Tina Welling

How did you become a writer?

I began writing commercials for a radio station, then for the fun of it, I tried poetry. All my poems could be read in 30 seconds - exactly, just like the commercials I wrote. From there I moved into longer and longer pieces, stories and essays, until I came to book-length projects, which seem to suit my pace. I have published three novels with Penguin Group and most recently New World Library published my non-fiction book, WRITING WILD, Forming a Creative Partnership with Nature.

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

My mother loved to read. She read Robert Louis Stevenson’s poetry to me as a child. And when I began to read on my own, I loved it so much I vowed to be a writer when I grew up, then forgot all about it for many years. Eventually, I remembered how I wanted to give to others what reading good books gave to me, which was sometimes a good story and sometimes words for my inner life. I fell in love with the whole process and all its props: paper, pens, files, dictionaries. I admire Barbara Kingsolver for her characters, the poet William Stafford for his language, Carl Jung for his insights, Lorrie Moore for her quirky thinking, and many novelists for their riveting storylines. I never read in an analytical way or am even particularly conscious of what I want to emulate in my own creative work. It’s more that I absorb the energy of the voice and material of what I’m reading and store this, unsorted, using the information as resource.

When and where do you write?

I schedule nothing until after 3:00 in the afternoon – dental appointments, tea with friends, meetings. I love to wake up and know that the day is mine to work in. After breakfast, I take my coffee into my writing cabin and begin writing in my pajamas. My theory is that nothing really counts when you’re wearing pajamas, so I’m free to just go with whatever occurs to me. Later in the morning, I surface and jump into the shower. With water drumming my body, I seem able to solve some writing problems or see my intention with more clarity, so afterward I get back to work with new enthusiasm. By three in the afternoon, Zoe, my dog nudges my leg, stares me pointedly in the eyes, and I pull myself away from my desk. She and I go walking up Snow King Mountain behind my house or along Flat Creek.

My writing space is an old log cabin that used to be on the Elk Refuge here in Jackson Hole. We moved it to our other small cabin and attached the two. It has windows all around and sometimes moose peek in.  

What are you working on now?

I’m in a place of taking in right now, rather than putting out. I started a novel, a young adult novel, and a non-fiction project, before remembering what I wrote about in WRITING WILD: that there needs to be a time for growing our root systems, in other words attending our inner lives. So after a time of intense writing, followed by a lot of public events for my book, I have given in to my desire to read. Of course, I’m jotting things down, sometimes pages and pages, but I don’t have a goal for any of this right now. And I think, at the moment, that’s exactly right for me.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No, I haven’t. Without sounding too harsh, I don’t really believe in it. I’m easy on myself. I figure if I don’t feel like writing, then I could do something else at my desk: edit, tidy my snack drawer, eat the snacks in my snack drawer, day dream. I think we need to honor our feelings about the creative process. The problem of writer’s block often arises from needing something from the writing. For example, when someone writes with the hope of earning money or attention, then right away the process is burdened with expectation and need. Too, we often write something then begin to tear it apart, denigrating our skills and output to the point that we freeze up. It takes a lot of bad writing to get to the good writing. So we need to be kind to ourselves and patient.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Lower your standards and keep lowering them until the flow begins. Those nasty judges in our heads don’t belong there until the very end when it’s time to edit and rewrite. The whole skill of writing is in the re-writes. That’s the way beautiful, clear language comes about, along with unique insights: re-writing and re-writing. With WRITING WILD, Forming a Creative Partnership with Nature, I re-wrote most sentences dozens of times. Some dozens and dozens. You do not get tired of the repetition if the work keeps getting more polished. And polished sentences are like faceted gems, you don’t get weary of them, no matter how often you look at them.

Tina Welling is the author of WRITING WILD, Forming A Creative Partnership With Nature, and the novels Crybaby Ranch, Fairy Tale Blues, and Cowboys Never Cry. Her essays have been published in Shambhala Sun, The Writer, Body & Soul, and other national magazines, as well as four anthologies. She conducts creative writing and journal keeping workshops around the country and is a long time faculty member of the Jackson Hole Writers Conference. Welling resides in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She can be contacted through her website: WWW.TinaWelling.com.

