Joy Lanzendorfer

How did you become a writer?

When I was a kid, I loved writing but I resisted the idea of being a writer because it sounded like a life of rejection and semi-poverty to me. So it was always, “I will be an X and write on the side.” I will be a private detective and write on the side. I will be a computer game designer and write on the side. I will be an actress and write on the side. When I got to college, I went part way through a theater degree before I realized that I’m a lousy actor. Meanwhile I was rocking my English classes, so I decided to quit denying the fact that I wanted to write and began pursuing it. I had my first paid publication when I was 21 and have been writing ever since.

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

There are too many to list, but I do like modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and DH Lawrence. These writers showed me that a book could actually teach the reader how to read it. A modernist text is often disorienting at first, but as you go along, a pattern emerges that establishes how this specific book works, and the story opens up in ways that couldn’t exist in a straight narrative. This is mind-blowing stuff to me even today; it gets me thinking about the possibilities of language and structure in storytelling.

When and where do you write?

I work at home full time. I put in long hours with lots of caffeine. On an ideal day, I’ll get up at 5:30 a.m., write until 3 p.m., and then take a walk or do errands. Sometimes I don’t manage the early wake up and get up at 6:30 or 7 a.m. and work until 5 p.m. or so.

What are you working on now?

I’m editing my novel, Right Back Where We Started From, as well as working on short stories, essays, and articles. I also maintain a lifestyle blog, Savvy Housekeeping (savvyhousekeeping.com), that I update every day.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Sure. I think all writers have to go through writer’s block sometimes. For me, it means my creativity has run dry and I need to recharge. Basically, I’ve used up all my ideas for the moment and have to put new information in my brain so it can make connections and give me fresh ideas. Reading is a good cure for writer’s block.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Learn to love discipline. Set up a schedule for yourself—a word count to hit, an amount of time at the keyboard each day—and make it a priority in your life. Always read the publication before you submit to it. Don’t blindly send your work to a long list of journals or magazines—it probably won’t be accepted and you’re just adding to the slush pile. Try not to be envious of other writers when they do well, but instead champion their success as proof that if they can do it, you can do it too.

And read every day. A writer has to read. It’s almost as important as the actual writing itself.

Joy Lanzendorfer’s work has been in Mental Floss, Salon, Entrepreneur, Writer's Digest, The Writer, Imbibe, Bust, Scholastic Instructor, Bay Nature, PopMatters, and many other publications. Her fiction has appeared in Hotel Amerika, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Monkeybicycle, Necessary Fiction, Superstition Review, Word Riot, and others. She’s a judge for the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards and holds an MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Her Twitter handle is @JoyLanzendorfer.

Don Winslow

How did you become a writer?

Basically by writing. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, and I’ve been doing it - or trying to – since I was six. (My neighbor, Joey Palumbo, paid me a quarter to write a play, and it was a long time before I got paid that much again.) I started seriously trying to write crime novels much later. I’d heard Joseph Wambaugh say that when he was starting, he decided to write ten pages a day, no matter what. I didn’t think I could do ten, but I could do five. So I wrote five pages a day on my first crime novel, no matter where I was or what I was doing. After a while (okay, quite a while) I had a book. The first fourteen publishers I sent it to disagreed. The fifteenth thought it was a book (it was nominated for an Edgar) and I’ve been writing since.

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

There’s not time or space for me to list all those. Shakespeare was a huge influence when I was a kid. In my genre, Elmore Leonard, Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, Lawrence Block, Joe Wambaugh, T. Jefferson Parker, Robert B. Parker, James Crumley, Ken Bruen, Ian Rankin, John Harvey...it goes on and on, and I’m always afraid I’ll leave someone out. Tolstoy inspires me, so does George Eliot. I don’t ever want to ‘close the list’ on my inspirations – I want to find new things every day.

When and where do you write?

Depends on where we’re living. If I’m at home in California, I write in my office. If we’re in Rhode Island, I write on my mother’s porch. The ‘when’ is pretty much the same – I start work at 5 or 5:30 AM depending on the time of year (earlier in the summer) and work all day. In winter, I take a break around 10 and do a few miles. In summer, I knock off late afternoon and hit the waves until dark. It’s a good life.

What are you working on now?

I’m always working on a couple of books, but I’m usually pretty close-mouthed about what they are. I think you can talk about writing or you can write, but it’s pretty hard to do both. At least for me.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No, but only because I refuse to believe in it. I’ll whistle past that particular graveyard, thanks. My hunch is that writer’s block is really an attempt to write perfectly on the first draft, which is hard to do. I just write badly until the good stuff comes. The other possibility is that I’m trying to write a scene that doesn’t really belong, or I’m trying to write it from the wrong character’s point of view. So I try switching it up. But if I take four or five stabs at a scene or a chapter, and it’s still not working, I have to decide that the scene or chapter simply doesn’t belong and I move on. It might be, too, that I don’t know enough about the characters or the story to write it yet. A lot of times, I’ll just skip it and go back later.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Write. That sounds glib, and I don’t mean it to. But at the end of the day, it comes down to sitting – usually alone – in front of some kind of writing instrument and getting it down. There’s just no replacement for ‘time on the mat’. The other thing I’d advise young writers is not to put too much stock in ‘peer review’. If you’re going to seek advice, get it from people who know more than you do, and, even then, do it sparingly. It’s too easy to get nibbled to death by ducks.

