Fiona Maazel

How did you become a writer?

Slowly and with trepidation. I wasn’t precocious about writing in the least, and didn’t start writing with anything like commitment until my mid-twenties. And even then I didn’t think of myself as a writer, which is a shame. If you write, you’re a writer. Unfortunately, I had the idea that you had to be published—and published successfully—in order to wear the moniker. I published my first short story when I was 27 or so, but I didn’t think of myself as a writer. Then I wrote a novel, had a great agent, but couldn’t sell the book, so I didn’t consider myself a writer then, either. It wasn’t until I published my first novel that I began to think of myself as—maybe—someone whose life was dedicated to this art. Which is all absurd, of course, and bound of up with issues of self-esteem that have little to do with what does and does not earn you the title. Bottom line: I became a writer when I started to spend hours every day wrestling with language and sentence-making, structure and stakes. That’s pretty much when it happens for any writer, young or old. 

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

This is always a hard one for me because I feel like writing is all about imprinting your sensibility on the page, which means what you’re really asking is what makes me who I am, which I’m not sure I can answer. Everything? I’m sure what I read is as influential on my work as the woman I saw last week yelling at her kid on the subway. Make yourself available to the world and everything becomes an influence. In terms of specific mentors, though, that’s easier. Jim Shepard, Amy Hempel, and Martha Cooley have all been hugely influential people in my life—as teachers and friends. They’ve set the bar very high for what constitutes great work and have taught me over the years how to find my way forward. How to strive for more. It’s wonderful for a young writer to have examples and mentorship, but it’s equally wonderful to retain those influences as you grow up. Your mentors become your peers, but that doesn’t mean you admire them less or have less to learn from them. 

When and where do you write? 

Whenever and wherever I can. I’ve heard of authors who need all kinds of conditions to write, but this has always seemed precious to me. Sure, it’s hard to write when it’s loud or the TV is on or your toddler is screaming. But extremes aside, it’s just not that hard to plunk down somewhere and open your laptop. Writing is hard. Where you do it is immaterial. These days I have very little time, owing to multiple jobs and motherhood, so I haven’t been very productive. But that is soon to change. When I do write, it’s at home or the library or a cafe. I used to go to artists’ residencies to pound out much of my draft work, but I can’t do that any more now that I have a child. So I’ll just have to adapt and squeeze in a sentence her, a sentence there. 

What are you working on now? 

A new novel about female rage, inertia, and the 2008 financial meltdown. I’m only about 90 pages in, though, so who’s to say what the novel will become over time. Check back in with me next year. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I have suffered from an incapacity to come up with ideas that are of interest to me. Is that writer’s block? I think all artists go through periods when they bore themselves. It’s brutal. You just have to keep throwing things down on the page until something sticks. It’s a scary time because of course you’re pretty sure nothing will stick. That you’ve exhausted your store of good ideas. Often, too, a good idea doesn’t appear good at first. So you throw it down and work on it and give it time to find its legs and feet and maybe if you’re lucky, it sticks. But then, of course, it has to run, which is its own challenge. In any case, getting through these periods requires real discipline and commitment, even as you’re despairing throughout. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

"So what?" Chris went to the store, he fell in love, she broke his heart—SO WHAT? What are the stakes here? What is happening in your fiction that will help enrich my capacity to feel deeply about other people? What are you teaching me? Why should I care? It might well be a writer’s responsibility to entertain, but entertainment without stakes is just fast food. Enjoyable in the moment but not worth much in the long run. I remember getting that advice early on and taking it to heart right away. It wasn’t going to be enough to funny now and then or to be able to spin a good yarn. I’d have to strive for much more if I wanted my work to affect people in a meaningful way. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Write.

Fiona Maazel is author of the novels Last Last Chance (2008); Woke Up Lonely (2013); and A Little More Human (2017). Last Last Chance was a Time Out New York “Best Book of the Year.” Woke Up Lonely was a finalist for the Believer Book Award and optioned by 21st Century Fox. Maazel is winner of a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship and the Bard Prize for Fiction. She is also a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree. Her stories have appeared in Conjunctions, Harper’s, Ploughshares, Tin House, Best American Short Stories 2017, and elsewhere. She has taught in the creative writing programs at Brooklyn College, NYU, Adelphi, Princeton, Syracuse, Columbia, and the University of Leipzig, Germany, and is currently the Director of Communications for a legal nonprofit, Measures for Justice. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Website: www.fionamaazel.com.

David Cooper

How did you become a writer?

Twenty years ago, I was inspired by actual career upheavals and professional experiences to work out a plot for what eventually became my debut novel “Hatred Ridicule & Contempt”, combining a libel trial with a distasteful round of law firm internal politics. I wrote half of it before becoming disillusioned at the prospect of ever finding a publisher, and shelved it. Then came the Kindle boom and the opportunity it provided for independent self-publishers. This was the inspiration for me to take out the long forgotten typescript, shake it down, finish it off and finally see it in print in 2011. “Infernal Coalition” followed a year later, and “Craven Conflict” three years afterwards, both of them once again legal suspense dramas. 

