Steve Hockensmith

How did you become a writer?

I wrote! And wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. Then I switched gears and did some writing. When that didn't get me anywhere, I tried writing…and writing and writing and writing. Eventually, I woke up one day and discovered something amazing: I was a writer! Sorry if that sounds facetious. It's actually not. My writing advice is always the same: Keep writing bad stuff until you're writing good stuff. Or put another (extremely clichéd) way: Practice makes perfect. Or at least it makes publishable. That's how I got where I am today (wherever that is). I'd wanted to be a writer since I was in grade school, but I didn't take it seriously until I was in my twenties. That's when I started putting in the work. After spending four or five years writing bad stories no one wanted to publish (you know -- because they were bad), I finally developed the skills I needed to write good stories that people did want to publish. And then I was off and running.

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

I stumbled upon Kurt Vonnegut at an impressionable age, and that had a huge impact on me, as a writer and as a person. But if I had to pick one writing influence above all others, it would be Little Big Man -- both the novel by Thomas Berger and the film by Arthur Penn. Both are funny yet ultimately tragic shaggy dog stories told by a sad, lonely old man who might or might not be full of beans. The book is written in first person, and the voice of the narrator is captured perfectly by Dustin Hoffman in the movie. I actually saw the film first -- it popped up on TV all the time when I was a kid -- then read the book years later. Maybe that's part of the reason I didn't just read the book. I heard it. I hope that when I'm writing at my best I'm able to do what Berger did: put a voice in your head that tells you the story with the idiosyncratic cadences and quirks of a real person.

When and where do you write?

Weekdays, I write from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. like clockwork. Weekends, I write from about 10 a.m. (depending on when I roll out of bed and how groggy I am) until about 1 (depending on what my family's up to). I'm lucky in that I have an office in my house with a lock on the door, so that's where I always hole up when I'm working. I'm not one of those people who can sit in a crowded Starbucks and crank out 2,000 words. I need solitude and silence or I can't focus. My dream office would probably be a cave.

What are you working on now?

Too much! I just finished the sixth Nick and Tesla middle-grade mystery, I'm collaborating on scripts for a new series of educational graphic novels for kids and I'm waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind on the third book in the Tarot Mystery series that I do with my friend Lisa Falco. So I guess you could say I'm working on a nervous breakdown!

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Nope. I have the opposite problem: too many ideas. What would that be? Writer's flood? I won't have time to turn all my ideas into stories if I live to be 100. In fact, even if I do live to be 100, I'll just have 1,000 more ideas I want to work on before I die. Here's hoping I'm immortal.

What’s your advice to new writers?

There's the aforementioned "Write and write and write and write," of course. And I guess I'd add to that "Explore your options." In some ways, there has never been a better time to be a writer. There are more ways to reach readers than ever. You can follow the traditional path, with an agent and a publisher, or you can try one of the new trails being blazed by writers who've decided to go it alone. Before you decide which approach is for you, you'll need to know why you're writing in the first place. I mean, writing's a tough racket. There's a ton of struggle and indifference and rejection. Why are you doing this to yourself? For money? Validation? Groupies? (If it's the latter, I have some bad news for you....) Hopefully at least part of your answer will be "Because I love it, dammit." That's what's going to get you through the hard times.

Steve Hockensmith is the author of 14 novels and dozens of short stories in a variety of genres. His novel Dawn of the Dreadfuls, the official prequel to the smash "mashup" Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, was a New York Times bestseller. His other books include the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sequel Dreadfully Ever After, the Edgar Award-nominated mystery/Western hybrid Holmes on the Range and the science-based adventure for kids Nick and Tesla's High-Voltage Danger Lab (written with frequent Jimmy Kimmel Live! guest "Science Bob" Pflugfelder). He writes the Tarot Mystery series with the help of tarot expert Lisa Falco. The latest entry in the series is Fool Me Once.

http://www.stevehockensmith.com

Cassandra Clark

How did you become a writer?

Ever since I realised that the squiggles on a page told a story I've written stories myself. I used to write on a little writing pad with Magnum Opus on the front. I was nine or so at the time. No Latin at that age, unlike Queen Elizabeth Tudor so where did I get that from? My family were extremely unbookish.  I went on to write plays in my teens and twenties and only later, out of financial necessity, wrote contemporary romance. Alan Boon saved my life and that of my two little daughters, god rest him. I was immensely lucky when I started because all my first work was accepted, plays, novels, tv scripts and so on. Only later has it become harder simply because publishing has changed so much and there are so many new writers willing to provide those cans of beans every publisher needs to survive.

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

My influences have neither rhyme nor reason. If something is written with style and care for the beauty of words I'll read it though I doubt whether it seeps in. At present I'm rereading Ivy Compton-Burnett, a neglected English writer from the early 2oth century, but I love the poetic, fractured prose of Annie Proulx, the wit and breadth of sadly missed JG Farrell, the plays of Becket and Shakespeare, the energy of the Revenge tragedies, the poetry of Philip Larkin and Dylan Thomas, the novels of Hemingway, Burroughs, Kerouac, Barbara Pym, Barthelme, EL Doctorow - eclectic and so many more I could name. No pattern beyond that thread of startling words.