Don Winslow is an American author most recognized for his crime and mystery novels. Many of his books are set in California. He has published a series of five novels that have a private investigator named Neal Carey as their main character.

Jake Needham

How did you become a writer?

It was an accident. Seriously, it actually was an accident. I had practiced law for a couple of decades, doing mostly international corporate work, and I found myself involved in a complicated and rather hostile corporate acquisition. When the smoke eventually cleared, I ended up personally buying out of the deal a major interest in a little Hollywood production company that mostly made cable TV movies. Looking back, I can only conclude I was either in a highly inebriated state or temporarily possessed by a fit of unrestrained hubris. Either way, once I had gone and done it, I did my level best to make the company profitable. My principle strategy was to focus the company more tightly on what I thought it could do best, and I even dashed off an outline of the kind of movies I wanted the company to try to sell to its production partners. A copy of that outline got sent by mistake to one of the cable TV networks we worked with and one day the network called up and asked me to make it for them. Make what? I asked. The movie you wrote that treatment for, they said. We really liked it.

And that, girls and boys, is how I became a writer…

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

I've always figured one day I would sit down think up an uplifting answer to toss out when I’m asked this question, one that makes me appear thoughtful, reflective, and terribly, terribly intellectual. Sadly, I’ve never gotten around to it. I guess the simple truth is that every author I’ve ever read has influenced me to some degree. I see ways others have told stories that I like and wish I could manage to do similar work myself, and I see ways they’ve told stories that I hate and swear to avoid forever.

A number of reviewers compared my early books to Elmore Leonard -– ‘If Elmore Leonard had written a book about Bangkok, this would be it!’ — and some interviewers are still jumping to the conclusion that I was once bitten by a Leonard bug and am trying to go down that road with my own books. That’s just not the case. All the Leonard titles I’ve read have been too disjointed in their narratives and tried too hard for cleverness in their characters to engage me for very long. Great dialogue, of course, but weak narratives. And weak narratives ultimately make you care very little about the characters no matter how snappy their dialogue may be. So, no, not Elmore Leonard. And, honestly, not anyone else in particular either.

When and where do you write?

I have libraries in both our Bangkok and US homes and my family accepts that those are my private retreats where I can work without being disturbed. The two rooms were designed to be very similar in order to minimize any sense of dislocation. Both are lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and both have a carefully-positioned Eames chair where I listen to music, enjoy the view out the windows, and work on a laptop with my feet up. Okay, so owning two original Eames chairs is probably a definition of serious self-indulgence. I admit it. Guilty.

What are you working on now?

I finished the final edits on my fourth Jack Shepherd novel last month and now it’s out of my hands and with the proofreaders. It will be published in January, 2014, as THE KING OF MACAU. Since the day after I let that one go I’ve been working oh the third Inspector Samuel Tay novel. It’s called THE DEAD AMERICAN and is scheduled for summer 2014.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No such thing as writer’s block. You ever hear of doctor’s block or architect’s block? Look, writing is a job. John Gregory Dunne said that writing is manual labor of the mind. It’s like laying pipe. You show up every day, dig a few feet further, and put down some more pipe. You do your job. Wasting perfectly good writing time whining about so-called writer’s block is something professional writers don’t do.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Sit down, put your fingers on the keyboard of your choice, and do it. I’m sick to death of people talking about the writing process, examining the writing process, and analyzing the writing process. That's just malarkey. You DO writing. That's all there is to it.

Jake Needham is an American screen and television writer who began writing novels when he realized he didn’t really like movies and television very much. He has since published six popular novels set in the cities of contemporary Asia and his seventh, THE KING OF MACAU, will be published in January, 2014. The Bangkok Post said, “Jake Needham is Michael Connelly with steamed rice.” 

Mr. Needham has lived and worked in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand for over twenty-five years. He is a lawyer by education and has held a number of significant positions in both the public and private sectors where he took part in a lengthy list of international operations he has absolutely no intention of telling you about. He, his wife, and their two sons now divide their time between homes in Thailand and the United States. 

The print editions of Jake’s novels have been distributed only in Europe, Asia, and the UK, where they have all been bestsellers. E-book editions of his novels are now available worldwide. You can learn more about Jake Needham and his books at his official website: www.JakeNeedham.com.