Alex Beam

How did you become a writer?

Always wanted to be a writer. Sold a few pieces of journalism, landed a job as a fact-checker, landed in Moscow on the strength of my language ability, took time off to write a novel. Kept on going: journalism, fiction, non-fiction, now popular history.

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

Mainly my parents, who were both excellent writers, although not professionals. My mother directed me to superb, non-obvious literature from a young age, e.g. Orwell's "social" novels, set in England; "Darkness at Noon;" many mysteries (John Creasey...), Josephine Tey. Or to books I wouldn't have known about, such as "Red Pawn," by Flora Lewis. or "Bible and Sword," by Barbara Tuchman.

When and where do you write?

At home, mainly in the mornings, before the world crowds in.

What are you working on now?

I just spent two years writing “American Crucifixion” about the assassination of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet. It will appear on April 22 (Vladimir Lenin's birthday), 2013.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

You mean "unemployment block," as veteran Miami Herald columnist and comic novelist Carl Hiassen calls it? I've been at the Boston Globe for over a quarter-century; people who have trouble writing don't stick around at newspapers. It's fantastic training, as I'm sure Mr. Hemingway of the Kansas City Star would attest.

What’s your advice to new writers?

If it's not fun for you, don't do it. If you enjoy writing, keep at it. Something good may happen. And remember: almost no one in America can write a coherent sentence, so if you have to go out and sell yourself, price your talent high. You're worth it. 

About Alex: I am a writer with a motley assortment of credits, including the Introduction to Arie Zand’s Political Jokes of Leningrad, for which I was paid the princely sum of $500 in 1982. Also: two novels about Russia; and two – soon to be three — non-fiction books on various subjects. I worked for Business Week magazine in Los Angeles, Moscow and Boston, a cheery eight years of my life I now call The Lost Weekend.

In 1987, I started working at the Boston Globe, where I became seriatim, a business columnist, an Op-Ed columnist and finally a columnist in what used to be called the Living Arts section. I took a buyout in early 2013 and am now writing a weekly column in the Opinion section. I have won a few awards, including some Best of Boston citations, a Massachusetts Book Award and an extremely lucrative (now defunct) John Hancock Award for Excellence in Financial Writing. I was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford for the academic year 1996-1997, which was an award of sorts, in addition to being lots of fun. The Globe allowed me to write occasional humor columns for the (soon to be disastrously renamed) International Herald Tribune, as well as the first-in-the-world squash blog, for Vanity Fair. My friends and I used to read and post “hate mail” podcasts for the Globe website, reading letters from irate readers. Alas, our efforts failed to attract much of an audience. Further proof, if any were needed, that hate doesn’t pay.

Here is a link to an interview I did for the Globe’s web site a few years ago, where, according to my wife, I say at least one very stupid thing, “…You don’t even have to be right.” But I meant it.

I have been married for a very long time and my three adult sons seem to be thriving, for which much thanks.

Ariel Gore

How did you become a writer?

I was a terrible talker. I was shy and quiet in part because I was accustomed to getting slapped across the face if I said the wrong thing. So I thought, well, I'll write. And I found that a much less stressful way to organize my thoughts. Later, as a teenager, I became a traveler and we wrote letters in those days. It was expensive international phone calls or letters if you wanted to keep your intimate friendships across the miles so, again, I thought, I'll write.

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

Maya Angelou and Ntozake Shange were big for me when I was first learning to see myself as a writer. Muriel Rukeyser. Diane Di Prima. Those were the early writers who showed me that writing wasn't just for men in tweed coats.

When and where do you write?

I write in the laundromat. Literally. But also in all the laundromats of life. I am a woman. I am a mother. I am the breadwinner for my family. I don't have a room of my own. So I write when and where I can.

What are you working on now?

I'm promoting my new memoir, The End of Eve, a dark comedy about taking care of my crazy, beautiful mother when she dying of lung cancer. So I'm on tour.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I wouldn't call it writer's block. Sometimes my brain is cluttered with other things. Sometimes my time is consumed with better-paying work or I get a repetitive strain injury writing someone else's stuff and I can't write my own then. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Keep your overhead low. Being a writer is feast or famine and a lot of time it's famine so you want to keep your credit card bills and rent or mortgage and all the rest of it low so you have time. What you need is time. You don't need a room of your own or anyone else to take care of you, but like Gertrude Stein says it take a lot of loafing to write a book and you need time to loaf and if you have to work 24-7 it's tricky.

Ariel Gore is the editor and publisher of Hip Mama. Her latest book, The End of Eve (Hawthorne Books), is also, she thinks, her best and most vulnerable.

Lawrence Grobel

How did you become a writer?

