David Madden

How did you become a writer?

Unclear what “how” means, but about when? From age 3, I told stories, orally. I started writing stories based on movies when I was in the 5th grade; also poetry, pretty soon by the 7th grade radio dramas, biography of Chopin. Foot high stack of writings before I ever read a book. First one was GOD’S LITTLE ACRE by Erskine Caldwell. 

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

No teachers until 11th grade when a university professor commented on a stack of my stories, teaching me more in one session than I was to learn later. Writers: Erskine Caldwell, Thomas Wolfe, James Joyce, Hemingway. 

When and where do you write? 

Anytime, anywhere. 

What are you working on now? 

At age 85, having published 60 books, I am finishing My Creative Life in the Army, Autobiography of My Mother [her pov], An Activist In the Ivory Tower [essays], Revising Nonfiction [I created the term “creative nonfiction”], novels: The Killing Dream, The Wreckage of Dreams, etc.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

See #4. Obviously not. Mastery of the craft of fiction enables me always to be able to write and/or revise on any given day. (See my legendary book Revising Fiction)

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

Imagine the most effective words = style. In the beginning was the word.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read as a writer, write as an artist, eschew subjectivity.

Born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1933, David Madden graduated from U-Tenn., served in the Army, earned an M.A. at San Francisco State, and attended Yale Drama School on a John Golden Fellowship. Writer-in-residence at LSU from 1968 to 1992, Director of the Creative Writing Program 1992-1994, Founding Director of the United States Civil War Center 1992-1999, he is now LSU Robert Penn Warren Professor of Creative Writing., Emeritus, living in Black Mountain, NC.

In l961, Random House published his first novel, The Beautiful Greed, based on his Merchant seaman experiences. For Warner Brothers, he adapted his second novel, Cassandra Singing, to the screen (not yet produced). The Shadow Knows, a book of stories, won a National Council on the Arts Award, judged by Hortense Calisher and Walker Percy. His second collection, The New Orleans of Possibilities, appeared in 1982. His stories have been reprinted in numerous college textbooks and twice in Best American Short Stories. A Rockefeller Grant, recommended by Robert Penn Warren and Saul Bellow, enabled him to work in Venice and Yugoslavia on his third novel, Bijou, a 1974 Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection. His best-known novel, The Suicide's Wife, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and made into a CBS movie. Pleasure-Dome, On the Big Wind, Sharpshooter: A Novel of the Civil War, Abducted by Circumstance, and London Bridge in Plague and Fire are his most recent novels. His third book of stories, The Last Bizarre Tale, appeared in August of 2014. 

His poems and short stories have appeared in a wide variety of publications, from Redbook and Playboy to The Southern Review and Botteghe Oscure. His plays have won many state and national contests. The Tangled Web of the Civil War and Reconstruction {essays] appeared in 2015. 

He has given lectures at many conferences and dramatic readings from his fiction at over 200 colleges and universities. David Madden: A Writer for All Genres consists of original essays by scholars and creative writers on Madden’s writings.

David Cay Johnston

How did you become a writer? 

I won so many speech contests that the old County News in Aptos, Calif., a weekly, asked me to write a column about my high school. After a few columns they had me write a feature -- 400 words that took me six hours for which I got 20-cents an inch ($1.50 in today's money). Then they asked me to cover the school board, followed by the Santa Cruz city council and the county supervisors. At 18, the San Jose Mercury recruited me. I was hired for the next staff writer opening, when I was 19. Within a few weeks my byline was on The Mercury front page.

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

Boyd Haight, John Howe and Fred Westphal, Mercury editors, taught me to not speak about a story until I had written the lede so the insight was not lost, to use active verbs, that clarity matters most and when you have time use it to polish, polish and polish.

Thomas E. Wark of The New York Times, whom I wrote for starting at age 22 as a stringer, taught me to be both lean and fact rich by insisting a piece come in at a precise length, say 282 words. 

Ladd Neumann of the Detroit Free Press taught me structure, the hardest skill to learn.

Jonathan Miller, an airline magazine editor, taught me to loosen up and think about imagery.

Norman Mailer, who wrote about me in The Executioner's Song, taught me that accuracy does not equal truth, which must be distilled from the specific facts, though in investigative reporting strict fidelity to facts is required. 

They and many others, all now long gone. to whom I am indebted all taught me to focus on doing my best — including doing better on each new tomorrow. That they are all men illustrates newsroom hiring bias.

And my many students — when I taught news writing at the University of Southern California and magazine writing at UCLA Extension in the 80s — forced me to learn how to articulate the reasons underlying edits.

When and where do you write?

Mostly I write in my home office with a view of my gardens or, when the weather allows, at a table in my garden. But I can write anywhere if I must. 

