Robin Black

How did you become a writer?

I took a super circuitous route. Growing up, I wanted to be an actress and a singer, ambitions that I dropped the second I arrived at Sarah Lawrence and saw the theater kids there. They were so sophisticated, so cool, I nearly died of social anxiety, and gave up before I began. (My decision-making skills are not always the best.) In my sophomore year, I took a fiction writing class with Allan Gurganus and very quickly became convinced that this was the new path for me – but then, again, various anxieties intervened, and I took a nearly twenty year detour during which time I married, divorced, remarried, had three kids, lost two pregnancies in emotionally devastating ways, and spent a lot of time mad at myself for letting go of one dream after another.

In May, 2001, when I was thirty-nine, my father died. My relationship with him was complicated (like the sky is big) and I can’t help but make the connection that I started to write three weeks after his death – and have never looked back. I think in the end that though he certainly wasn’t consciously doing this, there were ways in which he inhibited me and contributed to a set of pretty well-developed neuroses that not only kept me from writing, but kept me from making much of an effort at any kind of professional success.

Fall 2001, I entered The Rittenhouse Writers group in Philadelphia, and July 2003, I entered the Warren Wilson MFA Program. I’m not a bit convinced that everyone needs an MFA, but in addition what I learned there, I also wanted that professional stamp, in part just to believe in myself.

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

Allan Gurganus and Steven Schwartz are without question the teachers who have had the greatest influence on me. In both cases what I would say is that they have an incredible combination of knowledge, talent, compassion, humor, and a sense of responsibility to their students. Other teachers of mine also have had those characteristics, but if you're lucky some matches “take” and those two have for me.

Authors who have influenced me include Virginia Woolf (of course!), Henry James, George Eliot. Many, many short story writers, notably A.S. Byatt and  Mavis Gallant. And then, in some weird way, the greatest influence on my work may be a writer about whom no one ever speaks, due for a revival: Margery Sharp, whose genius novel Britannia Mews may well be the book I have read most in my life. I am trying to be influenced by Jane Gardam because I want to write just like her when I grow up, but influences are funny things. They tend to sneak in, while you’re looking the other way - while anything forced ends up merely as poor imitation. 

When and where do you write? 

All the time and all over the house. My kids are grown, and writing – which includes magazine work and reviews, and occasional teaching too – is my full-time job. I am incredibly fortunate that way. So I have a lot of time in which I can do it. And I am a wanderer. Have laptop, will sit in different room. I am currently, though, trying to make a study for myself – we will see if I stay in it.

What are you working on now? 

I am working very hard at revising, reshaping and adding to a collection of essays that will be out from Engine Books in April 2016. It’s called Crash Course, 52 Essays From Where Writing and Life Collide – and for once I actually think my title explains exactly what the book is.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?  

That would be 1982-2001.

And then, post 2001, it depends how you define it. There are periods when I “can’t” write – but I think those are probably appropriate and necessary breaks. There were definitely periods when I couldn’t get my novel going, but I wasn’t blocked as a writer, just on that project. Maybe it’s because I am willing to shift genres constantly or maybe it’s because I’m content throwing away nine tenths of what I write, but I never actually stop writing. It may be also that after losing twenty years, I am just smart enough to know I have no time to waste.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Don’t confuse help with unkindness. Don’t buy into the bullshit view of writing that we all have to learn to “take it” in order get better and that anything other than scathing criticism is coddling. Don’t buy it as a reader or as a student. Criticism is good and necessary, but by no means improved by insults or one-upmanship. Kindness counts. Similarly though don’t take all criticism as an insult. Be discerning.

Don’t try to make other people’s work into what you want to write and run like hell form people who do that to you.

Forgive yourself for jealousy and never act on it – except maybe to protect yourself by shutting down Facebook the day the NEA’s are announced and such private, harmless acts as that.

Pay more attention to the people who like your work than to those who don’t. Interesting fact: Once you reach a certain point in your career, you will ONLY work with people who like your work, because the ones who don’t won’t accept it or buy it or commission it. Pay attention to the negative responses, just to learn, but your people, your readers, are the ones who are excited when they read your stuff. Critical, maybe, but excited, for sure.

Robin Black is the prize-winning author of the story collection If I loved you, I would tell you this; the novel Life Drawing (newly in paperback, April 2015); and the forthcoming book Crash Course, 52 Essays from where Writing and Life Collide - which Engine Books is publishing and will be launching at the AWP Conference, April 2016. Her short work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, One Story, O. Magazine, and Conde Nast Traveler, UK. She lives with her family in Philadelphia.

Catherine McKenzie

How did you become a writer?