When and where do you write? 

When I start a new book in my medieval thriller/detective series I start on a Monday morning at eight o'clock, preferably in January when it's bucketting down with rain. I do my actual writing at a battered old Louis XVIth desk on an equally battered old apple mac. I then transfer what I've written to a pc because my agent can't open any other kind of file. I print out what I've written after 12,000 words or so and slash it down to very little. Once that's done I write through to the end, writing about six or so hours every day until it's done. I then let it lie for a week or two until I've almost forgotten it, then I edit, edit and edit. I love all parts of writing but I'm not somebody who can sit in a cafe and scribble a few lines now and then. It's all or nothing with me. Best is when it's so vivid I dream the next day's dialogue. Bliss.

What are you working on now? 

I've just finished number seven in the series. At present it's called The Scandal of the Skulls. There was a most horrific parliament in London in 1388 when every one of King Richard's closest freinds and allies were beheaded or forced into exile (where they quickly met violent deaths). Richard was nineteen at the time. It still rouses my anger when I think how helpless he was and what grief he must have felt. Hildegard, of course, is fictional, but she moves in this world of betrayal and violent death.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I'm not sure I believe in writers' block. I think it's maybe mistaken for the long period of mulling that every writer needs before they should even think of hitting the keyboard. You can't rush it. The mind has to work things out at a subconscious level and the best thing is to let it get on with it. Gazing out of windows on a moving train gets characters clamouring to be heard, I find.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Is advice ever taken? I would say read, read, read. Keep a note book. I walk around the location where my books are set and imagine it as it was. Because my books are historical I look at old maps and paintings and listen to music of the time. I read chronicles and letters. Everything helps to build detail and you can never know too much. After that I suggest cutting, cut for speed and clarity. Cut your precious research! I see and hear my characters as if they're people in a film. I wrote The Parliament of Spies as if it was a film script. Action is the thing. Oh, and never give in. Never give in.

Bio: Childhood spent in the East Riding of Yorkshire, won a tv playwrighting competition when I was twelve, escaped to London and streets paved with gold at seventeen, decided to go to University of London to read philosophy, married, had two daughters, ran a dress design business and wrote plays before the family got up in the morning, divorced, started writing contemporary romance and street theatre, wrote a couple of libretti for chamber operas, did a masters in Fiction writing, had a break to care for ill parents, moved back to London and started the Hildegard of Meaux medieval mystery series. Book 7 I hope will be out next year. I can be followed @nunsleuth.co.uk and my website is Cassandra Clark - Author.

Ben Dolnick

How did you become a writer?

I would say it started when I was eight or nine, first writing stories for school (on a giant Apple IIE attached to a dot matrix printer, incidentally). I discovered that I felt a greater freedom when I was writing than I did just about any other time -- I could do what I wanted to on the page (which happened to be largely tell stories about Nazis and dinosaurs) in a way that felt enormously pleasurable to me. Then when I was thirteen or fourteen my parents gave me Slaughterhouse-Five for my birthday, and I discovered that you could harness the pleasurable freedom of writing to an actual character, a voice, a set of concerns. At that point I was pretty much done for. 

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

The writers who have meant the most to me, at various times, are: Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Munro, George Saunders, Nicholson Baker, David Foster Wallace, Penelope Fitzgerald, William Maxwell, Denis Johnson, Kazuo Ishiguro, Philip Roth. I've also had some great teachers in my day -- a high school English teacher named John Burghardt (who happens to be a great writer) stands out in particular. But mostly it's been books for me. 

When and where do you write?

I do my best writing in the morning, usually from the time I get back from the park with my dog until lunch time. That's when it's quietest, and I don't have any appointments, and my mind is more or less clear. Then in the afternoon I tend to do less focus-requiring stuff -- short pieces, or copy-editing, or research, or whatever happens to be needed.

What are you working on now?

I'm working on a novel about which I won't say too much except that it involves ghosts and insanity and the 1800's. I'm at that point where I've been working on it so long, and still have so long to go, that it feels like the only thing I've ever done or ever will do.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Not in the sense of being unable to get anything down on the page, I don't think. I've certainly suffered from months- or years-long periods of not being able to really find the wind in my writerly sails, though. This for me just means casting unhappily about, not knowing who or what I want to write about, writing lots and lots of pages that do nothing much for me except, I hope, get me closer to the place where I will actually feel some sense of being impelled forward.  

What’s your advice to new writers?

The main thing is to read a lot and write a lot. That will teach you just about everything you need to know. Also, get yourself a copy of Bird by Bird. I avoid 99% of all books about writing and craft and etc., but this is one I turn to again and again, more for its compassion and wisdom about the process of writing than for its particular nuts-and-bolts advice, though it's good on that too.

Bio: I grew up in a suburb of Washington DC and went to college in New York City, where I studied English. I now live in Brooklyn with my wife and our beloved but insane mutt.