Isaac Marion

How did you become a writer?

I don't know if I ever really "became" one. I've been writing stories since I was a little kid, they just gradually got more ambitious and—I hope—a little better written.

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

I've never been good at pinpointing specific influences for my writing. It just distilled from a mixture of everything I've absorbed over the years and I have a hard time defining a hierarchy. There are a handful of authors I could name that were significant to me at some point in my life but my tastes and interests are always on the move so I can't really stand behind anything I liked more than a few years ago, and I think people are too eager to latch onto "influences" as short-hand for "this is what I do." I could list Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy, Charlie Kauffman, and so on, but my writing isn't really anything like theirs, so...I don't know if it's helpful!

When and where do you write? 

Since I started writing full time I've done most of it in coffee shops, first thing in the morning. I like being able to leave the house and "go to the office," it helps establish some kind of structure for my day, and I feel like the ambient human energy in the air does something for the writing. The downside of this is the high potential for distraction—like when an annoying guy sits at the table next to me and starts humming and dancing in his chair or doing a Skype call at full volume, etc. I have been trying to wean myself off of the coffee shop setting because it would be very convenient and clean to write from home, but so far it just hasn't clicked in my brain.

What are you working on now? 

I just finished editing another draft of THE LIVING, which is the final book in the Warm Bodies Series. There will be more editing to do on that one, but when that's done, it will finally be time to leave that series behind and start a whole new era of writing, which is daunting but thrilling. I have been circling a story that I wrote in a primitive form a long time ago, about an alternate reality that people access via dreams and the alternate selves that live there. We'll see.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Yeah, it happens. Ideas are ephemeral things that emerge from a complex alchemy of experience and you can't force them into existence when they aren't ready. So I've had terrifying moments when I just don't know where to find the story. But it usually just takes a few long drives and sweaty night jogs to reopen the valve.

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

The only bit I can think of is a surprisingly practical one from Hemingway, something about always trying to end your writing session on an "easy" part so that you have something welcoming to jump back into for your next session. Until I heard that, I had always tried to just keep writing until I got stuck and couldn't continue, but that means every writing session is going to start with an obstacle. I learned that leaving something juicy for tomorrow makes it much easier to plunge back into the flow.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Don't treat your writing like a product. Don't do market research to find out what genre is hot right now. Don't tailor your writing to fit a trend or to please a particular audience. Doing these things will make you a successful writer who sells lots of copies. Most writers are trying to do these things. Please don't do these things. My advice may not be entirely in your interests. I may have other motives, like when an ecologist advises you not to dump your garbage in the river even though it's easier than recycling. If your goal is to write to a formula in order to satisfy the mainstream market and keep the shelves of department stores stocked, my advice will not sway you, but I will say it anyway. Please don't write to appease others. Not the market, not a demographic, and not your family. Write the story that fascinates you in the way that electrifies you, and ignore everything else.

Bio: I wrote the Warm Bodies Series. The first book was adapted into a movie and was a big deal for a minute. I continued the story in three more books, the last of which is called THE LIVING and will be released soon, after which I will never speak of zombies again. I live in Seattle with my cat Watson and play a weird synth thing in the band Thing Quartet.

Nina Allan

How did you become a writer? 

The short answer is, I don’t know! I began writing my own stories and poems more or less as soon as I could read, and never really stopped. Writing things down came naturally to me as a way of recording my experiences, feelings and thoughts – a way of confirming to myself that something had actually happened. I took my writing for granted in a way, as an internal extension of my exterior self, which might be part of the reason it took me a relatively long time to begin my career as a writer. My first published story appeared in 2002, in a UK fantasy magazine called Dark Horizons. 

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

Always other writers. Older writers – often dead writers – who set out on this path long before me, the real trailblazers. As I began to attain maturity as a reader, the Brontë sisters and their works became increasingly important to me as examples of what the power of the imagination could achieve. A little later I became obsessed with the novels of John Wyndham and Iris Murdoch. I wrote my Masters thesis on the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov, whose work perhaps remains the ultimate demonstration of what can be accomplished by words on a page. In terms of books aboutwriting, there are two that stand out for me. Firstly, John Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist, which I discovered almost by accident soon after I began writing for publication, and Stephen King’s On Writing, which I recommend to everyone even remotely interested in writing, or simply as a reading experience. Both these guys take very different approaches – sure proof that in writing there really are no rules – but what unites them is their passion, the seriousness with which they approach their subject matter. For Gardner as for King, writing is not just a craft or even an art, it is a vocation. It is this sense of commitment, more than anything, that sets the seal on whether someone will ultimately succeed in their desire to write.  

When and where do you write?

I write every day, unless I’m travelling. I am one of those writers who thrives on routine, so you’ll normally find me at my desk, in my office, looking out on the Firth of Clyde and progressing at a slower pace than I would ideally like. 

