Helen Russell

How did you become a writer?

After living and working as a journalist in London for 12 years, I moved to rural Denmark five years ago when my husband was offered his dream job working for Lego. On learning the statistic that Denmark kept getting voted the happiest country in the world, I resolved to investigate Danish happiness first hand. I set out to explore every area of Danish living and interview as many psychologists, economists, sociologists, historians and experts as I could - as well as native Danes - to uncover the secrets to getting happy, Danish-style. I wrote a column on this for the Telegraph newspaper and it became the jumping off point for The Year of Living Danishly.

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

I read a lot and I listen a lot. The last three books I’ve really enjoyed and tend to recommend are Sara Pascoe’s Animal, Robert Webb’s How Not To Be A Boy, Laura Barnett’s The Versions of Us. But mainly I people-watch and eavesdrop – and I often find myself in absurd situations. I’ve always been a magnet for the ridiculous so writing is a great way of making sense of the world around me. Plus I like to keep on learning, so I’m always keen to research new topics or different ways of living – something I find incredibly inspiring.

When and where do you write? 

Anywhere and all the time – I have a desk in the living room but I’m currently on maternity leave with twins so it’s a baby changing station at the moment. I also have a bureau in the bedroom and am a familiar face at coffee shops in the town where I live. The Notes app on my phone is in constant use and one advantage to a lifetime of insomnia is being cognizant enough to capture ideas, thoughts and interesting turns of phrase at 2am.

What are you working on now? 

I’ve just finished my first novel, Gone Viking, out April 2018 (Ebury), my second book on change, Leap Year is out in paperback in December, and I’m working on ideas for my novel and non-fiction book.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

During the planning stages, occasionally – but once I’ve started a new project, I’m so engrossed in the research or characters that I’m itching to get going every morning. And honestly, with three children aged three and under, I can’t afford writer’s block. My time is limited, but rather than finding the pram in the hall to be an impediment to creativity, I’ve found a freedom within the boundaries. I have to be ‘on’, creative, buzzing and productive during my writing hours – there’s no time to procrastinate. Coffee and 80% cocoa solids chocolate also help.

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

I used to feel torn between wanting to write all the time and feeling as though I was missing out – as though I should really be out playing in the sunshine or seeing family and friends. But then I read a quote by the comedian Frank Skinner who said: ‘It’s hard to achieve something truly wondrous unless you’re prepared to sit alone in a room for hours on end.’ So the solitary part of writing is necessary and I embrace it rather than apologising for it.

I also love the Peter Ustinov quote: ‘Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious’. I live by this.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Enjoy getting older – I’m far bolder and more confident in my prose now than I was in my 20s.

Don’t be scared by the sheer volume of what ‘a book’ looks like when you’re grappling with a 100,000 word document – tackle it a chapter at a time and you’ll get there.

And only do it if you love it – because it isn’t an easy option. It’s an unusual lifestyle and a lot of work. I sweat when I write – it becomes a physical thing, acting out dialogue and blocking movement. You have to live it.

Helen Russell is a British journalist, author and speaker. Helen has previously worked for The Sunday Times, Take a Break, Top Sante and on new launches for Tatler Asia, Grazia India and Sky. She joined Marie Claire as editor of marieclaire.co.uk in 2010 and was BSME-shortlisted in 2011 and 2012. Helen now writes for magazines and newspapers around the world, including Stylist, The Times, Grazia, Metro, and The Wall Street Journal. Helen is a columnist for The Telegraph, a correspondent for The Guardian and her first book, The Year of Living Danishly, is now a bestseller. She is also the author of Leap Year and Gone Viking.

Joe Fassler

How did you become a writer?

I’ve been interested in books for as long as I can remember—my parents are both historians and I grew up surrounded by them, with bookcases crammed floor to ceiling wherever we lived. Maybe because of my parents’ focus on the past, and maybe because my English classes tended to focus on long-dead writers from the literary canon, it didn’t really occur to me that writing was something you could do—present tense—as a vocation and a career, in the here and now.

I didn’t really figure that out until a teacher of mine suggested I apply to the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, a summer camp staffed by MFA students at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, when I was 15. We wrote and workshopped all day and went to readings at night, and it was the first time I ever interacted with working writers in their natural habitat. This was a revelation: You could devote your life to the literary project and, if you were lucky, even make a career of it. I went home knowing that I’d found my people, and it’s what I’ve wanted to do ever since.

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

I’m lucky in that The Atlantic lets me run a column where I ask writers to share the books that have inspired them above all else—it’s called “By Heart,” and it’s the basis for the collection I just edited, Light the Dark. I’ve talked to many of my favorite writers over the years, who have in turn introduced me to now-favorite books I might not have otherwise read.

Along the way, they’ve taught me so much about process, too—not just craft, but strategies for sticking with a challenging creative endeavor over the long haul. I rarely have a writing session where I don’t think back to some piece advice I’ve picked up from Light the Dark. Sometimes it’s a craft thing, but often it’s more simple and elemental—the many ways writers convince themselves to keep going, trick themselves into never giving up.

When and where do you write? 

For now, I’m a journalist by trade, so I spend all day every day writing or editing something or other. But I can really only write fiction—my first and most enduring love—during the early morning, or very late at night.

