Elizabeth Day

How did you become a writer?

Years of practise.

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

My UK editor, Helen Garnons-Williams is an incredible mentor and dear friend. I value her opinion above all. I started out as a journalist and learned a lot about how to write clear, concise and lyrical copy from Dominic Lawson, who was then editor of The Sunday Telegraph. I read other authors voraciously and have learned a lot from them, namely Elizabeth Jane Howard, Anne Tyler, Rosamond Lehman, Tom Wolfe, Edward St Aubyn, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Patricia Highsmith, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Patrick Hamilton and R. C. Sheriff. 

When and where do you write? 

Anywhere and any time. I don't have a strict schedule. I'm also a working journalist so am often juggling several different deadlines at once. I tend to write journalism at my desk and then decamp to a nearby cafe for fiction. I like being around the murmur of other people. Writing can be an isolating profession and sometimes it's good to remember how people actually talk to each other! I also love writing on long train journeys and generally, at the beginning and end of each novel, I'll take myself off to an Airbnb or a friend's house for a few weeks to be able to concentrate fully on the task in hand.

What are you working on now?

I'm ghosting a memoir and mulling over ideas for novel number five.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

No, but I have written several thousand words of something only to discard them and realise they don't reflect the book I want to write. That's happened to me twice - the first time I ditched 40,000 words; the second it was 20,000. Sometimes you need to strip things back to be able to see clearly.

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

Take the adjective out and see how the sentence works without it. That came courtesy of my friend Sebastian Faulks.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Just do it. Writing is as much of a craft as an art, and the most important thing when you're starting out is to get words on a page. You can always go back and edit them, but they need to exist for you to call yourself a writer. Also, don't worry too much about having to write in a unique way: your story and your set of experiences are what make you unique. No-one else will think quite like you do. That's your power.

Elizabeth Day is an award-winning author and journalist. Her critically-acclaimed fourth novel, The Party is out now, published by 4th Estate in the UK, Little Brown in America, Belfond in France and Dumont in Germany. The New York Times called it, “a smart, irresistible romp” and it was an Observer and Irish Times ‘Book of the Year’.

Her debut novel Scissors, Paper, Stone won a Betty Trask Award. Her follow-up, Home Fires was an Observer Book of the Year. Her third, Paradise City was named one of the best novels of 2015 in the Observer, Paste Magazine and the Evening Standard, and was People magazine's Book of the Week.

She is a feature writer for numerous publications in the UK and US including The Telegraph, The Times, the Guardian, the Observer, Vogue, Grazia, the Radio Times, Elle, Marie Claire, Glamour, InStyle, the Lonely Planet Magazine, The Pool and Cosmopolitan. She is a contributing editor for Harper's Bazaar. A versatile and wide-ranging writer, her work incorporates everything from celebrity interviews to crime reportage.

Elizabeth grew up in Northern Ireland and her first job was for The Derry Journal. Since then, she has worked for The Evening Standard, The Sunday Telegraph, The Mail on Sunday and the Observer where she was staff feature writer for eight years. She won a British Press Award in 2004 for Young Journalist of the Year and was Highly Commended as Feature Writer of the Year in 2013. She is the co-founder of Pin Drop, a live performance short story studio, and a regular contributor to Sky News and BBC Radio 4.

James Curtis

How did you become a writer?

Just happenstance. I was in college and got interested in the work of a rather mysterious film director named James Whale. Intrigued, and having nothing better to do, I wrote a few letters and started getting responses. This led me to Whale's longtime companion, a producer with a reputation for working with writers. He encouraged me to put the story down on paper, although I had absolutely no background in writing. The result wasn't good, but it was eventually published, and I decided to try another, which turned out a bit better. But I never took it seriously in terms of a career, and went on to work in business. It was something I only did on the side until about 15 years ago, when I began doing it full time.    

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

My first editor, the late Marcia Magill at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, did a line edit on my second book that was a revelation to me. I still have those pages and whenever I grapple with draft content, I think of the things I learned from that experience.    