I’ve always been a writer — I wrote poetry from an early age. I started writing novels kind of by accident. I had an idea that wouldn’t leave me alone, but I didn’t know what it was. So I sat down and started writing. Six months later, I had something resembling a novel, but I knew I could do better. So I put it in a drawer and wrote another one. That book eventually sold and became Arranged.

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

I'm an avid reader - have been all my life. I grew up reading detective fiction - Rex Stout, PD James, Dick Francis and Agatha Christie. I had a couple of great English teachers in high school who instilled some rigour in my writing. I love Jane Austen and Nick Hornby, and I think from the beginning, I was trying to write something that was in that space — character driven stories.

When and where do you write? 

I write anywhere really, but often in front of the TV - it helps me to have something distracting me when I write. I most often write on the weekends.

What are you working on now? 

I’ve just turned in my fifth novel, SMOKE which will be releasing on October 20, 2015.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I wouldn’t say I’ve suffered from writer’s block. Writer’s fatigue sometimes. Idea block for sure.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read, read, read, read. If you don’t love books, why do you want to write one? And then write. Learn to write whether you’re feeling inspired or not because you’re not always going to feel inspired but you’ll have to write nonetheless.

Bio: A graduate of McGill University in History and Law, Catherine practices law in Montreal, where she was born and raised. An avid skier and runner, Catherine's novels, SPIN, ARRANGED, FORGOTTEN and HIDDEN, are all international bestsellers and have been translated into numerous languages. Her most recent release is SPUN - a novella sequel to her first novel, SPIN. HIDDEN was also a #1 Amazon bestseller and a Digital Bookworld bestseller. Her fifth novel, SMOKE, will be published in the US by Lake Union on October 20, 2015. And if you want to know how she has time to do all that, the answer is: robots. Visit her online at www.catherinemckenzie.com, on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/catherinemckenzieauthor, and on Twitter at @cemckenzie1.

Nahid Rachlin

How did you become a writer?

When I was an infant my mother, who already had seven children, gave me to my childless aunt to raise as her own child. Then when I was nine years old my father came to my elementary school in Tehran and forcefully took me back to live with him, my birth mother, and siblings in Ahvaz, a town miles away from Tehran. I was happy being an only child to my loving aunt and it was traumatic to be forced into living with my birth family, I hardly knew. This trauma led me to reading books to find answers to my questions. In turn reading led me to writing. In writing I could give shape to incidents that were painful, seemed meaningless or random, chaotic. I found that even if I wrote about a depressing subject, the process itself made me happy. Writing then became an ingrained habit, a need.

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

When I was in high school, I found a bookstore with books by European and American writers in translation. I read almost everything I found in translation—work by Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Hemingway, Balzac. Of course, I also read books by Iranian writers. I probably absorbed some of the techniques used by the writers I read. I can’t say I was influenced by a particular writer.

One of my composition teachers in high school liked the pieces I handed in for assignments. She was unusual in that she believed women should have a voice and not settle for prescribed roles in the male dominated world I grew up in. She was a big influence on me, both in her encouragement of my writing and my development as a more independent person.

When and where do you write?

I try to write three hours in the morning. If appointments stop me from writing in the morning then I write in the afternoon. I like working at home. So I just go to my desk and start writing. 

What are you working on now? 

I am putting together a short story collection, that includes a novella. Also  I am working on a novel.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

No, I haven’t had a writer’s block, but in general I write slowly. I usually become interested in a particular character or theme and then it takes me a few revisions before I even know what details in the story would convey what I am trying to develop.  

What’s your advice to new writers?

If you become too self-critical, you may get a writer’s block. It’s best to just put words on the page, until something clicks. Then be prepared to revise until you are satisfied with the outcome of your story or whatever you are writing. It is also important to read a lot. Reading can inspire you and also show you some techniques that you may not already have.

Nahid Rachlin (http://www.nahidrachlin.com) went to Columbia University Writing Program on a Doubleday-Columbia Fellowship and then to Stanford University MFA program on a Stegner Fellowship. Her publications include a memoir, PERSIAN GIRLS (Penguin), four novels, JUMPING OVER FIRE (City Lights), FOREIGNER (W.W. Norton), MARRIED TO A STRANGER (E.P.Dutton-Penguin), THE HEART'S DESIRE (City Lights), and a collection of short stories, VEILS (City Lights). Her individual short stories have appeared in more than fifty magazines and of her stories was adopted by Symphony Space, “Selected Shorts,” and was aired on NPR’s around the country. She has been judge for several fiction awards and competitions, among them, Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction (2015)  sponsored by AWP, Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award sponsored by Poets & Writers. She has taught at Barnard College, Yale University and the New School University.