David Burr Gerrard

How did you become a writer?

Reading certain books gave me a certain intense feeling, and it seemed to me that a major point of being alive was to experience that feeling. I wanted to write books that would make readers experience that feeling. So I wrote, then threw away what I had written because it was terrible, then wrote some more. Eventually I made a significant amount of headway on two manuscripts—one called Short Century, the second called The Epiphany Machine—but with each one I got stuck. I went back and forth between the two for years. I often thought that neither manuscript would ever be published, that nothing I wrote would ever be published. I kept writing anyway. Short Century was published in 2014, The Epiphany Machine is being published this summer, and I am well under way on my third novel.  

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

Kafka is the clearest influence on The Epiphany Machine. He’s the only writer in the history of literature whose work might reasonably be called “realistic.” My other biggest influence is Philip Roth, the writer whose books I always want to put down and yell at, then to keep reading. That’s my model for what engagement with literature should look like. If you’re not tempted to hate a book, why would you bother loving it?

My most important writing teacher was Leslie Woodard, with whom I took creative-writing classes in high school and college. She died in 2013 at the age of fifty-three. I am only stating the facts when I say that I still hear her voice in my head whenever I sit down to write, and especially whenever I try to avoid sitting down to write.  

When and where do you write? 

Whenever and wherever I can manage not to have an internet connection. This usually means both leaving my apartment and using the Internet-blocking app that is strangely but perceptively called Freedom. 

What are you working on now?

I’m writing a novel about a mysterious disease that appears to be killing everyone born in the calendar year 1981 (the year I was born) but is leaving everyone else unaffected. It obviously reflects my own concerns about my encroaching middle age, just as The Epiphany Machine reflects my own concerns about finding my own way and my own value system. I like taking whatever is most personal to me and spinning it around I can find a weird angle that allows me to see it more fully and clearly.   

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Every day. Writer’s block is like heavy traffic or problems with the subway on your commute to work. It’s so frustrating it can make you want to peel your skin off. But you wouldn’t let a bad commute keep you from getting to work, would you?

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

Write every day, and accept no excuse to miss a day. Then, when you inevitably go for days or weeks or months without writing, forgive yourself and get right back to work. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

That even when you’ve ignored the best writing advice, even when you feel you’ve squandered every opportunity, even when your other obligations nibble at your day until it seems there is nothing left but the tiniest crumbs, even when you’re convinced you have zero talent and that your time at the keyboard could be better spent any other way, still, STILL you can get some writing done today. Finally, the best writing advice is also the best life advice: remember that nobody else has any idea what they’re doing, either.

David Burr Gerrard is the author of THE EPIPHANY MACHINE (Putnam, July 2017) and SHORT CENTURY (Rare Bird, 2014). He teaches creative writing at the 92nd Street Y, The New School, and the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop. He lives in Queens, NY with his wife.

Andrea Askowitz

How did you become a writer?

I became a writer after I failed at saving the world. I was 25 when I went to graduate school in public policy because I wanted to understand the government so I could be a more effective advocate. In grad school I had a teacher, Jill Kasle, who had us write a one-page story in the style of an author. I picked The Bell Jar and really thought I nailed Sylvia Plath. When I first read The Bell Jar I though it was funny although I did get that the narrator was severely depressed. The last time I read it, it didn’t seem as funny, but almost 25 years ago, Plath’s humor and simple style gave me the feeling that I could write too. The same thing happened when I was assigned A Room of One’s Own and was instructed to explain my book in the voice of Virginia Woolf. I understood that the book was a serious essay on the inequality between men and women, but I also thought Woolf was really funny. I still remember the line, "It is the nature of biscuits to be dry and these were biscuits to the core.” Woolf was talking about how bad the food was at women’s colleges versus the food at men’s colleges. After grad school, while looking for a job (not that hard), I read Julia Cameron’s The Artist's Way. She tells you to get rid of people in your life who are crazy-makers. At the time I had a big, unrequited crush on a woman who was a drinker, and to stay away from her, for nine months, I holed up and wrote a novel. The novel is somewhere buried on my computer, but the experience got me started. For about 10 years after that, I worked a few jobs—environmentalist, advocate for homeless people, reproductive rights organizer—and got fired from all of them before I decided, at 35, to take writing seriously. That was 14 years ago.

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

I've had great teachers: Joyce Maynard, Terrie Silverman, Jill Kasle, Peggy Sanday, Cheryl Strayed, Steve Almond, Vikram Chandra, Ann Randolph. The books that have taught me are The Bell Jar, A Room of One’s Own, The Things They Carried, At Home in the World, In Cold Blood, Into Thin Air, Wild, Torch, Tiny Beautiful Things, so many David Sedaris stories, same for Joyce Maynard, and lots and lots of essays both published and ones written by my students for almost ten years.

When and where do you write?

I write in my office, which is the garage of my house. I get to my desk at about 9 a.m., but I’m never in a huge rush. Everyday, I try to write until my kids come home from school at 4:30, but I don’t write everyday.

What are you working on now?

