Cressida Connolly

How did you become a writer?

Although I’d always written fragments of stories and overheard conversations in notebooks, it didn’t occur to me that these might be signs of becoming a writer until I was in my early twenties. Then I moved out of London to a farm in the countryside and began to write more purposefully.

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

Poetry was my first love and if I had to choose ten books to take to a desert island, probably half of them would be poetry: Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Tennyson, Shakespeare’s sonnets. I love short stories and especially American writers of the form: Scott Fitzgerald’s beautiful clear language and lovely sentences and John Updike, too. I very much admire William Trevor and Alice Munro. I love Elizabeth Bowen. And George Orwell’s rules for writers are indispensable.

When and where do you write?

In the mornings as soon after breakfast as I can. Sometimes in my kitchen, sometimes in my study. I pace around a lot between paragraphs. A lot of my last novel was written in my car, because my sister was sick with lung cancer and I didn’t want to disturb her by clattering around downstairs.

What are you working on now?

A novel about three sisters. It’s about betrayal: the sister who you think is the nice one turns out to be the worst. They’re awful! It’s very enjoyable to write.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Well, I’ve only published three books in over twenty years. That was partly because of bringing up three children and partly down to being blocked.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read. Read as much as you can, across as many different kinds of work as you can. When a book is especially vivid to you, take some time to consider why that is and whether it has something you’d like to incorporate into your own writing.  

I believe that artists need three things: talent, industry and self belief. If you have at least two of these, you’ll be OK. The most successful writers have all three.

Cressida Connolly is the prize-winning author of a novel, My Former Heart and a short story collection, The Happiest Days. Her acclaimed life of 1920’s Bohemians the Garman family is called The Rare and the Beautiful. Cressida also reviews extensively. She is married and lives on a farm in England.

Noah benShea

How did you become a writer?

Born to a blue-collar family in Toronto, early on I wanted to become a doctor because that was what bright Jewish boys were told would be a crowning achievement. My capacity with language, I simply took as a throw away talent that got me invited to sit shot-gun in the car with the boys so I could chat up the girls. Years later I would learn the Irish witticism: “A writer is only a failed talker.”

By my junior year in college, chemistry was not holding my interest and a romantic interest in poetry and the poet’s life had me in its grasp. Again, I loved women and women loved poets. And I was off to the races.

On reflection of life spent at the races: Be cautious about what we do to seduce others because in the process we often seduce ourselves. Or, the first person every salesman always sells is himself.

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

Writers: T,S. Eliot, Donne, ee Cummings, Blake, Dylan Thomas. Books: The Bible, Jung, Zen literature, Buber, Siddhartha. Teachers:  1) John McManmon – a great, great 18th century prof at UCLA, poor Irish who went in and left “the Hood,” and dear friend across time who challenged me and challenged me again. 2) Carlos Castaneda was introduced to me when a book of poetry I had written, “Don’t Call It Anything” came out and won the Schull Poetry Prize. Carlos was a grad student in Anthro at UCLA, and I was an Asst. Dean of Students. The Anthro dept. thought Carolos was too close to his subject, Don Juan, the Mexican brujo, and didn’t know what to do with him. One month later, Carlos was on the cover of Look Mag, and he and I had a great laugh. His teacher, Don Juan always said, “Follow the path with a heart.”  The no B.S. teachings of John and the follow the heart of Carlos/Don Juan played major themes in my holding the course and compass in my work.

Other: My parents. My mother doesn’t fall into any category but was a category on her own. She opened my feminine side, the side that allows me to see the whole house if you leave your window up six inches. She was brilliant and an ethicist posting up small signs around our house reminding us “It’s nice to be important but more important to be nice.” Not bad for a woman orphaned at birth, working full time in a butcher shop when she was fourteen, and never graduating from high school who went on the head up the Credit Dept. at major department stores. My father, who told me early on that God had gifted me but I wasn’t to use those gifts just to get my head further down in the trough. My great tragedy was his early death from ALS. My great gift was his love of life and people. Thanks Dad.

When and where do you write?

I have worked in coffee shops, in cars, with background noise becoming white noise and ommmmm. But most of the time I work very early in the morning at home. I wrote several of my books from 3 or 4 in the morning until about 7. And then made my kids breakfast. Now, I can write at any time, as long as I have quieted my ego and got out of my own way. I scribble notes to myself all the time. My character Jacob in my JACOB THE BAKER books is similar in that way. Except I am the one with character flaws.

What are you working on now?