For some reason, there’s a quietness of mind that I access best when everyone else is sleeping, when emails slow to a trickle, when the world somehow seems to turn a little more slowly. In Light the Dark, Andre Dubus says that writing fiction is closer to dreaming than thinking, and there’s something to that for me. I’m better able to suspend my own skepticism, and follow the work to new and surprising places, when I can cut shut off my more critical, intellectual instincts—something that seems to be easiest in the small hours.

What are you working on now? 

I’ve been working on a first novel since 2012 that I think I’ll finally finish this year (fingers crossed). But other projects keep me busy, too: my Atlantic column, writing essays and journalism, and writing dance music with House of Feelings, a collaboration with my longtime creative partner, Matty Fasano. Music is spontaneous and collaborative and public, and it makes a wonderful break from the private world of fiction.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Yes, terribly. I don’t so much with short fiction, where you can always find a way to push through on sheer energy, or with essays and journalism, where you can always fall back onto the stone cold facts of the case. For me, nonfiction is just so much easier to write, even when the subject is difficult. For better for worse, you are limited to what happened and that’s an incredibly freeing constraint.

In writing my novel, I’ve often felt stunned by the sheer number of possibilities. You can find infinite ways to tell a long story, and it’s hard to know what will work without trying a million different things. I tend to get blocked when I start looking for a shortcut, a way to just write the scene the right way right now and move on. That’s when I start overthinking the possibilities instead of just jumping in headfirst, and that’s when I get stuck.

Most of the writers I’ve interviewed seem to have learned a simple way around this, an approach I try live by as often as I can bear it: Write now, ask questions later. You can always revise. But you can’t improve material you’ve not yet written.

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

It’s a little hard to say, as I spend so much of my time trying to get writers to tell me as much as they’re willing about how they work, and what they’ve learned about what works well. Light the Dark is filled with craft and productivity advice mined directly from the lives of working writers, and it would be hard for me to choose just one. But one thing I’ve noticed across my conversations, and which has worked for me, is this: the writers who publish are the writers who write. Above all else—above ambition, above talent, above vision—you have to show up. If you’re not finding the time to work, the work won’t get done.

Some people write three times a year at residencies, and that’s enough for them. I’m a big believer in setting aside time—whatever you can spare each day, it might just be half an hour—and keeping it sacred five days a week. The magic starts to happen when you make it habit, and it’s amazing what you can get done when you make consistent time.

What’s your advice to new writers?

This could be irresponsible, but I would say: Lighten up. I wish I hadn’t taken myself so terribly seriously in my late teens and twenties. I spent a lot of time forcing myself to write when I still didn’t have much to say, time I could have spent exploring. But most people don’t publish in their twenties, and those who do often come to wish they hadn’t. I wish I hadn’t put so much pressure on myself, especially because I had no idea what I was doing.

Success in writing—thank god—does not depend on youthful appeal, at least to the extent some of the other arts do. You have time. So instead of worrying about writing something great, take weird jobs. Meet interesting people. Stay out late. Get up early. Volunteer. Organize. Travel. Learn about the world and your place in it. Work and hang out where here are other artists, and read as widely as you can. These are the experiences that will sustain you through a lifetime of creative work—the moments you’ll rely on as you sift through memories and reach for precise details.

By all means, write, but don’t do it at the expense of living. Because when the time comes to get serious, you’ll find that writing tends to happen at the expense of everything else.

Joe Fassler is editor of Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he regularly interviews authors for The Atlantic’s “By Heart” series, and his fiction has appeared in magazines like The Boston Review and Electric Literature.

Meg Elison

How did you become a writer?

I knew I was meant to be a writer because I couldn't stop. I wrote stories on a notepad I kept in my apron at my lousy minimum wage job. I wrote stories in my letters to friends and in my diaries. I sometimes catch myself editing my dreams as sleep begins to fade. I became one for real when I began to apply form and discipline to the work, which I did first through journalism. I wrote my first book filled with white-hot rage, and got it published through luck and openness to fate. It all sounds like magic now, but it was mostly grind. That still applies to the work, every day. 

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

I was influenced by the writers who found an angle of stories nobody had looked at before: Margaret Atwood, P.D. James, Octavia Butler. They helped me realize that although there are no new stories to tell, there are sides of stories that are a lot less well-worn than others. 

When and where do you write?

I write in the morning, always. I come to it new and without disappointment that way. I also write when the mood strikes me, because that is not a thing that should be denied. The instinct is strong and direct and I respect it. 

What are you working on now?

I'm working on book three in my Road to Nowhere series, as well as my first horror novel. I am always at work on short stories and essays.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I don't believe in writer's block. Free people make art. If you're not making art, something in your life is keeping you from being free. Find it, excise it, and you will write again. 

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

It's a ubiquitous piece of advice, but I took to heart the idea that I must write the books I most want to read. It has served me beautifully. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read books you hate. Nothing pushes you more strongly in the direction of your own voice as knowing precisely what you are not. 

Meg Elison is a science fiction author and feminist essayist. Her debut novel, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award. She has been published in McSweeney’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Catapult, and many other places. Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley. Find her online, where she writes like she’s running out of time. megelison.com @megelison.