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a new novel, set here in Scotland, on the Isle of Bute. A photographer returns to her childhood home to confront the truth of what happened to her best friend, who was murdered. It starts out reading like a murder mystery but becomes increasingly weird the further you get into it. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I don’t normally find trouble in writing or even in finding ideas – there are always too many ideas to choose from, which can be a problem in itself. My own peculiar version of writer’s block is changing my mind about a project half way through. The book I plan to write is never the book I end up writing, which inevitably means I end up scrapping a lot of material. I had already written 60,000 words of draft for my 2017 novel The Rift before I realised I had started in the wrong place – I trashed everything and began again. It sounds frustrating, terrifying even, but I have learned to accept this process of revisionism as a normal part of my working process. And no writing is ever wasted – even the stuff you throw away is stuff you have learned from. 

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

‘Write a proper second draft’. This piece of advice was given to me by my partner, Christopher Priest, soon after we met. He described his own method to me, which was to print out his first draft, then begin typing it out again, from the beginning, making necessary changes as he went. It sounded like hell to me and I privately swore I’d keep to my own method, which was to edit on the page, going over and over the draft as it existed until it felt right. Several months later I was having problems with a short story, and so I decided to give Chris’s method a try, experimenting with just the first page. The results were so instantaneous, and so dramatic, that I switched over to his method immediately and never looked back. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

The only piece of advice I feel confident in giving – because I know it is essential – is to read, read, read above your level. It is tempting to keep looking over your shoulder at what your coevals are up to, but ultimately the only way to learn and to progress and to put fire in your belly is to read works by writers who are above and beyond you, so far ahead of you that you feel you’ll never be able to achieve what they have achieved. Discover your own literary heroes, your own personal canon. Set the bar high, and remember, there are no rules. 

Nina Allan was born in East London. She studied German and Russian at Exeter University and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where she completed an MLitt and monograph on madness, death and disease in the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov. With her short fiction appearing in many magazines and anthologies, Nina’s story collection THE SILVER WIND, a meditation on time, memory and the nature of reality was awarded the Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire (France) in 2014. Her debut novel THE RACE, set in an alternate Britain and dealing with themes of identity and loss, was shortlisted for the Kitschies Red Tentacle and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2015. She also won The Novella Award for THE HARLEQUIN. THE RIFT, a tale of two sisters separated as teenagers and reunited in mysterious circumstances twenty years later, was published in July 2017 by Titan Books and won the British Science Fiction Award and The Kitschies Red Tentacle. Nina lives and works on the Isle of Bute, together with her partner the writer Christopher Priest. Nina's new novel, THE DOLLMAKER, will be published in spring 2019 by riverrun (UK) and Other Press (US).

Henry Hitchings

How did you become a writer?

I started writing at an early age. As an only child I needed to be good at amusing myself; I was always drawing and scribbling, as well as reading, and gradually the scribbling became more coherent. First there were illustrated stories, then poems (often rather earnest) and playlets (often quite mischievous). My parents were encouraging, and I never imagined a life without writing - although by the time I was in my teens and thinking seriously about my future I was enough of a realist to recognize that I had to have a Plan B. The Plan B ended up being to pursue an academic career, but that fizzled out while I was getting my PhD, an experience that extinguished my illusions about the pleasures of the scholar’s life. 

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

I think influence happens mainly by osmosis. I can’t point to a person or a particular work and say “This was my great inspiration”, but my ideas about what constitutes good writing have been shaped by just about every book I’ve read. Sometimes, of course, I’m reacting against a book rather than admiring it, but that’s a powerful thing. 

When and where do you write? 

At home, often on my lap or at the kitchen table. I tend to find I'm most productive in the afternoon and late at night.

What are you working on now? 

I have a newborn daughter, and she’s my main focus. But I have a new book out in June, so I still feel as though I’m in the literary swim. It’s about Samuel Johnson, an author I keep returning to, and it ponders how Johnson - Dr Johnson, as he usually is, though I like to call him Sam - can be a guide to (or through) the perplexities of life. On my computer there’s also a draft of a novel, set in the eighteenth century, that’s calling for a rewrite. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I’ve experienced setbacks and frustrations, but I wouldn’t say I have been blocked. Like most writers, I’ve from time to time found myself stymied by other people being less excited about an idea than I am. Sometimes they’ve been right to be sceptical!

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

Constantly challenge your tastes as a reader. My writing is stimulated by reading and especially by encounters with writers whose approach differs radically from my own. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

It’s a somewhat downbeat piece of advice, I’m afraid, but any emerging writer should definitely have another source of income. I don’t subscribe to the view that financial insecurity is a spur to creativity. The other thing I would say is “Look after your back.” That probably sounds as if it has some dark significance, but I mean it literally.  

Henry Hitchings was born in 1974. He has written mainly about language and history, starting in 2005 with Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Johnson's Dictionary, which won the Modern Language Association's prize for the year's best book by an independent scholar. The Secret Life of Words (2008) won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award, as well as seeing him shortlisted for the title of Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. 2011's The Language Wars completed what was in effect a trilogy of books about language. Since then he has published Sorry! The English and their Manners and edited Browse, a collection of essays about bookshops. He is a prolific critic and has made several programmes for radio and television, on subjects including Erasmus Darwin and the eighteenth-century English novel.