Between ages 27 to 35, when I did many long L.A. Times pieces (up to 7,000 words) I first wrote long hand on a legal pad, then on a keyboard, after which I would print out the draft, reading it over and over and over until the words became nonsense. Eventually clarity and sharp focus would reveal burrs — the wrong verb, a misplaced dependent clause, too many words separating two concepts. 

What are you working on now? 

I have several long magazine investigative assignments, but I am also finishing my book proposing a whole new federal tax system for the 21st Century economy while building files for three other planned books.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Only when I took a project because of the money rather than a desire to tell the story. With two exceptions I never finished any project I took on just for the money. 

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

Tell readers what they don't know that matters and do the work to make the unknown and complex clear and easy for readers to understand.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read relentlessly to learn how to write. 

Learn bylines (books, magazines, newspapers) so you don't waste your time on bad writers.

When a writer transports you from one place or idea to another, review how the writer made that seamless transition — and the reasons the transition made sense — so you can do the same. 

Write with verbs and nouns. Use adverbs and adjectives sparingly. 

Listen to what people tell you, not what you want to hear. Always ask, “is there anything you wish I had asked you?” and then sit silently.

Be generous with people’s spoken comments. Writers get to polish our words so be kind, fair — and fearless.

Remember that numbers acquire meaning only in relation to other numbers. Overcome innumeracy.

Long stories need an arc. The end should loop back to the start.

Get a compact Oxford English Dictionary (and buy dictionaries of all kinds all your life) to study the changing meaning of words. 

Learn to take editing. Your best friends are editors who make you look better than you deserve. Seek them out and honor them always. Avoid bad editors like death itself.

Learn the rules of writing (Strunk & White, etc.) until you have mastered them. Then you can then violate those rules and maybe even forge new ones. 

And study the movie Finding Forrester, watching it repeatedly until you appreciate every subtlety, especially about “soup questions,” conjunctions, the unobservant and the quiet nobility of the human spirit.  

David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and author of seven books, four of them New York Times bestsellers. In 1968, at age 19, became the youngest staff writer at the San Jose Mercury, going on to report for the Detroit Free Press, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times, which he left in 2008.  

Johnston is a former president of Investigative Reporters & Editors, has lectured on journalistic techniques, ethics and tax policy on every continent except Antarctica and for eight years taught the  law of the ancient world at Syracuse University College of Law. He earned enough college credits for one, and perhaps two, masters degrees, but does not hold any degree because he skipped most lower division requirements.

Johnston is the father of eight grown children. He lives in Rochester, New York, with his wife Jennifer Leonard, the CEO of the Rochester Area Community Foundation.

Matt Young

How did you become a writer?

I wrote in high school a bit—bad short stories about misunderstood teens and worse news articles for my school’s literary magazine about why marijuana should be legalized. I didn’t write at all for most of my time in the Marines aside from patrol orders and class notes. I didn’t start taking writing seriously until a few years ago—2011 or 12. I got a lot of encouragement from professors and had a story or two accepted to literary magazines and those things kept me coming back to the chair.

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

Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad is the book that made me want to write. Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior was a book that helped me understand early on what creative nonfiction could do. Neil Davison was the professor at Oregon State University who told me I should switch my major from fisheries and wildlife science and study English.

When and where do you write?

Recently, I’ve been writing at night from 9 pm to midnight or so. The house is quiet because my wife goes to bed early. I sit at the desk in our loft and warm up writing longhand in a small journal and then transfer whatever I like to the computer. I usually go back and forth between long hand and computer while I’m writing a few times during a session.

What are you working on now?

I feel like it’s bad luck to say.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I’ve gone long spans of time not writing, but I don’t know that I’d call those times blocks. Sometimes it takes me a while to work through a problem in a story or essay and it just needs some time. Those things are frustrating as all hell, but I think natural to the process and I never really feel blocked. Though, now I’ll probably end up with a block. Who knew I was so superstitious?

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

Read more.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read work outside your preferred genre. Whenever I teach an intro to creative writing course most of my students just want to stay in their lane. If they read science fiction or poetry or literary fiction or nonfiction or whatever they want to just read in that genre. That’s BS and it doesn’t help them become better writers. It can be helpful to read within the genre you’re writing to understand the conventions of the form, but ultimately it’s limiting. Reading widely will open you to influences and concepts you might not realize in such a narrow space.

Matt Young holds an MA in Creative Writing from Miami University and is the recipient of fellowships with Words After War and the Carey Institute for Global Good. His work can be found in Granta, Catapult, Tin House, Word Riot, and elsewhere. He is the author of Eat the Apple, and lives in Olympia, Washington, where he teaches writing.