Steph Post

How did you become a writer?

I’ve always been a storyteller--ever since I was kid. In high school I realized that I could start writing my stories down and it could take me places. I’ve been writing--poetry, short stories, longer works and now novels--ever since. I’m not sure it’s an occupation you choose. I think it reaches out and chooses you. Then drags you down into its clutches and never lets you go.

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

Jim Harrison, Cormac McCarthy, Daniel Woodrell, just to name a few authors. The first book that I ever read that made me go--damn, I want to do that--was Sheri Reynolds’ The Rapture of Canaan.

When and where do you write?

I’m a high school teacher, so I have a pretty hectic schedule. I’ve learned that I can’t write once I come home from work. I’m too exhausted or preoccupied. Instead, I write every single weekend, come rain or shine. I live in Florida and have the benefit of amazing weather, so I do a lot of my writing by hand, sitting outside in the backyard. When it’s time to start typing, I seclude myself in my studio, always with a dog at my side.

What are you working on now?

At the moment, I’m working on my third novel, which is going back to my Southern Gothic roots. In some ways, it’s a re-write of the first novel I ever wrote and self-published. I was never satisfied with that book and so my plan was to fix it up and redeem myself. Of course, since I made that decision, the novel has taken on a life entirely of its own and is going off in a completely new direction.

Have you ever suffered from writer's block?

Not in the usual sense of the term. I usually have more ideas than I want or need when it comes to writing. However, I definitely suffer from stress, anxiety, lack of time and the general love/hate experience that comes with being a writer. Writing isn’t easy. Sometimes it’s the last thing on earth I want to do. But yet, I could never stop.

What's your advice to new writers?

Writing can be hell. If that doesn’t deter you, then keep at it. Keep at it, keep at it and keep pushing, even it feels like you’re going to break. Work hard, but be patient, and most importantly, make sure that you love the story you’re telling. Especially if you’re writing a novel or longer work. You will be spending a lot of time with it and you want to approach it with passion each and every time.

Steph Post is the author of the debut novel A Tree Born Crooked, a Southern literary thriller. She currently lives, writes and teaches writing in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Meghan Daum

How did you become a writer?

I became a writer by default. I had very few other skills. My only other skill, really, was playing the oboe and I wasn’t willing to put in the work it would have taken to go pro. My parents would have loved that, but it wasn’t in the cards (I probably had the only parents on earth who were disappointed when I didn’t become a professional oboist.) As for other pursuits, I now think I would have liked to join the FBI, but at the time I never would have considered it, partly because it might have required doing math in some way. I was terrible at anything with numbers and today probably do math on about a fourth grade level. The only time this is a problem is when I have to figure out how much to tip cabdrivers or nail salon technicians. Otherwise, I have found that as long as you have a good agent and a good accountant being a writer precludes doing any math. So this profession has worked out well for me.

But to answer your question precisely, I became a writer by writing anything and everything for any outlet that would publish me. After college I moved to New York and worked as an editorial assistant at Condé Nast – the whole Devil Wears Prada scene. I had no income other than the $18,000 a year they were paying me (the human resources person at the company informed me that most editorial assistants have their income supplemented by their parents) and I dressed horribly, like this kind of ragamuffin with shoulder pads. I was clueless about fashion – I literally pronounced Versace like “Versase.” But part of the job of being an assistant was writing up the minutes from the editorial meetings and eventually I got the editor-in-chief’s attention by writing the minutes in a funny, clever way. And one day a senior editor came to me and asked if I wanted to try my hand at writing a photo caption describing a bottle of shampoo. It was like the best day of my life.

And the next thing I knew I was writing for The New Yorker.

Oh, wait, that’s not how it went. The next thing I knew I was writing captions about shampoo. And then I worked my way up to 75-word “articles” about moisturizers and how many calories are in a giant muffin (this was the early 90s, when giant muffins were all the rage.) And after a year or so I quit that job and went to an MFA program and tried to write short stories until I figured out that I was an essayist. I got really lucky and sold an essay to The New York Times Book Review. That led to some other high-end publications but I was always still hustling by writing for women’s magazines and anyone else who would pay me. I wrote ad copy, random website copy, Publisher’s Weekly reviews for $30 a pop. Literally anything. I’ve always been a freelancer, and that requires finding a certain balance between being an egotistical snob and a shameless mercenary.

