his father, grandfather and father’s best friend, and things go wrong immediately. The boy’s father lets him sight in on a poacher through the scope of his rifle, as my father let me do in real life, and the boy pulls the trigger. This causes problems for the men. But what’s strange is how the poacher becomes a Jesus figure, a buck the Holy Ghost, and the grandfather a kind of God. I’m an atheist, so what was the Holy Trinity doing showing up in my novel? I’ve been thinking lately that it’s my Cherokee heritage showing up, because what bigger problem did Native Americans have than Jesus, showing up as a poacher on the land? I’m very excited about this novel, and I’m still trying to understand it.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No. I think writer’s block happens only if you’re not a writer or not working on the right material. It’s a thing that doesn’t really exist.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Write every morning for two hours. It can’t hurt. Find a job that doesn’t happen in the mornings. Refuse to go to breakfast or lunch with anyone. Don’t write in cafes or other public places. Don’t try to “be” a writer, just write. Enroll in a writing program, where you’ll get solid advice. Don’t ask anyone else for advice, especially your family or friends or anyone in a café or online. Don’t read or write blogs, since they have no subtext and therefore suck. Realize that anything without subtext, without a second story, sucks. Put your family on the sacrificial stone and swing the axe. Don’t plan to make any money from writing, and realize it’s unfair and you may not get published for decades. Realize it may be a mercy and a justice to everyone that you don’t get published. Most likely your writing isn’t worth reading. One in twenty of my students is worth reading, and they all made the cut to get into a graduate writing program. The best thing you can do is read a lot of good books and study language. A ten-week intensive Latin course at UC Berkeley was the single best thing I ever did for my writing. Old English has been helpful, too, and a course in linguistics. I’ve read Blood Meridian six times, because re-reading is helpful. What you write will be a by-product of what you ingest. No writer is ever original or can help being original.

Published in 19 languages, David Vann’s internationally-bestselling books (Legend of a Suicide, Caribou Island, Dirt, Last Day On Earth, A Mile Down, and his new novel, Goat Mountain,  have won 14 prizes, including best foreign novel in France and Spain, and appeared on 70 Best Books of the Year lists in a dozen countries. He has written for the Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Outside, Men’s Journal, McSweeney’s, The Sunday Times, The Observer, The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, and many others. A former Guggenheim fellow, National Endowment for the Arts fellow, Wallace Stegner fellow, and John L’Heureux fellow, he is currently a Professor at the University of Warwick in England. www.davidvann.com.