I finished my second memoir currently titled, Attention Whore, which is about a woman who needs lots of attention. The author Kim Severson says the kitchen table is the modern-day tribal fire, the place where people come together to connect. I’m looking for tribal fires everywhere. Sometimes I even start them. The problem is, I’m married to a classic introvert who needs hours of alone-time daily. You know how they say every couple has their fight? Ours is the one where my wife isn’t listening and I want more attention.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I think I might be suffering right now. This is a hard moment because I broke up with my agent. I’m looking for a new agent and at the same time, I polish and re-polish my finished memoir. I know I need to start something new, but the book just needs a little more polish. Also, I’m chicken-shit.

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

Steve Almond said he got better as a writer by reading bad writing. He was the editor of his college journal, so lots of the submissions weren’t the best. I took that as advice, to put myself in the position of editor, which I do as the teacher and co-producer of the podcast Writing Class Radio.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Get yourself into a writing class or form a writing group. Learn to be a good listener. Figure out what works and what doesn’t in other people's stories so you can identify what works and doesn’t in your own. Also, there’s nothing more motivating than having an audience and deadlines. If you can’t find a group or even if you can, listen to the podcast Writing Class Radio. 

Andrea Askowitz is the author of the memoir My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy (Cleis) and the editor of Badass: True Stories, the Double Album (Lominy Books). Her stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon, xoJane, Brain, Child, AEON, and have aired on NPR and PBS.  She is the founder of the Knight award-winning, true-stories reading series Lip Service. She is also co-producer, teacher and co-host of the podcast Writing Class Radio. Andrea grew up in Miami where she lives with her wife, Victoria, and children Natasha, Sebastian and Beast. Tweet her at @andreaaskowitz. Info at andreaaskowitz.com.

Andrew Crofts

How did you become a writer?

When I left school at 17 I wanted to be freelance and I wanted to have as many different experiences as possible. I wanted to be able to follow my interests, ask a lot of questions, learn a lot, meet a lot of different people and hear a lot of stories. I also wanted to spend a lot of time on my own, thinking and writing. So I did every sort of writing work I could find, earning money wherever I could. I wrote begging letters to every editor and publisher whose address I could find, and submitted my own speculative work at the same time. Eventually people started to respond and eventually they stopped sending rejection letters.

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

I learnt to read with the Paddington Bear books. For comedy I was influenced by P.G. Wodehouse, for lifestyle by Lord Byron. I learnt about the rich from Scott Fitzgerald and the poor from George Orwell and it was the books of Graham Greene, Jan Morris and Paul Theroux that made me want to travel.

When and where do you write?

My study at home is a converted game larder with windows on three sides looking out over the gardens. I work best from lunch time to dinner time.

What are you working on now?

I am working on an American billionaire's business book/biography and am about to start the memoir of a young man who survived the genocide in the Rwanda as a small child after seeing 80 members of his family slaughtered with hammers and machetes. 

I am putting the final touches to a manuscript for a spiritual leader based in Paris and the biography of an Australian who has built an enormously successful company in Saigon. (Graham Greene-land again.) At the same time I am promoting the newly published paperback version of my novella "Secrets of the Italian Gardener".  

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

No, never. My theory is that if you get blocked you are not ready to write that book and simply need to do some more thinking or some more research. I always have several projects on the go at any one time anyway.

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

"Kill your darlings" - i.e. cut out most of what you write to make sure it is as tight as it can be.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Learn about marketing and how it works. You need to be able to sell yourself and your work - or you will starve.

Andrew Crofts is a ghostwriter and author who has published more than eighty books, a dozen of which were Sunday Times number one bestsellers. He has also guided a number of international clients successfully through the minefield of independent publishing.

Andrew’s name first became known to publishers for the stories he brought them by the otherwise disenfranchised. Travelling all over the world he worked with victims of enforced marriages in North Africa and the Middle East, sex workers in the Far East, orphans in war-torn areas like Croatia and dictatorships like Romania, victims of crimes and abused children everywhere.

The enormous success of these books brought many very different people to his door; first came the celebrities from the worlds of film, music, television and sport, and then the real elite in the form of world leaders and the mysterious, powerful people who finance them, arm them and, in some cases, control them. 

As well as using traditional publishers to reach readers, he has also published his own fiction, most recently “Secrets of the Italian Gardener”, which draws on his experience among the powerful and wealthy.

His books on writing include “Ghostwriting”, (A&C Black) and “The Freelance Writer’s Handbook”, (Piatkus), which has been reprinted eight times over twenty years and “Confessions of a Ghostwriter” (Friday Project)..

Throughout his bestseller, “The Ghost”, Robert Harris quotes Andrew’s book, “Ghostwriting”. Harris’s book went on to become a major movie by the same name, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Ewan McGregor as the eponymous ghost.

Andrew was on the Management Committee of the Society of Authors from 2012 to 2015. He lectures on the subject of making a living from writing at Kingston University and frequently guests at writing workshops, literary festivals and in the media. He blogs regularly on matters pertaining to publishing, self-publishing and writing.