When I was 11 I was curious about a certain old house in my suburban neighborhood and disguised myself as a reporter for my nonexistent elementary school paper, knocked on the owner’s door and got invited in to ask anything I wanted about the place. I then became an actual reporter for and then editor of my high school newspaper. I entered an essay contest sponsored by Newsday and won a watch, a trip to Washington D.C, to meet the head of the FBI, my two N.Y. U.S. Senators, and Attorney-General Robert Kennedy. I saw that writing “paid.” In college I wrote for both the newspaper and the humor magazine, joined the Meredith Mississippi March with Dr. King and called in my (unpaid) observations to a Newsday editor. In the Peace Corps I had plenty of time to write a novel and a book about my life in Ghana, neither of which was shown to anyone. When I returned to the States after 4 years abroad I convinced the editor of Newsday’s new Sunday magazine that I could write for him and wound up with some assignments which kept me busy and, when accepted, gave me the confidence to approach the N.Y. Times with some story ideas. They took two of them, and then I turned to magazines—got plenty of rejections but never gave up. Once Playboy took a chance with me, I convinced Barbra Streisand that she should give me an in-depth interview…that led to Marlon Brando and I haven’t stopped talking to people for 35 years.

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

My piano teacher, Ted Harris, was a great character who believed in me when I was 9. I started reading James Joyce at an early age, along with Dostoyevsky, Hesse, Joseph Heller, Norman Mailer, and Saul Bellow. At UCLA I studied independently with the novelist Bernard Wolfe and used to hang around his office in Beverly Hills and his home as well, talking about what he was working on and what I was. He turned me on to reading J.P. Donleavy, whom I eventually interviewed at his home in Ireland.  Also at UCLA I became friends with my Spanish teacher, Enrique Cortes, who was sort of like a Don Juan figure for me. He read everything I wrote and rarely liked anything, but when he once asked if he could keep one page of something I had written, I was elated.

When and where do you write?

I work in an office in my home in the Hollywood Hills. I’m not good at writing at coffee shops or hotels or on planes or in foreign places. I try to be at my desk every day, whether I accomplish anything or not.

What are you working on now?

I’m starting a script based on my last novel, Begin Again Finnegan. I also went back to some fiction I wrote years ago about Africa—I screwed that up by introducing the wrong characters in the middle of it, so I am rewriting it and seeing where that goes. I’m doing some short pieces for the Saturday Evening Post. I started a story last week based on something I heard that got my attention. And some producers in Singapore contacted me about writing a script for them, so we’re talking about that. But I probably spend more time trying to figure out how to market and promote the 15 books I self-published on Amazon these last few years…and I wish I didn’t have to do that.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Rarely. But I did stop working on the last chapter of my memoir (dealing with my time with Brando on his island) because I was afraid that I was going to hear from the person who was featured in the previous chapter, Barbra Streisand, since I wrote about all the behind-the-scenes stuff that happened between us over 9 months, when I was interviewing her for Playboy. I could hear her calling me and saying, “I never said that.” Or, “You’ve got it all wrong.”  Or, “Why would you write about that, it’s mean.” Just thinking about that kept me from finishing the book for over five years. Until I just said, to hell with it, it’s my life. (I think Truman Capote helped me here, when he said about how he felt writing about his rich friends, “Who did they think I was? I’m not a court jester, I’m a writer.”) So I finished it, and self-published it on Amazon. Kind of a quiet way to put it out, I know. Maybe I’m still thinking about her.

What’s your advice to new writers?

The same advice Bernard Wolfe gave to me when I first told him about a novel idea I had. “Write 100 pages, and if it doesn’t work, fuck it.”  I couldn’t believe it when he said that—100 pages?? And yet, he was right. Sometimes you need to write a lot just to find out what it is you are really writing. And sometimes you need to throw away a lot to keep the good stuff.  Writing is really rewriting, which every writer learns only by doing. You just need the self-confidence to believe in yourself. And not let anyone convince you otherwise.

Lawrence Grobel is a novelist, journalist, biographer, poet and teacher. Four of his 22 books have been singled out as Best Books of the Year by Publisher’s Weekly and many have appeared on Best Seller lists. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction. PEN gave his Conversations with Capote a Special Achievement Award. James A. Michener called his biography, The Hustons, “a masterpiece.” His The Art of the Interview is used as a text in many journalism schools. Writer’s Digest called him “a legend among journalists.” Joyce Carol Oates dubbed him “The Mozart of Interviewers” and Playboy singled him out as “The Interviewer’s Interviewer” after publishing his interviews with Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton, Henry Fonda and Marlon Brando. He has written for dozens of magazines and has been a Contributing Editor for Playboy, World (New Zealand), and Trendy (Poland). He served in the Peace Corps, teaching at the Ghana Institute of Journalism; created the M.F.A. in Professional Writing for Antioch University; and taught in the English Dept. at UCLA for ten years. He has appeared on CNN, the Today Show, Good Morning America, Charlie Rose and in two documentaries, one on J.D. Salinger, the other Al Pacino’s Wilde Salome. His blog, books and articles can be found on his website: www.lawrencegrobel.com and at Amazon.com’s Kindle Store.