Warren Adler

How did you become a writer?

As a teenager I knew that was the life and career I wanted. I started writing at the age of 15. Although I had published short stories and poems in my early twenties, I didn't get my first novel published until I was 45 years old. It was pure luck. I ran an advertising agency in Washington D.C. at the time. A man came to my office and asked if we promoted books. I said we promote everything. What is the fee for this promotion, he asked. This was the eureka moment that changed my life. My fee, I said, was that your publisher, a tiny publisher in Philadelphia, publish my first novel. He said "fine, send me the book and I will give it to my publisher." He did. My first book, Undertow, was published and that was my fee. It completely changed my life and became the realization of my life’s ambition…to become a novelist. Since then I have published a total of 42 novel including my latest thriller, Treadmill. I guess you might conclude that talent by itself is not enough. You need luck. I am grateful to this many who became my friend and has now passed on. 

My passion for writing will never extinguish. I will be 87 soon and I can no more stop writing than I can stop breathing. That’s what a real writer or artist knows in their gut. Write what you know, but write.

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

My mother was a prodigious novel reader and I watched her read day after day, getting her books out of storefront lending libraries for what I think was ten cents a day at that time. When she finished her daily chores and I returned home from school, she would be sitting and reading, waiting to serve the evening meal. That image of her engrossed in this parallel world seems to be the root of my own obsession to create works of the imagination. It is almost as if I am writing my stories and novels to feed her with the content that she required for her own fulfillment. It has taken many years to discover this as the seed that grew my own obsession to write. As a child and even now, storytelling has also offered me a paradise away from the reality of a contemporary world of struggle and strife.

My freshman English teacher in college, Don Wolf, also inspired me. I was passionate about wanting to write stories and I loved my English literature courses. In the class that Professor Wolf taught were two enormously talented writers, William Styron (Sophie’s Choice) and Mario Puzo (The Godfather). We bonded. We had kitchen sink readings. I was really inspired by my fellow writers. We published three books of short stories.

When and where do you write? 

In my study. I have always had a room dedicated to my work.

What are you working on now? 

As mentioned earlier, I've just released my 42nd novel, Treadmill, and I have a lot of film/TV/stage developments in the pipeline. My stage adaptation of The War of the Roses will premiere on Broadway in 2016, to be produced by Tony-Award winning producers Jay and Cindy Gutterman (All the Way, Spring Awakening), The War of the Roses: The Children is in development with Grey Eagle Films and Permut Presentations as a feature film adaptation along with Target Churchill (Grey Eagle Films and Solution Entertainment), Mourning Glory, to be adapted by Karen Leigh Hopkins, Capitol Crimes (Grey Eagle Films and Sennet Entertainment), a television series based on my Fiona Fitzgerald mystery series, and Cult which is being adapted by Alex McAulay (Eastbound & Down) who is also adapting The War of the Roses: The Children.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I believe there is no such thing as writer’s block. If you don’t surrender to that notion it will all go away. I know this sounds ridiculous, but the fact is that you’re telling yourself that you are bereft of ideas. Going on a reading orgy for a week or so always works for me. Do that and then try getting back to work. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Write on, dear friends. Share your dreams and aspirations with the like-minded. In the great battle between art and commerce, art always triumphs. The serious novel, the story, the urge to know “What happens next?” is the lifeblood of the human experience, and will continue until the end of time. If you want to know more about my perspective on rejection then read my essay On Rejection and Renewal: A Note to Aspiring Novelists. Most of all never, never, never give up. 

Warren Adler is best known for The War of the Roses, his masterpiece fictionalization of a macabre divorce turned into the Golden Globe and BAFTA nominated dark comedy hit starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. Adler's international hit stage adaptation of the novel will premiere on Broadway in 2015-2016. Adler has also optioned and sold film rights for a number of his works including Random Hearts (starring Harrison Ford and Kristen Scott Thomas) and The Sunset Gang (produced by Linda Lavin for PBS' American Playhouse series starring Jerry Stiller, Uta Hagen, Harold Gould and Doris Roberts). In recent development are the Broadway Production of The War of the Roses, to be produced by Jay and Cindy Gutterman, The War of the Roses - The Children (Grey Eagle Films and Permut Presentations), a feature film adaptation of the sequel to Adler's iconic divorce story, Target Churchill (Grey Eagle Films and Solution Entertainment), Residue (Grey Eagle Films), Mourning Glory, to be adapted by Karen Leigh Hopkins, and Capitol Crimes (Grey Eagle Films and Sennet Entertainment), a television series based on his Fiona Fitzgerald mystery series.

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.