Mark Harris

How did you become a writer?

Simplest answer: I wrote, and I read. I think that's how all writers become writers. I wanted to write from the time I could form letters. I think I was probably just out of college the first time I said, "I'm a writer" aloud and tried to own it as a profession or at least as an aspiration.

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

When I finished high school, I foresaw a very orderly future for myself in which I would go on to college and then to law school, after which I would be a lawyer. My father, who died when I was 14, had been a lawyer, and so this plan seemed somehow likely to fulfill my family's expectations. So I went to my high school prom, and I was dancing with a teacher I really liked, and she asked me what my plans were. I told her "I'll probably be a lawyer," and her face fell and said, "The world has enough lawyers. You should be a writer." Those words went into me like lightning; my life changed in that moment. It was the first time an adult had ever suggested to me that this was a choice I could make. As for influences, there wasn't one writer who made me want to be a writer. I'm a journalist, and therefore sort of a scavenger. Every writer who's ever written a sentence I wished I'd thought of has been an influence. 

When and where do you write?

I have a small home office, and I write there, or on the couch, or really anywhere--including in my head, on the treadmill, walking the dog, or in the shower before I ever sit down at my laptop. I don't have a routine; I wish I were one of those writers who got up at the same time every day, made breakfast, sat down, and wrote, but I never have been. I'm an evening person; I gain in competence as the day goes on, so I tend to write in the afternoon. I don't have a lot of rules; I think years of working on a magazine staff made me unfussy. I can't write in bed, and I can't write if music is playing. But otherwise, I don't need perfect atmospheric conditions to do what I do.

What are you working on now?

I'm working on my third book, a biography of Mike Nichols, and will be working on it for the next three years. I've also written a script for a documentary. Biography and scriptwriting are both new forms for me, and it's very exciting for me to try something I've never tried before. I've taken a break from writing journalism about movies and TV for the last few months in order to concentrate fully on those projects, but I think soon, I'll reincorporate some journalism into my working life. I like keeping one foot in the 21st century, and I also think it's dangerous--for me, at least--to go too long without writing. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I'm grateful not to have suffered from it in any sustained way--I think journalism beats that out of you--but of course, I've had days on which I've felt either that I didn't know how to get my ideas out of my head and onto the page or that the sentences just wouldn't come. So sometimes I walk away, just to think, because if I'm stuck, there's almost always an underlying problem with the idea itself. And sometimes I'll just start writing anyway--writing garbage that I know I won't submit but that will help me figure out why I'm having trouble.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read everything. If you admire something and wish you'd written it, read it again--for style, for word choice, for thought, for construction, for how it makes you feel. And for new journalists; Rewrite yourself ruthlessly. If you're lucky enough to have the guidance of an editor, that's great; if you're not, learn how to be your own editor. It's easy to treat writing as a form of self-expression, but unless you're writing in a diary, it's first and foremost a means of communication. Rewriting your own prose honors the person with whom you're trying to communicate, so it's worth the extra effort and time. Try to put your best work into the world--and then, try not to beat yourself up when you realize, as you always will, that it could have been better. It will be better next time.

Mark Harris is a New York-based cultural journalist and the author of Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood (2008) and Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War (2014).

Steve Silberman

How did you become a writer?

My father was an English teacher who used to read James Joyce's Ulysses aloud to me as he carried me on his shoulders. I was walking home from elementary school one day when I noticed that there was a sentence continuously unspooling in my head. Shortly after that, one of my teachers encouraged me to enter a New York City-wide poetry contest hosted by Fordham University. As I sat down to try to compose a poem, I quickly had the feeling that writing was something I might be good at doing; the field of words on paper felt "alive" to me -- charged -- in the same way that the virtual environment of an immersive video game might feel charged to a kid born 30 years later. I had always been completely inept at sports, but working with language felt native to me, and I already loved to read, particularly science fiction. The poem I wrote, "The Math Battle," ended up winning the contest and being displayed at an exhibit at Expo '67 in Montreal -- my first modest taste of literary fame.

Then in high school, I fell in love with poetry, particularly the poems of Allen Ginsberg, like "A Supermarket in California." The poet's loneliness, and his yearning for companionship and transcendence, spoke deeply to me, particularly since I was a gay kid always hopelessly falling in love with my best friends, as Allen had done. In college, I saw Allen read at Queens College, and it was such a profound experience that I immediately vowed that I would seek him out and do whatever I could to make his life better. I ended up becoming his student at Naropa Institute in Colorado, which immersed me in a community of writers that also included William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Anne Waldman, and others. I got to see how writers really lived: what they thought about, how they worked, what they gossiped about, who they slept with, which drugs they took, their public stances in the world, and their private peccadillos. It was thrilling, frustrating, terrifying, and wonderful.

I once told poet Philip Whalen that my initial experience of working with Allen was disillusioning, because he was a crabby, horny, egomaniacal middle-aged rock star instead of the sweet, broken-hearted nerd in his poems, and Philip replied, "What's so great about illusions anyway?" Ten years later, I became Allen's teaching assistant at Naropa, and it was a much better experience, because I was no longer this painfully self-conscious teenager mooning around him. Those experiences made me a writer. I carried a pocket notebook wherever I went, because that's what writers did. I filled hundreds of those notebooks. I retrospect, though I continuously felt like a failure -- a third-rate Ginsberg clone who would never write "Howl" -- I was working really, really hard, nearly all the time.

I would eventually leave poetry behind, because I felt like I could never tell how good or bad I really was. Poetry didn't seem to have the same kind of leverage in the world that it had in the early days of the Beat Generation. So I went into journalism, where I felt like I could actually make things happen, do some good in the world. Eventually, I got a job at Wired, where I was able to merge my life-long interest in science with my literary aspirations. And my work on autism there led to my writing NeuroTribes.