I write almost every day, with the exception of the Sabbath. I am working on another JACOB book, blogs, columns, and posting stuff up in shorthand always. When people tell me they are bored, I am amazed. If I had a dozen lives I couldn’t imagine being bored. When my kids were little, I would tell them: “If you’re bored and feeling flat, look inside – that’s where it’s at.” Doggerel, perhaps, but Auntie Mame had it right, “Life is a banquet and most poor bastards are starving.”

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Nope. Written some stuff that best serves as kindling but no blocks.

What’s your advice to new writers?

I’m often asked this question after I give a talk or am cornered on a plane. And my answer remains the same after all these years. “Write one page every day for two years. Then throw away half of it, and you have a book.” “Every day?” they ask, astonished. “Yep, every day. Being a writer isn’t something you do only when your girlfriend leaves you, and you’re sitting in front of a fireplace on a rainy night.”

Someone like Ben Hecht or of that ilk once said, “A writer is someone who sits down to work and prays for the phone to ring.”

You’ve got to be driven to write - particularly in my case beginning as a poet. Poets never had to worry about selling out because there was no one buying. And if you’re looking for strokes, stroke on. A poet is someone who throws rose petals over the Grand Canyon and learns not to wait for the echo. And a great writer is a poet running a marathon.

Noah benShea -  www.NoahbenShea.com

Bullet Point Bio

• North American poet philosopher.

• The international best selling author of 23 books translated into 18 languages.

• Syndicated column contributor NY Times Regional newspapers Nominated for The Pulitzer Prize.

• Spoken to the Library of Congress, included in the Congressional Record.

• Published by Oxford University Press and World Bible Society in Jerusalem.

• Dean, UCLA at age 22, at 30 a Fellow at several esteemed “think tanks,” Visiting Professor of Philosophy University of California SF Med School, Philosopher in Resident Dept of Internal Medicine Cottage Health Hospitals, Santa Barbara.

• Private advisor to corporate and political leaders, Ethicist for Sansum Diabetes Research Institute, nominated for the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas that Improve the World Order, National Laureate for the ALS Association.

• Noah benShea National PBS Special airs in 150 cities in 2009-2010.

• 2009 – present National Philosopher for Foundations Recovery Network, Nashville, Tenn.

• 2012 – present Executive Director, THE JUSTICE PROJECT / Making A Difference – Sage Publishing, Inc.

James Grippando

How did you become a writer?

Becoming a writer was never a goal for me -- it was a lifelong dream. In 1988, I was five years into the practice of law and tired of the fact that no one -- including judges -- seemed to be interested in any of the legal stuff I was writing. I also noted that the hottest show on television was L.A. Law, and the hottest book in the country was Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent. There seemed to be this insatiable public appetite for stories about lawyers written by lawyers. So I started writing, nights and weekends, still practicing law full time. Finally, after four years, I had a 250,000-word monster in the box that no publisher wanted. But my agent assured me that I had received -- get this -- the most encouraging rejection letters he had ever seen. Over the next seven months, I wrote the first Jack Swyteck Novel, The Pardon, and it sold to HarperCollins in a weekend.  Black Horizon is now eleventh in the Jack Swyteck series and my 21st novel over all. Don't you love happy endings?

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

I had a great high school English teacher, James Corrigain. With his gray hair and thick salt-and-pepper beard, he reminded me of Ernest Hemingway. Probably the most important thing he taught me was that, to be a good writer, you have to be a voracious reader. It was Mr. Corrigan who gave me one of the most unforgettable books I've ever read, the Pulitzer Prize winning play, A Man for All Seasons. It's the story of Sir Thomas Moore, who was tried for treason and beheaded after he refused on principle to sign an oath approving the marriage of King Henry VIII to Ann Boleyn. I still have that book. It became especially meaningful to me in the early years of my legal career, when I was young and naïve and appalled to discover how many witnesses lied under oath. People complain that lawyers are always trying to trip them up with their clever questions, but in my experience witnesses too often had to be tricked into telling the truth. In my most cynical moments as a trial lawyer, I'd go back to Sir Thomas Moore and the sanctity of an oath. It's just one of the many ways I'm so often reminded of my high school English teacher. Here are some other books that have influenced and impressed me as a writer:

 To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee -- Atticus Finch is what every honest lawyer aspires to be, and what better way is there to address serious issues like racial prejudice than through the eyes of an eight-year-old narrator who likes to catch snowflakes on the end of her nose?

  The Plague by Albert Camus -- "Life is meaningless, but worth living, provided you recognize it's meaningless." Camus had me believing that stuff for a while. Then I got married and had kids.

  Mutiny on the Bounty -- I think of this book as the original legal thriller. Re-read it. You'll see what I mean.

