Jacqueline West

How did you become a writer?

I was a secret writer for many years. From age nine, when I wrote my very first unicorn-y story, until the end of high school, I kept my notebooks hidden beneath the clothes in my dresser drawers. When I went off to college, I majored in music (with an English lit minor) and started publishing a few poems in small journals—but I would never have dared to call myself a “writer,” and I still kept most of my writing safely hidden from others. There was a lot of it to hide by then; besides reams of poetry, I was writing short stories, working on adult novels, and trying my hand at comic books and plays. In my fourth year of college, I started work on a story for young readers that would eventually grow into my first published book: The Books of Elsewhere, Volume One: The Shadows. I dropped out of grad school when I finally realized that I didn’t want to be an opera singer, found a paid writing gig with a local arts weekly, and published more stories and poems. Within a couple of years, I had finished my English teaching certification, gotten a chapbook of poetry accepted by an academic press, polished up my manuscript for young readers, and found an agent. So that’s how I became a writer: secretly. Or sneakily.

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

Because of the whole secret/sneaky thing, I’ve taken very few writing-focused classes. Most of what I learned about writing came through extensive reading and lengthy, sloppy, sometimes embarrassing practice. I was lucky enough to grow up in a house full of books—my mother was an English teacher—and I started reading early and voraciously: fairy tales, Milne, Carroll, Tolkien, Dahl, Alcott, L.M. Montgomery, Bill Watterson. As a teenager, I fell head-over-heels for poetry, devouring Plath and Sexton and Eliot and Shakespeare, with hearty helpings of Salinger, Bradbury, Dickens, Vonnegut, Poe, Atwood, and the Brontes in between. Eventually I sought out books by writers on writing: Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, Plath’s journals, Stephen King’s On Writing, everything by Annie Dillard. It’s a weird stew of influences, but that’s what has fed me.

When and where do you write?

I’ve turned out to be a morning writer. Generally, I write at home, either in my office or at the dining room table. When I need a change of scene or an absence of homey distractions, I’ll head to a coffee shop. If I’m drafting something new, I try to cross the thousand-word threshold every day…although this doesn’t always happen. (I blame the internet. And the dog. And then I go to the coffee shop.)

What are you working on now?

The fifth and final volume of my middle grade fantasy series The Books of Elsewhere was released this summer, so I’m getting to delve into some new projects at last. My still untitled YA novel will (probably) be published in early 2016, and between bouts of revision, I’m making headway on a draft of the first book in what I think may be a whole new MG fantasy series.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

The kind of writer’s block in which you stare, paralyzed, at the blank page?—no. The kind in which you are certain that everything you write is so humiliatingly awful that the authorities will arrive at any minute to take away your pens and paper and ban you from writing anything ever again?—yes. Accepting the fact that my first, second, or thirteenth drafts may be light-years away from what I had intended to write is a daily struggle. But the struggle is getting easier. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read widely and write widely. Experiment with genre and form. Try everything. Expect your first million words to feel like dreck; expect to spend ninety percent of your time revising and rewriting. You’ll get there. 

Jacqueline West is the author of the New York Times-bestselling middle grade series The Books of Elsewhere (Dial Books for Young Readers). The series has been selected by the Junior Library Guild, received a CYBILS Award, and was named a “Flying Start” by Publishers Weekly. Her short fiction for young readers has appeared in venues including Spider and The School Magazine. A former English teacher and occasional musician, Jacqueline currently lives in Red Wing, Minnesota, surrounded by large piles of books and small piles of dog hair. Visit her at www.jacquelinewest.com.

Michele Filgate

How did you become a writer?

I grew up on a lake in a small town in Connecticut, and supposedly it was built over an Indian burial ground. Who knows if that’s true or not, but it was enough to charge my imagination. I used to write stories about kids who lived in the murky depths. What can I say? I loved books by R.L. Stine and more traditional ghost stories.

I became a writer when I became a reader. From early on, I felt like writing was a superpower.  Words did have a power—and literature became a kind of religion for me. I wrote Babysitters Club fan fiction in which I inserted myself as a character. I made up my own mythological tale after reading the D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths.

I think the moment I really realized I was a writer was in high school. I read an (admittedly) terrible poem to my classmates, and afterward one of them told me I was really talented. The fact that I could move someone I wasn’t even friends with (or related to!) meant the world to me.

