Mark Leibovich

How did you become a writer?

It was mostly by a stroke of accidental masochism, which I think is how a lot of writers get started. I was an English major in college mostly by default (I was terrible at math, science and a lot of other things). My first job was as an editorial assistant in Boston, at the alternative weekly, the Boston Phoenix. I wasn’t led there by any particular hunger to get into journalism; I just needed a job. It paid nothing and involved mostly clerical work and sorting the mail of actual reporters, some of who had gone onto greatness (long-ago Phoenician Susan Orlean!). I loved the osmosis factor of being in a newsroom and listening to reporters talk. After a few years, I realized these were my people. Eventually they made me a reporter.

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

Dorothy Gonson, an English teacher at Newton South High School, in Newton, Massachusetts, encouraged me to get into journalism. She was the faculty advisor of the school newspaper. I’ve had too many great editors to name, but I will never forget the late great Caroline Knapp, my first editor – an amazing writer/editor and beautiful soul. Every year, I try to read “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser, “Mr. Personality” by Mark Singer and “The Woman at the Washington Zoo” by Marjorie Williams.

When and where do you write?

I’m a newsroom guy – not one of those disappear-into-the-wilderness writers. I like being around other reporters and I miss it if I’m not. Even when no one is around – if it’s a weekend or something – I like to be in an office. There is angst in the walls of a newsroom. I like it.

What are you working on now?

Besides my day job, which involves finishing a profile of a presidential candidate, I’m embarking on a book about Tom Brady and the NFL.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Of course. It is part of the process. Or at least that’s how I’ve rationalized it.  I don’t have any great remedies except to just fight through it and “keep your ass in the chair,” which is a great piece of wisdom I picked up from Richard Ben Cramer (he said that in some book). I’ve written that on many Post-It Notes and stuck it on many computers over the years.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Keep your ass in the chair. If it comes too easily, you’re disqualified.

Mark Leibovich is the chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, based in Washington, D.C. He is known for his profiles on political and media figures, and is the author of three books, including This Town, about the gilded culture of contemporary Washington. The book debuted at #1 on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list in July 2013 and remained on the Times best-seller list for 12 weeks. Leibovich was previously a national political correspondent in the New York Times' Washington Bureau. He came to the Times in 2006 from the Washington Post, where he spent nine years, first as a technology reporter for the Post's business section, then as a political reporter. He lives in Washington with his wife and three daughters.

Thomas Swick

How did you become a writer?

I majored in English in college because I thought I wanted to be a writer. But I had nothing to write about – having spent most of my life in school – so one year after graduation I moved to France, where I studied French for eight months and worked on a farm for the summer. When I came home, I got a job as a feature writer at the Trenton Times in New Jersey (my home state), which was another wonderful experience for a budding travel writer because it taught me how to talk to a wide range of people and to see the world through the eyes of others.

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

It seems presumptuous, definitely wishful thinking, to claim them as influences, but the two writers I return to again and again are Evelyn Waugh and Vladimir Nabokov, for their elegance of style and sense of humor (though each is elegant, and amusing, in his own way). My favorite travel books are Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water – about his walk as a young man from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople – and it would be nice to think that they have given me even a dash of his prodigious openness, enthusiasm and curiosity. (I know I fall far short of his erudition.) The list of other travel writers I admire is very long, but at the top of it stand Gerald Brenan, Elliot Paul, A.J. Liebling, S.J. Perelman, V.S. Pritchett, Lawrence Durrell, Kate Simon, Nicolas Bouvier, Norman Lewis, V.S. Naipaul, Jan Morris, Colin Thubron and Jonathan Raban.

When and where do you write? 

I write in the morning in the bedless guest bedroom of our Florida condo. It overlooks a canal and a neighborhood of palms. Despite years of working in newsrooms – I was the travel editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel for nearly two decades – I’m incapable of writing in public. Plus, all my books are here. Afternoons are often devoted to rewriting what I wrote in the morning.

What are you working on now? 

A memoir, like everyone. But mine is about me. And because of that it will touch on two momentous developments of the last half century: the demise of the Soviet bloc (I left the Trenton Times to move to Poland for two and a half years) and the decline of the American newspaper.  

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

No. Most writers who spend years in newsrooms develop an immunity.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Nothing original, I’m afraid: Read. Write. Read. And be an eclectic, wide-ranging reader, not necessarily with regard to genres but to perspectives, attitudes, sensibilities that are different from those you and your friends share. This will help you to develop an interesting and distinctive voice. And after you write, read what you’ve written, over and over, until you get it right. (The more good writing you read, the easier it will be to tell when you’ve got it right.) A huge part of writing is self-editing. Paddy Chayefsky spoke for most famous writers when he said: “I’m not a great writer. I’m a great rewriter.” For people who want to be travel writers, I suggest they do what I did: Move to another country for a year or two and learn the language, the customs, the jokes, the rhythms of everyday life. If you’re lucky, as I was, it will be a country that’s in the news, but even if it’s not, you’ll gain a deep understanding of another part of the world. And the skills you acquire through living in one foreign country will help you when you travel to others. 

Thomas Swick is the author of a travel memoir, Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland, and a collection of travel stories, A Way to See the World: From Texas to Transylvania with a Maverick Traveler. His work has appeared in the Oxford American, the North American Review, the Missouri Review, the Wilson Quarterly, The American Scholar, Ploughshares, Boulevard, Smithsonian, National Geographic Traveler, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Best American Travel Writing 2001, 2002, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2014. He teaches an online travel writing course as part of the MFA program at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.

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