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

In addition to Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and other Beats, I was very influenced by the writings of Tom Wolfe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Annie Dillard, and, later on, Oliver Sacks. Oliver was one of the muses of NeuroTribes -- both his writing and his respect for his patients. He always treated autistic people as full human beings, even when he was a young doctor working in a state institution where the staff would call the patients "morons" to their faces, as if they were deaf or incapable of understanding. Instead, Oliver saw them as people trying to make the best of their situation -- trying to find ways to communicate, express themselves, and be creative, even given the barrenness of their environment and the brutal ways they were treated.

When and where do you write?

I do most of my writing at my desk at home in San Francisco. My days of scribbling in pocket notebooks on Greyhound buses riding coast to coast are over, though if I suddenly found myself on the Moon, I'd immediately start looking for a pen or a keyboard.

What are you working on now?

Mostly what I'm writing these days are interviews like this, because my book unexpectedly became a bestseller, and I feel like the messages in it are things that the world needs to hear in this brief period that I have the microphone. I frankly can't wait until I have a totally open space in my life to begin some new project, because reading, writing, and thinking about autism have totally consumed my life for about six years now.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

When I was a kid poet, I had writer's block all the time: "O Muse, why have you deserted me?" and so forth. Now that I make my living writing, I can't afford to indulge such feelings. I just have to get to work, every day.

What’s your advice to new writers?

A barista in a coffee shop once told me that he wanted to become a writer. I asked him to name three of his favorite books. "Well, I haven't read that much," he said. "I don't want to be influenced." Bzzzzzt -- wrong answer! Young writers should read as much as possible, in whatever genre really turns them on, because writers who came before you are offering you tools that will enable you to do the writing you were born to do. Read, read, read, steal, steal, steal -- and then just get as much writing done as possible, every day. Breathe words, in and out. Then put your writing out there -- as blog posts, as stories you show your friends, as news stories, whatever. The experience of subjecting yourself to public scrutiny, criticism, appreciation, and editing will make you a real writer, unless you were meant to do something else with your life. Not everyone was born to be a writer, but that's OK. The experience of investing yourself deeply in an activity will enrich you. Life is short, and writing -- along with the habits of precise observation and close attention to language it requires -- is one of the most meaningful and rewarding ways to spend your very brief time on this planet.

Steve Silberman is an award-winning science writer whose articles have appeared in Wired, The New Yorker, the MIT Technology Review, Nature, Salon, Shambhala Sun, and many other publications. He is the author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity (Avery, 2015), which Oliver Sacks called a “sweeping and penetrating history…presented with a rare sympathy and sensitivity.” The book has become a bestseller in the United States and the United Kingdom, and won the 2015 Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction. Silberman’s TED talk, “The Forgotten History of Autism,” has been viewed more than a million times and translated into 25 languages. His Twitter account @stevesilberman made Time magazine’s list of the best Twitter feeds for the year 2011.

Molly Peacock

How did you become a writer?

My grandmother wrote in her daily diary and kept up her correspondence as she baked, sewed, and pushed clothes through an old wringer washer. Mondays she made pies, Tuesdays did the laundry, Wednesdays got out the sewing machine…but every day she wrote. Her habits showed me how to craft a routine.

My mother went to the library weekly, took out a stack of romance and western novels, and gobbled up one a day. Because she was often lost in her reader’s world, I often think I became a writer to have her read me. And my grandmother gave me the basic tools. Every writer has to craft an everyday life.

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

Friend: Phillis Levin, poet, with whom we have exchanged nearly every serious word we have written for nearly forty years.

When and where do you write? 

In the mornings at home, or, deliciously, in hotel rooms.

Poetry: In the blue bathrobe. In a hypnogogic state. On paper. No radio. No email. No talking.

Prose: Yoga routine, breakfast, make bed, water plants, feed cat and converse with husband. Then sit down at a computer and pound it out for three hours.

What are you working on now?

I’m pleased to say that W.W. Norton and Company has just accepted The Analyst. The poems spiral off from a relationship between a patient and a therapist that drastically changes when the therapist suffers a brain hemorrhage but survives and suddenly devotes herself to painting-- an art she abandoned at 18.

My new biography is about the fabulous, unknown 19th-century American-Canadian painter Mary Hiester Reid.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I’d call it “rusty pump syndrome.” In the spring, the well for a house that has been closed up for the winter has to be primed again. You pump it till your arm practically falls off, and then a thin stream of rusty water trickles into the bucket. In my early thirties, after the discipline of undergraduate school and a graduate program gave way to exhausting full-time work, I let the work stop my writing. Winter, so to speak. Then when I’d have a vacation, I’d have to prime the writing till a sickly stream of words came out. It would take the whole vacation to get going again.

But what if you just don't close up the house for the Winter of Work? Sick of the syndrome, I resolved to write a poem every week on Saturday morning. Even producing something awful had to be better than stopping and starting up again. I would make space in my head during the week to think about a poem, say, about Thursday, and then on Saturday morning write it down. The discipline is exhilarating, comforting—and banishes rust in the pump.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Write to the next head on the pillow.

Molly Peacock is a widely anthologized poet and biographer. Her latest work of nonfiction is the bestselling The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life’s Work at 72, and her latest book of poetry is The Second Blush. Alphabetique: 26 Characteristic Fictions is her book of very short stories, with illustrations by Kara Kosaka. She is the Series Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English and the subject of Jason Guriel's recent monograph Molly Peacock: A Critical Introduction.