Mark Haddon

How did you become a writer?

By a long and circuitous route, partly because I came from a family which was neither hugely bookish nor hugely cultured, and partly because I spent my childhood reading books about science in preparation for my planned career as a paleoanthropologist. When I was fifteen, however, I began to see how literature could give me access to similar mysteries and generate a sense of awe not unlike the sense of awe I felt when looking up at the Milky Way. Reading Patrick White was  large part of that revelation. The prospect of becoming a novelist was, of course, preposterous and inconceivable. I could draw, however, and was scraping a living after leaving university by illustrating for an eclectic string of magazines – the New Statesman, the Catholic Herald, the Banker… So I began writing and illustrating children’s picture books. I must have produced fifty before Gilbert’s Gobstopper was finally published Hamish Hamilton.

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

I was sent to a boarding school where the teaching was done by force rather than by encouragement, so my influences are all literary and fall into three categories. The first contains those novels which continue to take my breath away and remind me why I continue to do this ridiculous job. Bleak House, Beloved, Middlemarch, Voss… The second category contains those novels from which I am constantly learning and relearning how to write. Examples from the last couple of months would include The Girls by Emma Cline, Golden Hill by Francis Spufford and New American Stories edited by Ben Marcus. The third category includes stories which simply don’t work, in my opinion. They flag up potholes into which I might fall and sometimes contain wasted ideas of which I think I might be able to make better use. I won’t name any of those books…

When and where do you write?

I’m a great fan of cafes. I like the hubbub and the sense that I am wholly unconnected to the rest of human life. It’s also harder to waste time when other people are watching you. I can rarely write for more than four a day without the quality heading rapidly south. When that happens I have to go and do something else or I’ll spend the following morning unpicking the mess I made the previous afternoon.

What are you working on now? 

A novel which opens with a house fire. I won’t say any more for fear of invoking the universal curse which dooms all writing projects discussed in public.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I get it all the time. Writing is just plain hard work. To complicate matters, I’m a poor writer but a persistent editor of my own work. Nothing I produce sounds good until the twentieth draft at least and most of it gets thrown away before that. As a result it’s difficult conjuring up the necessary self-confidence when you know what lies ahead. On the other hand, it’s the best job in the world and I wouldn’t last a morning in an office

What’s your advice to new writers?

One: Read lots, read widely and read forensically. Remember that every book is a long string of words chosen and ordered by another human being. Take it to pieces. Try to understand why it works, or doesn’t work. Two: Write lots, edit more and get used to throwing work away and starting all over again. Three: find a reader whose reactions chime with that little voice in your head which is repeatedly saying, “I’m not sure about this word / this sentence / this paragraph / this story but I might just get away with it.” If you can’t hear that voice you probably need to be a dentist or a wilderness guide.

Mark Haddon is an English novelist, best known for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. He won the Whitbread Award, Guardian Prize, and a Commonwealth Writers Prize for his work.

Alice Mattison

How did you become a writer?

I’ve become a writer many times. Decided at 13 I had to write. Wrote poetry for years, always feeling bad that I wasn’t writing more. Became serious at around age 30—an emotional change brought on, I think, by motherhood. Published one poem, then nothing for years. Published a book of poems in my late thirties. Started writing fiction at 34 or 35, published stories for the first time in my forties. Stories in magazines, then books of stories, then a novel (age 50), then more novels. I had one big break: The New Yorker took several stories, one after another. Other than that, slow shifts in direction, small failures and successes.

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

I was turned into a writer first, as a child and  young woman, by reading a lot of poetry, studying Latin and some Greek, and reading a great deal of Henry James. Dubliners. Jane Austen’s Emma. Around the time I started writing fiction, books by Grace Paley, Tillie Olsen, William Maxwell, Peter Taylor, and, more recently, Edward P. Jones affected my writing of short stories. As for novels—E.M. Forster, Lore Segal, Paule Marshall. But I was also made a writer by friends: the writing friends who have read my manuscripts over the decades, talked writing, talked books, showed me their work, rivaled my anxieties with theirs. THE KITE AND THE STRING is dedicated to my novelist friend Sandi Kahn Shelton, who writes as Maddie Dawson. We’ve been yanking each other along for almost forty years, since we met and said we were writers (on slim evidence back then), then slowly began to do it for real.

When and where do you write?