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

Many of my writing influences are the usual suspects, at least for women of my generation, demographic and sensibility: Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Lorrie Moore. I also loved Norman Mailer, Tom Wolf and Hunter S. Thompson, all those gonzo (or semi-gonzo) maximalists. I was hugely influenced by Woody Allen’s early writings, like the essays and stories in books like Without Feathers and Side Effects. The high/low technique that he employed, where you shift back and forth between very erudite references and really base, sophomoric concepts and rhetoric (The Whore of Mensa demonstrates this in the title alone) was something I internalized and still use to this day.

When and where do you write?

I write in my office at home. I’m not a big coffee shop person. I know a lot of writers love to sit there all day with their lattés, but I find it distracting. Also, I always drink too much coffee and then have to use the restroom a million times and then what are you supposed to do, just leave your computer and all your stuff sitting there unattended? At home this is not a problem. As for when I write, the answer is whenever I have a deadline, which is all the time. Mondays and at least part of Tuesday are totally taken up by writing my L.A. Times column, which runs on Thursdays. The other days of the week I’m usually juggling a number of projects, trying to prioritize things and making sure my dogs have been walked and are tired enough that they don’t bother me for most of the day.

What are you working on now?

Right now I’m still doing a lot of promotional work for my book of essays, The Unspeakable, which came out last November. I’m also gearing up for an anthology I edited called Selfish, Shallow & Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not To Have Kids. I don’t need to describe it because the title pretty much does the job, but I will say that I have some amazing writers and I’m very proud of the project and I’m excited to talk about this subject in the thoughtful, nuanced way in deserves. Unfortunately, these days promoting a book means writing a lot of stuff that masquerades as journalism (blog posts and so on) but is really just a form of hawking your book. So I’ve been doing a lot of that. I’m also teaching in the MFA program at Columbia this semester, so that takes up some time. My next book will be heavily reported, so right now I’m trying to do research and background interviews in order to build a foundation. I’m not ready to talk about it yet, but let’s just say it’s not going to be personal essays.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

There was a period of a couple of years, from maybe 2003 to early 2006, when I was rather horrifyingly unproductive. I’m not sure if it was writer’s block or just some kind of protracted laziness, but it was awful. But then I started writing a weekly newspaper column and it was like shock therapy or something. Busyness begat busyness and I was back in action. But those were some tough years for some reason.

What’s your advice to new writers?

My advice largely falls into the “do as I say, not as I did” category. For starters, this: develop an expertise in some area other than yourself. Know something (know a lot, actually) about science or sports or medicine or fashion or human rights abuses or climate change or craft beers or anything other than your own neurotic navel. Become the person an editor thinks of when she needs someone to write about something in particular. I’m not saying you can’t also write about yourself, but if you have another area in which you’re really well-versed you’re going to be much better positioned for actually having a sustainable career.

My other advice, especially if you want to write essays, is to write pieces on spec. Write them on your own time, own your own terms, and then try to place them in a publication. Just about all of the big hits I had in my 20s, the pieces that wound up in The New Yorker or Harper’s and later in my first book, were things I’d written on my own and sold after the fact. And even now I do this. Because pitching can be deadly. The creative ventures that are the most interesting, be they in literature, film, visual arts, whatever, are the ones that are the hardest to pitch. So try to avoid pitching. Write first, sell later.

Oh, and if and when you publish a book, don’t read your Amazon or Goodreads review. Just don’t go near them. I’ve never looked at a Goodreads review in my life, but with this last book I added Amazon reviews to the no-fly list and it’s been great. If you’re desperate to read an Amazon review, go look at the nonsense some people are spewing about works of great literature. Is James Joyce sitting around stewing about someone calling him “drivel”? No, and neither should you.

Meghan Daum is an opinion columnist for The Los Angeles Times and the author of four books, most recently The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion. She is also the editor of Selfish, Shallow & Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers On The Decision Not To Have Kids, which will be published in March. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, and Vogue. She lives in Los Angeles but is currently in New York teaching in the MFA writing program at Columbia University.