Matt Stone

How did you become a writer?

I minored in creative writing in College, and after a 20 year career in various aspects of the real estate business, I just threw the hammer, quit my job and started writing full time. Actually it wasn't a pure cut and run, as I'd begun freelancing on a part time basis while still working my other full time job. It didn't allow much free time but facilitated me learning more about the game, getting into good work habits, and developing a client base. I'd recommend this as a way to get in the game. 

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

I'm a car guy, and grew up on Motor Trend, Road & Track, Car and Driver, and the like, back when those monthly buff books had really great writing. Many of their great staffers, such as Eric Dahlquist Sr., Peter Egan, John Christy, Michael Lamm, David E. Davis Jr., and many others who wrote about cars and the car scene. 

When and where do you write?

Its my full time career now, and I have a fully equipped office at home, so I write nearly every day from my own comfy office, with no more daily freeway commute. And don't let starving, failing, sit around and drink coffee all day writers tell you there's no work out there, because there is, but you have to work hard to develop paying clients and it takes some time. 

What are you working on now?

Always a plethora of magazine feature articles, and at least one book in the oven at all times.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Seldom. If I do, I just start writing the middle of the story, or whatever aspect of the piece comes to mind, then work outwards to the lead and wrap if I have to. Some times it works to write your conclusion and declarative statements first, and then work backwards to get the story moving and heading in the direction of your wrap up. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

We all do a little work for free or little to no money at the beginning, just for the experience and the bylines, but don't waste away too much time or your whole career doing it for nothing so others can make money off your talents. I have always viewed this as a pie chart cut three ways; one slice is your ability to write (in other words, can you write?), another slice is your knowledge and passion for subject (or do you know what you're talking about?) and finally your ability to conduct yourself as a business (and as an adults). In other words, write to size and meet deadlines, handle your invoicing, pitches, editing and follow up. You must do all three at a high level.

Matt Stone, freelance journalist, author, broadcaster, former Editor, Motor Trend Classic magazine, has been a professional automotive journalist/photographer since 1990. 

Editorially, Stone was in charge of advance and strategic planning for the magazine, including story selection and editor assignments. He participated in all manner of Motor Trendactivities, including road tests, special interest stories, industry news, and MT's world-recognized Car, Truck, and Sport/Utility of the Year programs. His specialties are history, design, and interview features. Stone contributed to MotorTrend.com, and his voice was often heard on the syndicated Motor Trend Radio Network. 

Stone has a Bachelor's degree from Cal Poly Pomona, with a major in Business, and minors in Journalism and Marketing. He has authored and photographed more than a dozen automotive book titles with more in process, and for seven years was a member of SPEED/Fox Sports' Barrett-Jackson auctions television broadcast team. 

Matt enjoys anything with four wheels, though demonstrates a particular passion for sports, performance, and racing cars. He was Chief Class Judge at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, a judge at the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, a member of the Le May America’s Car Museum Steering Committee, and officiates at other shows and events. He serves his profession as a past Officer and Board of Director member, Keynote Address Committee Chairman, and past-President of the Motor Press Guild (MPG) trade association. 

A California native, Matt currently resides in Glendale, and still hopes to own a Ferrari Daytona, a Ford GT, and a Shelby Cobra 289. Well, some day, anyway…

Brooke Borel

How did you become a writer?

I've always loved writing and have written stories and poems since I was a kid, but I didn't follow a typical writer's path to my current career (if there is such a thing). I never worked at a school paper, I didn't take many lit classes in college, and I didn't publish my first article until I was 28. Instead, my focus was science. I studied biomedical engineering as an undergraduate--which required coursework from biology to electric circuit theory to physics--and after I graduated I considered a career either as an engineer or a patent lawyer (yes, really). But neither felt right. I went back to school and finished a graduate program that involved the history of science and science studies, and I fell in love with the act of writing about science. I lucked into a brief internship at the science magazine Cosmos when I was traveling in Australia in 2008, and started freelancing right after. As for the rest, history and all that. 

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

Oh wow, this is a hard one. There are too many to list here. There is my second grade teacher Mrs. LaGrone, who had us write and bind our own books and then donate them to the school library. And my graduate thesis advisor at NYU Andy Jewett, who was always really encouraging about my writing, was an excellent reader and editor, and was the first to suggest I'd be a good journalist (he's now at Harvard). And all of my editors at Popular Science have been so great over the years I've written there, especially Martha Harbison (now at Audubon), Susannah Locke (now at Vox), and Jenny Bogo.

As for books, I've always appreciated Roy Peter Clark's writing advice, and I try to read the Elements of Style every year or two. That reminds me, I'm overdue on that one...

When and where do you write?

I work from home in a tiny office with a window. It looks out onto a busy street in Brooklyn, so sometimes it gets distracting, but it's also nice to see people walking around and going about their days. I write on and off pretty much all day, in between research and interviews, but I usually get my best burst of writing energy in the early to late evening. 

What are you working on now?