I’m the world’s only afternoon writer (and of course it’s often hard to free afternoons). I rarely have a good idea before lunch, and close down around suppertime. I usually write in my house. I have a room for writing but it’s crowded with rational thoughts: I’ve written so much nonfiction, emails, letters to students (my job in the Bennington low-residency MFA program requires writing many letters to students) that it’s hard to write fiction there. To think incoherent, messy, fictional thoughts, I retreat to a different room, with soft furniture.

What are you working on now?

I’m finishing a novel about friendship in a difficult world. Three women protested the war in Vietnam. One became a violent revolutionary. One wrote a novel about the revolutionary. The third is the main character. The book is also about her friendship later in life—that is, now—with a woman who runs a social services program. Also her marriage, to a man whose conscience is even more vigorous than hers, and all the trouble that causes. Also about the novel within the novel, which causes even more trouble.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Not enough writer’s block. Being stuck is good—it means that what needs to be written is intense, maybe painful. Or it’s complicated and requires careful consecutive thought. It’s often possible to get unstuck by asking oneself simple, sensible questions (like, “What do I already know about this story?” or “about the next scene?”). But maybe I’d write better books if I let myself remain stuck longer.

What is your advice to new writers?

KITE is all advice, so it’s hard to choose. Also, not everybody needs the same advice. My guess is that the five things I say to students most frequently are: 1. Never mind whether it’s good. Write it whether it’s good or not. 2. Protect your writing time. 3. Plot is whatever provides forward momentum, and, yes, you can make up a plot. 4. If you say what’s happening, the reader will know how it feels, so you don’t have to say. 5. Write when you’re sleepy and stupid, so your strongest feelings get into the work.

Alice Mattison’s new book is THE KITE AND THE STRING: HOW TO WRITE WITH SPONTANEITY AND CONTROL—AND LIVE TO TELL THE TALE. She is also the author of six novels, four collections of stories, and a book of poems. She teaches fiction in the low-residency MFA program at Bennington College.

Lian Hearn

How did you become a writer?

I must have been born a writer. I was making up stories by the age of four. Writing them down was harder. My handwriting as a child was slow, clumsy and illegible. I was taught to write again at age 15, in a modified italic. I still write all my first drafts by hand.  I worked as a journalist, film critic and arts editor before I emigrated to Australia and had my three children. When they were small I wrote poetry and made up stories for them. My youngest child went to school and I thought I would try and write a novel. It was published eventually and I was on my way. It was 1986 and I have been a full-time writer ever since.

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

I’ve always been a wide and eclectic reader, but I’ve never done a writing course or read many books about writing. I learned how to write from reading. I studied French and Spanish at school and university and so was influenced early by literature other than English. Now I read in Japanese as well, which has an effect on my style. As a teenager I loved Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut. Also Lord of the Rings which I read when I was 19 and it was still a little known cult book. When I was poised to try writing my first novel Diana Wynne Jones was a huge influence.

When and where do you write?

I write very early in the morning, in bed, the cat on my knee, a cup of green tea to hand. I like to start before anyone else is awake, while I am still half in the dream world.

What are you working on now?

I’m writing a further tale of the Otori, looking at what happens to the characters who survive the trauma at the end of The Harsh Cry of the Heron. I’m also letting some ideas for horror stories simmer away somewhere in my unconscious.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

All my life I’ve written in stolen hours so I’ve never had time for writers block.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Trying to be a writer is full of paradoxes and contradictions. Grow a thick skin but be sensitive to everything around you. Get a day job but make writing your priority. Read other writers but find your own voice. Have the highest expectations but don’t be disappointed. Be prepared to sell yourself in a marketplace but remain modest. Success if it comes will be followed by failure, so have courage.

Lian Hearn is the pseudonym used by British born Australian writer, Gillian Rubinstein for her Japan inspired medieval fantasies, Tales of the Otori (2002-2007) and The Tale of Shikanoko (2016) These books have been translated into 40 languages and published around the world. She has also written two historical novels, set in 19th century Japan, Blossoms and Shadows and The Story Teller and his Three Daughters. In her previous incarnation Gillian wrote over thirty books for children and teenagers, as well as numerous plays, winning many awards and inspiring many young writers. Previously she worked as a film critic, freelance journalist and editor in London and Sydney. She lived for thirty years in South Australia and now lives in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales.