Anna Davies

How did you become a writer?

I always liked stories and reading, but I didn't realize writing was a strength until I was in high school when I wrote a thinly veiled short story in English class about a summer romance gone wrong and my peers positively responded to it.

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

I had always had visceral responses to authors and writing, but seeing that my own work could promote that sort of response in peers was pretty powerful. So I guess I've thought of myself as a "writer" since high school. But I do think if you write and you share and you grapple with your work, then you're a writer. I think it's a term you can really take ownership of, it's not something you have to wait for someone to bestow upon you. Bottom line: A writer writes. So if you're sitting down and writing stuff that matters to you, even if you're not published yet? You're a writer. Own it. 

I majored in English at Barnard College, which was an amazing education. A visiting professor there was the Irish writer Roddy Doyle and he taught a great workshop where I learned to stop worrying about what other people thought and write what worked best for me. I would send him these frantic 2AM e-mails, asking him what he wanted in terms of assignment length or how he'd know if people were working hard enough. He just told me, and I'm paraphrasing, to write a f*cking story. And I did. I still think that's really the best writing lesson: Just stop asking questions and overthinking and write the thing!

Favorite authors that I'll read again and again are Mary McCarthy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Meghan Daum, Joan Didion. I also love reading plays as well for structure, rhythm, and dialogue: Tony Kushner, Richard Greenberg, Jane Martin, and August Wilson are some favorites. I feel like plays get to the heart of the matter, they are AMAZING tools in terms of learning structure and storytelling. Plus, you can read most plays in less than an hour (maybe not Tom Stoppard, he's pretty wordy) and I think that's really satisfying: Take an hour, read a major work. Can't do that with novels! 

When and where do you write?

I developed a system at one point when I was on deadline where I would aim for six to eight  two-hour time blocks a week: Usually from 10-12AM and 4-6PM on Saturdays and Sundays, and then two to four 12am to 2am writing blocks during the week. But that was when I was in my twenties and didn't need to sleep. Now I CAN write anywhere—and spent the summer traveling, where I was writing from crowded trains and packed hostels and, this summer, a few random Albanian bars—but I try to limit my "writing" time to an hour at a time, or else I start procrastinating and start hating on everything. I've found that SHOWING up and sitting down with the mantra "butt in chair" is really helpful in terms of just getting something on paper. I have definitely fallen victim and still fall victim to "waiting for inspiration" but it just isn't feasible. 

What are you working on now?

Right now, after 13 young adult novels, as well as a bunch of personal essays and first-person pieces for various outlets, I'm slowly working on a "grown up" novel. I'm also working on a personal-essay type collection, which is going so easily and is so much fun I hesitate to call it work. I don't know if anything will come of it, but the main thing is that I'm gingerly edging back into finding the fun in writing.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Yes! I ghostwrote for five years for a major young adult book packaging company. I wrote ten books in five years, all of which ended up on the NYT children's bestseller list, but my name wasn't on any of them them. I kept wanting so badly to write my own work, but finally, my editor made it clear it just wasn't going to happen with that company. I was devastated and really began doubting myself. I felt betrayed, burned out, and really unsure about my voice. And I didn't write for almost a full year. I traveled, I kept journals, I read—but I didn't write. I missed it and was angry at it and knew I WOULD get back to it, mostly because there's really nothing else I'd want to do—but in the moment, I also knew I just COULD NOT muscle my way through it. I was DONE.

I would feel SO JEALOUS when I heard about friend's projects. But I let myself miss it. And little by little—and I hesitate to say this, because I am still getting over the block—I began writing for fun again. I've always worked as a writer, either on staff at a magazine or freelancing for magazines or writing copy for various outlets, and I think the thing that can be hard about that is when writing is how you get paid, it can be hard to see beyond the paycheck. I think part of the reason I've been able to begin to get over the block now is because I recently took a copywriting job at an office. I love the work, I love the coworkers, and not having to worry that an after-hours creative project has to lead to a major payday has made me really excited about writing stuff that makes me excited and passionate. It also lets me structure my day much better. When you potentially have the whole day to write, it's really hard to sit down and do it. When you know you only have an hour or less, you'll take the time to get it done. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

I think you hear the same advice to new writers—read everything, learn to revise, develop a discipline—over and over again because it WORKS. But I think the advice I wish I had learned is that there are agony days and hate days and days you just can't turn off that "writer" voice in your head. Sometimes, you really don't know why you're doing this—but you keep doing it. And I think if that's how you feel: The having to do it, that inner drive, then you ARE a writer, and then the rest is just the details of refining and homing your skills.

Anna Davies is a writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, New York, Glamour, Cosmo, Women's Health, Men's Health, salon.com, refinery29.com and others. She's ghostwritten ten bestselling young adult novels for Alloy Entertainment and has written three young adult novels under her own name—Wrecked (Simon & Schuster), Identity Theft, and Followers (Scholastic). Anna has spent the last year backpacking around the world, and is thrilled to have recently settled back in New York City. 

Suki Kim

How did you become a writer?

I don't think I became a writer. I feel that I was always one because I remember writing little stories even as a little girl. But I immigrated to the U.S. when I was 13 and did not speak a word of English. So that presented a problem for many years. But despite all that, I ended up writing. It was never a choice.

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

It's difficult to name influences since they change all the time. For a long time I was influenced by films. I loved Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad and Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating because those films questioned time and space and challenged my thought process. I loved early Tarkovsky films for the same reasons. For a while, I loved reading Joan Didion because I was a 28 year old New Yorker when I first read her essay, "Goodbye to All That" which was about being 28 and in New York and crying all the time, and I felt like I was her. I loved some of the modern Japanese mystery novels because they made me think about the great puzzle of solving plots. I loved Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go because for me, his characters feel truly alive, and I admire that. But these influences all seem to pass, and I get over them. Currently, nothing moves me, and I am a bit worried about that. 

When and where do you write?

Generally, I write at home, but it really does not matter where. When I write well, I could write on a subway. When I do not write well, I could be given a quiet cabin in New Hampshire for a month and not produce a word. It's all in my mind.

What are you working on now?

I have spent the past few months answering emails… and repeating the same information about my newly released book for all the media network. But this is the glorious part of post publication where I have an excuse to not write. We are always procrastinating, and right now I have an excuse.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Of course; my second book took 11 years.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Giving advice makes me feel like an old person, so I refrain from that because in my heart, I am still the 13 year old girl who came to this country without a word of English and feel overwhelmed with everything. I could however relate an advice from a bigger writer, now deceased Doris Lessing who made a great impression on me when I, as a young writer, went to watch her speak at the 92nd Y. She said -- probably not her exact words -- Writing should be hard. If it is easy, be suspicious. It's the hardest thing in the world, and it should be if it's any good. Now that I am no longer a young writer, I see that she spoke the truth.

Suki Kim's first novel, The Interpreter, was a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Prize. She is the recipient of Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Open Society fellowships. She has been traveling to North Korea as a journalist since 2002, and her essays and articles have appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, and the New York Review of Books. Born and raised in Seoul, she lives in New York. Without You, There is No US: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite, a book of investigative memoir, is her second book.

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.