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

Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf. Have I mentioned Virginia Woolf? I wasn’t even a fan of hers until a couple of years ago. I first read Mrs. Dalloway when I was an undergraduate, and for some reason the book didn’t resonate with me. I could kick myself, but I’ve realized that certain books can’t be appreciated until the right time in our lives. I read The Waves on a friend’s recommendation, and I felt like the whole world opened up to me in a way I had never seen it before. Her sentences can momentarily knock the wind out of you. The way she writes about the interior life is extraordinary: “How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.”—from The Waves.

I think she’s the greatest writer of all time.

Other influences: Roald Dahl, Marcel Proust, Joan Didion, George Eliot, Fernando Pessoa, Paul Harding, Marilynne Robinson, Ali Smith, Jeanette Winterson, Kate Zambreno, Mary Ruefle, and Valeria Luiselli. (I could go on and on!)

When and where do you write?

I really like writing at a local bar that’s more of a café during the day. They have long picnic tables and good cappuccinos and the music isn’t over-whelmingly loud. I also like to write in bed or on the chaise lounge. My favorite time to write is in the afternoon or late at night, when I can ignore my inbox and social media for a while.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a memoir about fictional characters and their influence on me. I’m also working on a bunch of personal essays.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Of course! Every single day. Sometimes I’d rather vacuum or empty the dishwasher or respond to emails I’ve been putting off rather than sit down with my own thoughts for a while. I have to push through that resistance all the time.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Many writers give this advice, but that’s because it’s true: you have to write as if you are just writing for yourself. If you are only thinking about the end result (getting published) you will find endless ways to self-sabotage. I spent a year struggling to find the right voice for the book I’m currently writing, and I had to scrap what I wrote and start all over again. That laborious effort was worth it, in the end. Have patience. Be good to yourself. Write what you need to say. Write what you have to say. Read as many books as you can.

Michele Filgate is an essayist, critic, and freelance writer. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, Tin House, The Rumpus, Salon, Buzzfeed, Poets & Writers, The Brooklyn Quarterly, Time Out New York, The Daily Beast, O,The Oprah Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Capital New York, The Star Tribune, Bookslut, The Quarterly Conversation, The Brooklyn Rail, and other publications. She lives in Brooklyn.

Noah Berlatsky

How did you become a writer?

I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember, just about. I got a creative writing degree in college, and when I got out I failed at being a poet and then failed at writing zines. I started doing freelance criticism and arts writing and blogging, and haven't failed at that yet, so here we are.

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

I had a wonderful third grade teacher, Mrs. Stone, who encouraged me to write and told me I was good at it; I'm still thankful for that. As far as writers, James Baldwin is certainly a hero of mine; he's someone who believed, and demonstrated, that criticism could be art. Carol Clover, Sharon Marcus, and Julia Serano are all folks whose work has inspired mine. And of course William Marston and Harry Peter, the creators of the original Wonder Woman comic; I love their work so much I wrote a book about it.

When and where do you write? 

Writing’s a job. I work from home and write every day, sometimes work for hire, sometimes criticism or essays, often both.

What are you working on now? 

My current gigs are working on articles for a business/economics encyclopedia and an online literature study guide. I'm always working on articles and criticism of various sorts. I also have a couple of potential book projects percolating that may or may not happen.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

When I was working on poetry and fiction, I'd sometimes get stuck. That hasn't happened in a long while though. Again, I write every day, and if I don't write the bills don't get paid, so you learn to forge ahead, and if it's not perfect…well you finish it anyway, and move on to the next thing.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read a lot, practice, and remember that success in anything involves a lot of luck, of various sorts. Folks will tell you that if you really want to be a writer, you'll be one, and that if you don't end up as one, it was because you didn't want it enough. This is nonsense. You try your best, and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't, often depending on whether you know the right people, are in the right place at the right time, and/or have enough resources that you can afford to take risks and not earn a whole lot while you struggle to get your feet. Think of writing as any other job, not as a spiritual calling. And think broadly about what being a writer can mean. Work-for-hire isn't necessarily very glamorous, but it's a living.

Noah Berlatsky has written for The Atlantic, Pacific Standard, Reason, and Splice Today, among other venues. He is the editor of the comics and culture blog The Hooded Utilitarian. His book Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941-1948, is out in January 2015 from Rutgers University Press.