Name your writing influences.

You’re no doubt expecting me to say John Grisham! I’ll gladly concur, but my all time favourite for reading pleasure and inspiration is Robert Goddard, an undisputed master of the ever twisting plot and the use of fascinating settings. I’d add Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton and Glenn Cooper (not a relation!).

When and where do you write?

Home and office, whenever the moment seems right. I am still working full time in the legal profession, so writing is very much a sideline. Thankfully I can answer “doesn’t the boss mind?” with “I am the boss”.

What are you working on now?

The outline of a potential plot for a new legal suspense drama involving disputed wills, dishonest brokers (far more entertaining than honest brokers) and family turmoil. I’ll need to be sure in my own mind that the plot is both interesting and watertight before the first words start to hit the screen.

Have you ever suffered from writers’ block?

As described above, my initial experience involved a 12 year block…

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Write about what you know about, and what others are likely to know less about.

What’s your advice to new writers?

It was going to be “ne te confundant illegitimi” (Google it!), but on a more constructive basis “learn how to self publish and get yourself a really good cover designer.”

David Cooper is a solicitor by profession and lives in the UK. He has written and self published three UK based legal suspense drama novels, Hatred Ridicule & Contempt, Infernal Coalition, and Craven Conflict. He tweets as @DavidCooperBks and his blogsite can be found at davidcooperbooks.blogspot.co.uk.

Douglas Rushkoff

How did you become a writer?

I guess I fell into it. I was a theater director, but writing articles about new technology and digital culture because I had access to the people who were working in these areas, and had enough of a science and psychedelics background to understand what they were talking about. I ended up becoming the go-to journalist for articles about anything to do with rave culture, new media, networks, virtual reality, and non-linear culture in general. 

I was writing in Los Angeles, and tired of the way the theater and film businesses actually worked, so I accepted a job as senior editor for a magazine called Fame in New York. But before I got on the plane, I got a call from the magazine that they were shutting down! So I got on the plane, anyway, with a legal pad. And I listed all the topics I had been hired to write about, and declared them part of the same cultural movement: Cyberia. I wrote a 14-page book proposal during that 6-hour flight, and managed to sell it to a publisher two weeks later. 

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

Gosh, there’s a lot. Milton and Shakespeare, Ibsen and Shaw, Edward Albee and Sam Shepard to start. Theater was my thing. Brecht and Artaud were my theorists, and really informed my sensibility about society. Only later did I get into Adorno, Benjamin, and the Frankfurt folks. 

I love Robert Anton Wilson - also a writer/thinker, rather than just a thinker who happens to write. And some of my contemporaries, my friends, are among my favorite writers: novelists Walter Kirn and Jonathan Lethem, playwrights Annie Baker and Brooke Berman. 

For teachers, Timothy Leary, RU Sirius, Howard Rheingold, and John Brockman have all been huge influences on my writing and, more important, what I choose to write about. 

When and where do you write? 

Whenever I can. It used to be three sessions - morning, afternoon, and an evening one. But since I got married and had a kid, I tend to write whenever I can sneak it in. Right now it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m doing this interview instead of writing. If I had the wherewithal I’d be working on my new book proposal. But for the most part I write during working hours, in an office outside the house. And I keep a little notebook handy for ideas that I can’t get to because of family commitments. 

What are you working on now? 

I’m working on a book called Team Human about asserting human autonomy and connection in a world that has been designed to prevent both.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I don’t believe in writers block. I do believe that there are extended periods of time when writing isn’t the thing you’re supposed to be doing. I’m always writing, whether I’m writing or not. Sometimes an idea needs to germinate. Writer’s block is simply a way the marketplace has of making you feel bad for not having output on its schedule. There’s no such thing.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

To write the stuff I was born to write. The stuff I was put here to do, that no one else can. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Find a beat. Champion a place, a thing, an idea. All writing is travel writing, to some extent. Where do you go? What do you know about? It doesn’t have to be a physical place. It could be a depth of experience. A perspective. A way of thinking. Learn as much as you can about it, and share that. Before long, you’ll be the world’s biggest expert in it. And the more you write about it, the bigger and more popular that thing will become. 

Douglas Rushkoff is a writer, documentarian, and lecturer whose work focuses on human autonomy in a digital age. He is the author of fifteen bestselling books on media, technology, and society, including Program or Be Programmed, Present Shock, and Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus. He has made such award-winning PBS Frontline documentaries as Generation Like, Merchants of Cool, and The Persuaders, and is the author of graphic novels including Testament and Aleister & Adolf.