  The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison -- One of my favorite professors, who happened to be black, recommended this book to me when I was a student in his class at the University of Florida. The book and our talks about it are equally memorable.

  A Separate Peace by John Knowles -- I first read it in high school, and it's a book I still give as a gift to young readers.

  Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck -- How could any list not include Steinbeck?

  The Sun also Rises by Ernest Hemingway -- I re-read just about everything Hemingway wrote while coping with back pain in my late twenties, and Brett Ashley was one of those characters who could really take my mind off my misery.

  Mystic River by Dennis Lehane -- As I read it, I couldn't stop thinking "I wish I'd written this," and when it ended, I couldn't stop thinking about the characters.

  The Pigman by Paul Zindel -- When I first read this young adult novel, it felt so real to me that I can remember insisting to my friends at school that it was a true story masquerading as fiction.

  The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe -- At the time I read it, I was a young lawyer with "Masters of the Universe" as clients. Wolfe so nailed the spirit of the eighties.

When and where do you write?

I live in south Florida, so I write in my backyard. My outdoor office has these essentials: a patio table and chair, a big shade umbrella, a laptop computer, a hammock, a hot tub, and a swimming pool. The cell phone is optional. For me a "normal" workday means putting on my oldest pair of shorts and favorite T-shirt, visiting the refrigerator every half hour, and trying to make my golden retriever Max that I can’t play fetch with the tennis ball while I’m trying to write a book. Early in my career, I often woke in the middle of the night to write. I try not to do that so much anymore, but you never know when inspiration is going to strike. For the most part, morning is my most productive writing time, and I try to finish every afternoon in time to do anything that doesn’t involve sitting in front of a computer screen. 

What are you working on now?

This is a very busy time for me. Black Horizon was just released in March, and my twenty-second novel, Cane & Abe, will be published by HarperCollins in January 2015. I’ve already written the next one, which is tentatively slated for summer 2015. Both of those novels are outside the Swyteck series. So I’m looking way the road right now, brainstorming about the 2016 release. I’m thinking I might go back to Jack.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Yes, after the failure of my first manuscript that Artie couldn’t sell. I was staring at a blank computer screen for weeks, afraid to start down another four-year road to nowhere. Then one night in October 1992, tired of staring at a blank computer screen, I went for a walk before going to bed. I got about three blocks from my house when, seemingly out of nowhere, a police car pulled up onto the grassy part of the curb in front of me. A cop jumped out and demanded to know where I was going. I told him that I was just out for a walk, that I lived in the neighborhood. He didn't seem to believe me. "There's been a report of a peeping Tom," he said. "I need to check this out." I stood helplessly beside the squad car and listened as the officer called in on his radio for a description of the prowler. "Under six feet tall," I heard the dispatcher say, "early to mid-thirties, brown hair, brown eyes, wearing blue shorts and a white t shirt." I panicked inside. I was completely innocent, but it was exactly me! "And a mustache," the dispatcher finally added. I sighed with relief. I had no mustache. The cop let me go.

But as I walked home, I could only think of how close I'd come to disaster. Even though I was innocent, my arrest would have been a media event, and forever I would have been labeled as "the peeping Tom lawyer." It was almost 2 a.m. by the time I returned home, but I decided that I needed to write about this. I took the feeling of being wrongly accused to the most dramatic extreme I could think of. I wrote about a man hours away from execution for a crime he may not have committed. What I wrote that night became the opening scene of The Pardon.

What’s your advice to new writers?

I would encourage anyone who loves to write to give it a try. But you have to go in with your eyes open and realize that to make a career out of writing it does take some luck. People tell me that I have talent, and I know I work hard. But so do a lot of aspiring writers. The difference between them and me is that I found my first break. My advice to them is to keep looking. So maybe it's luck and perseverance.

The first question you should ask yourself is "why do I write?" For some people the answer is "because I have to." That's fine. For me, the answer is "I love it." At age eleven I wrote a comedy western and put my friends in it so they would sit and listen to me read it to them. In high school and college I was the guy who actually looked for courses that required you to write a paper. As a lawyer I published in more academic journals than most tenured law professors. I keep an "idea file" in my closet, and I'll never live long enough to write all the stories I want to write. It blows my mind that I actually get paid to do this. Truly. But my point is this: until you understand why you write, you'll have a hard time figuring out who you are as a writer.

James Grippando is a New York Times bestselling author. Black Horizon is his twenty-first novel and the eleventh in his acclaimed series featuring Miami attorney Jack Swyteck. Visit his website at www.jamesgrippando.com.