Sam Graham-Felsen

How did you become a writer?

I always wanted to write but I became a fiction writer by process of elimination. I tried being a journalist, a political writer (blogger for Obama), a marketing writer — but none of those careers felt quite right to me. I didn’t like being held down by rules or message discipline. Once I started writing fiction, in my early thirties, I immediately felt this surge of freedom and excitement and I knew it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. 

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

I had the privilege of studying fiction under a lot of great writers at the Columbia MFA program including Sam Lipsyte, who showed me how much fun I could have playing around with the music and meaning(s) of words. I also took a seminar with Richard Ford, who raised my ambitions as a writer and showed me what it looked like to take writing dead seriously as a calling, not just a career. 

No writer’s work has had more of an impact on me than Philip Roth — the way he alternates between total silliness and utter seriousness has made a huge impression on me. Also his fearlessness and willingness to go to the most humiliating places. 

Huck Finn is my favorite book of all time and had a huge influence on GREEN, specifically my decision to have a young narrator who speaks in an American vernacular voice. 

Other writers who’ve had a big influence on my work: Ralph Ellison, Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Thoreau, Alice Munro, Paul Beatty, George Saunders, Zadie Smith, David Grossman, and Homer. 

When and where do you write? 

I go to a shared office space and sit in a boring cubicle. The more boring the space, the better. I used to obsessively fantasize about the perfect writing space — a shack next to a pond, a house on a cliff overlooking the ocean with a vast window, etc. But if you’ve got a good view, you’re gonna be looking at the breathtaking vista instead of the page. Much better to face a wall. 

I get into my office around 9:30 AM and leave at 1:30 PM and spend the rest of the day taking care of my young son until my wife gets home. 

What are you working on now?  

I’m mapping out a new novel in my head. Haven’t started writing it yet. To me, writing isn’t hard at all compared to thinking. Coming up with good characters, good plot, good themes, to me, is a lot more challenging than coming up with good sentences (though writing good sentences is damn hard too!). 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Yes but now I prefer to not think of it that way. It’s like Voldemort — better not to say its name. I used to spend long stretches of time agonizing and trying to make something that wasn’t working work. Now, if I’m feeling stuck, I’ve learned to just move on and try something else. 

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

“Be regular and ordinary in your life, like a bourgeois, so you can be violent and original in your work.” Flaubert said that.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Don’t worry about getting published. Worry about writing something you’re proud of. Publishing is something of a crap shoot. I know a lot of unbelievable writers who haven’t been published and may never get published. But they are still unbelievable writers creating amazing stuff and that’s what matters most. Getting published is out of your control. But writing is in your control. Write and write and write and eventually you’ll have a story or novel. Then revise and revise and revise and it’ll be a better story or novel. Keep revising until you can’t possibly revise a single word in a single sentence and you’re done. You can and must be proud of finishing a work of fiction — something many people aspire to do and don’t end up actually doing. 

More advice: 

1. Sit down, be humble. Stay curious and open and learn constantly. 

2. Don’t try to be the fastest. 

3. You will want to quit. You can’t quit. Stay. 

Sam Graham-Felsen is the author of the novel Green, out now from Random House. He was Barack Obama’s chief blogger on the 2008 campaign, and has written essays and journalism for the New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Washington Post and elsewhere.

Steven Beschloss

How did you become a writer?

Back in high school, I already had an idea. I had a history teacher who said I had “a knack” for writing, which kind of got me going. The next year I became editor-in-chief of my high school paper, but then had nothing to do with journalism during college. My college was a place where we only read primary source books: Marx, Freud, Hegel, Kirkegaard, Sartre, Plato, that sort of thing. I loved exploring ideas and the works of great thinkers, even if I didn’t see many models of great writing. I wasn’t trying to “be” a writer: I was more focused on making sense of a world that wasn’t making a lot of sense.

But eventually I realized if I wanted to continue exploring ideas and how people live—and make a living—I better get some training and start writing, every day. After getting a graduate degree from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism and writing dozens and dozens of stories, some of which were published in newspapers, I started on a path of writing full-time for newspapers and magazines. The way I saw it, it took about seven years of writing professionally before I began to believe this was real—that I wasn’t going to have to quit and get a regular job, that I really can tell stories and pay my bills. 

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

I loved big biographies like Carl Sandburg’s series of books on Lincoln and social commentary like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me. Early on, my mind was opened up by absurdist writers like Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Franz Kafka. I also loved the engaging style and humanity of J.D. Sallinger and, later, stylists and explorers of the human experience like Milan Kundera, Don DeLillo, Martin Amis and Sigmund Freud. Joan Didion’s carefully observed and gracefully written essays/stories have been important, as have deeply researched and beautifully crafted narrative non-fiction works by Erik Larsen and Hampton Sides.

When and where do you write? 

Almost every day in my office with a window, preferably beginning early in the morning when my mind is fresh, uncorrupted by the day’s distractions.

What are you working on now? 

I’m currently working on three non-fiction books. One is a fairly big book about American character, largely told through historical sketches and contemporary stories of remarkable Americans who represent the best of us, some famous, most not. The second, smaller book focuses on a single day in the year 1909, a project that’s taken shape by chance, after I bought a copy of The New York Times from that day. The third is a love story and crime story, based on an airplane hijacking in the 1970s. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

If your family’s survival depends on it, you just keep going, even during those days, weeks or months when the spirit is not moving you. At least that’s how it’s been for me.

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

Two thoughts: Historian David McCullough has said, “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly.” So a lot depends on your work before you hit the keyboard. I’ve also benefited from the writing process of Hemingway, who said to “always stop when you know what is going to happen next.” That way you have momentum the next day when you pick it up.

What’s your advice to new writers?

The difference between writers and people who talk about being writers is this: Writers write, a lot. As long as you’re curious, hard-working and continue developing your craft, you can keep getting better for a lifetime. If you’re genuinely passionate about writing, don’t give up.

Steven Beschloss is an award-winning writer, journalist, and filmmaker. He is the author of The Gunman and His Mother: Lee Harvey Oswald, Marguerite Oswald and The Making of an Assassin, a bestselling Amazon Kindle Single, and co-author of Adrift: Charting Our Course Back to a Great Nation. His writing on international and urban affairs, politics, economics, art, culture, and history—from the US and overseas—has been published by The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New Republic, Smithsonian, Parade, National Geographic Traveler, The Economist and its Economist Intelligence Unit, and dozens of other print and online outlets. His film work as writer and producer includes “Paris,” a noir love story, and “The Miracle,” a fictional documentary shot in St. Petersburg, Russia, about a TV journalist who goes to Russia with the impossible assignment of filming a miracle. You can follow him on twitter at @stevenbeschloss or check out his website, www.stevenbeschloss.com.

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.