Rachel Cantor

How did you become a writer?

I always wanted to be a writer. Wanting and becoming turned out to be different things, however. It wasn’t till I was divorced and in my mid-thirties that I decided to take the idea seriously: I quit my job and moved to the shore not just to write but to “become a writer.” I gave myself a year and never looked back. At the time, the decision required all the courage I had; at much remove, it’s plain the decision was a no-brainer.

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

It starts with Miss Benny, the fourth grade teacher who removed me from my third grade classes once a week to attend her creative writing class. It continues with at least 1,000 great books, 1,000 great paintings, 1,000 great musical compositions, etc. Plus all those great people I met, the men I loved, the friends I made, all those interesting and beautiful and awful places in which I’ve lived and visited and read about, the strange curves life throws. Unless you’re trying to write like someone else, influence, for me, anyway, is infinitely complex and ultimately untraceable.

When and where do you write? 

I write when I can. I only write well when I am able to focus on it more or less exclusively for stretches at a time, so I alternate money-work and writing. I live in a small NY apartment, so I work in a corner, unless I’m fortunate enough to have a residency, in which case I write in absolute luxury!

What are you working on now? 

I’m drafting a novel-in-stories about the Brontë siblings. I’ve published pieces of the book in the Kenyon Review, Five Chapters, Ninth Letter, Volume 1 Brooklyn, and in a few anthologies.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Can’t say I have. I yearn so much for unbroken writing time that when I have it, I almost always get to it! Not every day is productive, but I have faith that the next one will be, and usually it is.

What’s your advice to new writers?

I have advice both for the hesitant and the impatient. For the former: have courage! Share your work with teachers and peers, never let fear of failure keep you from finishing your work, and never let fear of rejection keep you from sending it out. Persist! For the latter: don’t rush to publication! Take time to read lots and lots of great writing and to rewrite your own work again and again and to share it and rewrite again, and possibly put it away for a while. Take time to find the writing style and subject matter that are well and truly yours. Know the world of publishing will still be there when your work is actually ready!

Rachel Cantor is the author of the novels Good on Paper (Melville House, 2016) and A Highly Unlikely Scenario (Melville House, 2014). Her short stories have appeared in The Paris Review, One Story, Ninth Letter, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn, where she is always at work on another book.

Amitava Kumar

How did you become a writer?

I must have been fifteen or sixteen. I had recently moved to Delhi, the capital city, and I had decided that I needed better English. I read an essay in the school text-book by George Orwell. The British writer had been born near my own village in eastern India, in 1903, but I hadn't known this connection at that time. The essay was "Why I Write." Orwell had written that there was a voice in his head describing what he was doing and what was going on around him. This also became true of me. I could be in a bus and a voice running in my head would name the objects I saw being sold on the streets, their colors, the looks in the eyes of the sellers. That basic desire, to use words to give shape to the world around me, made me a writer.

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

My roommate in college had on his shelf a copy of V.S. Naipaul's Finding the Center. This was one of the first literary autobiographies that I read. Its very first sentence established in my mind the idea of writing as an opening in time or a beginning. It conveyed to me, with its movement and rhythm, a history of repeated striving, and of things coming together, at last, in the achievement of the printed word: “It is now nearly thirty years since, in a BBC room in London, on an old BBC typewriter, and on smooth, ‘non-rustle’ BBC script paper, I wrote the first sentence of my first publishable book.” This first sentence—about a first sentence—created an echo in my head. It has lasted through all the years of my writing life. Other writers have influenced me in the decades that followed, numerous writers, perhaps too many to mention, with their language and their technique. But no one has so consistently dramatized for me the narrative of a writer's struggle. Barely a day passed when I'm not reminded of his phrase: "such anxiety, such ambition."

When and where do you write?

I have only worked in my study unless I've been away for a short-term writing residency. We moved house recently. My study overlooks a creek. I like looking at the changing light on the water. Once, I was on a very comfortable flight across the Atlantic. Jimmy Cliff was singing "You Can Get It If You Really Want." A short-story came tumbling out of me. It came out of the relaxation of the moment, and also perhaps the isolation, but such happenings are rare.

Mornings are best for fresh writing. As soon as the children leave for school, I turn to work. If I dawdle over coffee and nothing else, we can be off to a good start. Otherwise it is easy to lose the rhythm, the intensity.

What are you working on now?

About fifteen years ago, while on a visit to Mumbai, an acquaintance gave me a copy of your book Advice to Writers. (The best advice I remember reading while walking around the Fort area in Mumbai came from E.L. Doctorow: Writing a book is "like driving a car at night: you never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.") Anyway, right now, I'm trying to do a long essay that provides advice for academic writers. I want to provoke us to think about style. My argument is a modest one. We shouldn't feel duty-bound as academics to produce writing the texture of drying cement. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

No, but that doesn't mean I lead an ideal existence. I'm conscious of the lack of time. There's never enough time. I'm happy that I can write regularly but what disturbs me, no, distresses me, is that whenever I get the gift of large chunk of time, I seem to write less.

What’s your advice to new writers?

The same advice that I offer my students and myself: write every day and walk every day. Your output needn't be huge but writing needs to be practiced daily. A goal of writing 150 words is achievable even on busy days. The same goes for walking. You don't need to hike for miles. Even ten minutes of mindful walking will suffice.

Amitava Kumar is the author of several works of non-fiction and a novel. The New York Times described his book, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb, as a "perceptive and soulful...meditation on the global war on terror and its cultural and human repercussions." Kumar's latest book is a collection of essays entitled Lunch with a Bigot. He teaches English at Vassar College. His website is www.amitavakumar.com and is on Twitter @amitavakumar.

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).