I just wrapped up a book about bed bugs, which will be out this spring from the University of Chicago Press. It's called: Infested: How the Bed Bug Infiltrated Our Bedrooms and Took Over the World. I'm working on a handful of stories for various science magazines and websites that cover everything from agriculture to invasive species to cricket farming. And I just started a new book project--also for Chicago--that will be a fact-checking guide for journalism students, freelancers, and anyone else who wants to learn how to fact-check nonfiction writing.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Of course, but I usually just step away from the computer and either take my dog for a walk or go for a swim at the YMCA. Getting away from it for a little while usually helps. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Just keep at it. The only way to get better is to practice and to share your work with smart writers and editors who will push you to do better. Oh, and stay curious about everything. The best stories come from asking a lot of questions and wanting to learn more, more, more.

Jessica Lahey

How did you become a writer?

I'm not sure where the distinction between being "a person who writes" and being a "writer" lies, but I have always written. I was not a big journal keeper or diarist, but I've always loved writing nonfiction. I love telling a true story, whether mine or someone else's, and am so grateful that I get to do it for a living as a teacher and a practitioner of the craft. 

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

I got serious about writing in high school. I was lucky enough to have two phenomenal teachers, Don Cannon and K.C. Potts. I specifically remember getting a paper back from K.C. in my junior year of high school. He'd written a note about a tiny moments in that paper, a description of clicking my cycling shoes into my pedals. He said it was beautiful, and that was it. I was hooked on the rush of rendering a sensory moment in words. Don and K.C. taught me so more than English and writing; they taught me about the real depth of language, the power language has to stitch ideas together and convey more than one meaning at a time. It's not coincidental that I became a teacher. I love writing, but I also love showing my students how to create the magic themselves. I have tried to model my own teaching after Don's and K.C.'s example, and still rely on them for advice on both my teaching and my writing.

When and where do you write?

When I was teaching full-time (English, Latin and writing), it was catch as catch can. Between classes, during lunch, during my prep periods, and in the moments between helping my kids with their homework and making dinner. Now that I'm teaching very part-time, I have established a much more productive schedule. I'm primarily a morning writer. I am clearest first thing, after coffee, and get my best work done before lunch, either at the dining room table, at my desk in the back room of our house, or at the little coffee table in our kitchen. I'm pretty hyper, so I have to get up a lot and move in between ideas, pages, or sections. When I have a serious deadline to meet, it helps for me to get out of my house, away from the temptations of laundry and gardening. I go to Dartmouth's Baker Library a lot, and wrote much of The Gift of Failure at the King Arthur Flour cafe in Norwich, Vermont. A little background noise is good for me; I'm pretty good at tuning it out. 

What are you working on now?

I write education pieces for the Atlantic and have a column called "The Parent-Teacher Conference" at the New York Times, so there's always something in progress for those two publications. I also do regular commentaries for Vermont Public Radio, and I love the radio work. I am also finishing up a YA novel that I'd started before selling The Gift of Failure and while it's much harder for me to write fiction, I love writing this book. It's a story that was born out of a friend's memory loss, and the parts that were hardest for me to write had to do with the experience of having no memory and dealing with the aftermath of a head injury. However, the day after I handed in my draft of The Gift of Failure, my husband and I went for a trail ride in the New Hampshire woods and I was thrown from a horse, on to my head. I had no memory of who I was, where we were, how to get home, what my book was about, or even where I'd been that morning. Suddenly, I had an insight into my main character. I don't recommend this kind of "method writing," but my own head injury offered its own silver linings, I suppose. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Not really. I've suffered from anxiety and worry when challenging edits come in, but I usually can go for a walk or go out and weed a flower bed and the answer presents itself. Once, when I was having trouble framing a piece I really wanted to write, I went for a long cross-country ski, and the piece just presented itself to me. I came home and simply wrote down the stuff that percolated up. I've come to understand that gardening, writing, running, skiing, walking, laundry, vacuuming, are actually a really important part of my process. For me, writing is about being quiet or doing something with my body so my brain can unhinge and do its thing, sifting through ideas and letting them settle into place.

What’s your advice to new writers?

At the risk of being cliché, read, write, and read. My friend and New York Times editor K.J. Dell'Antonia likes to talk about giving your best writing hours to your most important project, so I try to do that. I read a lot to get ideas about the subjects I write about (education and parenting), but I just love to learn stuff. I will read just about any nonfiction book - about mapmaking and history and extreme sports, and food foraging...I love to read about stuff I don't know much about. That, in turn, feeds the idea mill. Ideas for my own writing come from odd places, and I just have to read a lot and pay attention when those connections and ideas show up.

Bio: I studied comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and then law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I got my first teaching gig at Duke University during my time at UNC, and fell in love that very first day. I finished law school, but knew I would end up teaching. I wrote my first book and, like most first books, it was a valuable lesson in writing if not a publishable work. After that book went nowhere, I started writing about education, first at my own blog and then for the Core Knowledge Foundation for my first really wonderful editor, Robert Pondiscio  For the first time, I began to understand that editors are not there to make me feel bad about my writing, but to improve it. I published my first article at the New York Times Motherlode blog, and later, at the Atlantic. That article, "Why Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail," went viral and helped me land my agent, Laurie Abkemeier (I'd chased her for years!) and led to an auction for my book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. That book will be released by HarperCollins in August of 2015. I live in the wilds of New Hampshire with my husband, a physician and writer, and my two boys, 15 and 10.