In terms of writers, Gene Fowler, who really popularized biography in the 1930s and 40s, was an early influence, as was Kevin Brownlow, who rescued the silent film era from incorrect projection speeds and tinkling pianos. He saw the romance of it all back when no one else did. Generally speaking, I have always responded to strong stylists like Raymond Chandler and Kurt Vonnegut. In terms of books, I never read one on how to write, but I devoured the nuts 'n' bolts interviews in the Paris Review collections. Currently, I have John McPhee's "Draft No. 4" on my nightstand, but I haven't gotten to it yet.    

When and where do you write? 

I have a home office and an old desk I keep thinking I should replace. As to when, I'd like to be able to say I have set hours, but I can't. When I have a deadline to meet, as I do now, I tend to work seven days a week.  

What are you working on now?

A biography of Buster Keaton for Knopf.  

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No. Subject's block, yes. But not writer's block. 

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

From Mark Twain: "When you catch an adjective, kill it.” No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart." And from John McPhee: "Creative non-fiction is not making something up, but making the most of what you have."   

What’s your advice to new writers?

Persist. You'll only get better by continuing to work at it. There's never a time when you're good enough to slack off.  

James Curtis spent twenty-five years as a senior executive in the insurance and computer industries before turning full time to writing. His latest book, Last Man Standing: Mort Sahl and the Birth of Modern Comedy was published in May. He is also the author of William Cameron Menzies: The Shape of Films to Come; Spencer Tracy: A Biography; W. C. Fields: A Biography (winner of the 2004 Theatre Library Association Award, Special Jury Prize); James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters; and Between Flops: A Biography of Preston Sturges. Born in Los Angeles, he and his wife are longtime residents of Brea, California.

Tova Mirvis

How did you become a writer?

I first wanted to become a writer because I loved to read - I was one of the kids always buried in a book. And then, as I got older, I found that writing was the way I could understand the world, the way I could ask hard questions and think about different ways to be. I grew up in a religious world where I always had the sense that many things were being left unsaid, and writing became a way to say those things.

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

I have had the gift of several teachers who have influenced me. In high school I had an English teacher - a poet with a renegade spirit who was marvelously out of place in my strict Orthodox Jewish high school - who first opened me to the possibility of writing. In college, I had the privilege to study with Mary Gordon, a brilliant writer and extremely generous teacher who first made me believe in the possibility of my becoming a writer.

When and where do you write?

I write during the day when my kids are in school. I try to sit for long stretches even when I don’t feel like it. I write different places depending on my mood - often in bed, sometimes in coffee shops, always with my headphones in to block out any noise.

What are you working on now?

I am just about to start a new novel, and though I’ve written four book, I still feel a sense of immense fear that I don’t know how to do this. Right now I am trying to slowly sneak up on the novel, making notes, doing some reading, letting myself think about what I want to write about before actually diving in.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Oh, all the time. I feel like its just part of the process for me - a back and forth between motion and stillness, between ease and frustration. I know all too well how maddening it can be, to feel used up or hollowed out; to feel like I have run into a wall. And then sometimes, that feeling of being empty or stuck gives way and  opens the path to the next breakthrough.

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

Mary Gordon once said to me (when I was talking about not having enough time to write), “If you are a writer then you write.” I have never forgotten this straightforward and crucial piece of advice. I have learned the importance of sitting myself down, of putting in the hours.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Revise even when you think you are done. I know how strong that urge is to just be done with something - to send it out, to declare it finished. But don’t let that urge blind you to the need to go slow, to go back, to write it again. Be relentless with yourself when it comes to revision, with pushing yourself as hard as you can to take each sentence closer and closer to the truth.

Tova Mirvis is the author of the memoir The Book of Separation, which was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. She has also written three novels, Visible City, The Outside World, and The Ladies Auxiliary, which was a national bestseller. Her essays have  appeared in various publications including The New York Times,The Boston Globe Magazine, The Washington Post, and Psychology Today, and her fiction has been broadcast on National Public Radio.