Anthony Madrid

How did you become a writer?

My parents were expressive people, so I was too. Early on, I started to see expressiveness as a form of ordinary magic, the only one I was any good at, so naturally I pursued it. Seemed like the only way I was ever going to glamor anybody, and I really wanted to do that. Pitiful enough, but there it is.

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

If I list a hundred poets and novelists, it will just be meaningless, a rigmarole of completely received bigshots. Instead, I’ll take the opportunity to name my mentor: Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments and The Odd Woman and the City. From her writing and her talk I’ve learned as much as from everything else put together. I’ve known her half my life.

When and where do you write? 

Whenever, wherever; I’m not particular. I have no prejudices against computers or pencils-and-paper or any of that. Morning, noon, night, they’re all the same to me. I do prefer silence, I will say that.

What are you working on now? 

The usual. Translations, poems. I want to do this Russian children’s poem into English. I may have just found an illustrator for it, literally day before yesterday. It’s a very nice piece, 121 lines. I’m memorizing it, in Russian, in preparation for translating.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

The thing that happens to me doesn’t deserve to be called writer’s block. It doesn’t hurt.

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

Joel Craig said to me, regarding delays in the production of his first book: “I don’t need it to be done fast; I need it to be done right.” That’s the kind of thing I always need to hear.

What’s your advice to new writers?

(This is just for baby poets; I don’t know anything about how to do fiction.) Poets, you have to vigorously separate what you Actually Like from everything you only sorta like. Study your pleasure closely. Because! all your poems and definitely all your books had better be the kind of thing you Actually Like. Otherwise, what the hell are we even doing here? Look, you will fail to impress all kinds of people it would have been nice to impress, no matter what you do. The only thing that protects you from the pain of that is the fact that you yourself actually like your own stuff. If you ignore this principle, if you write a book, say, that is formidable nine ways from Tuesday, piled high with sophistication and impressive this ’n’ that, but which you don’t actually like, then what ends up happening is you helplessly side with the people who don’t care about your work. Next stop is the bottle.

Bio: I was raised in Maryland, currently live in Texas, turn fifty this year. I am the author of two books of poems: I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say (2012), and Try Never (2017). A book of children’s poems for adults is coming out later in 2018, titled There Was an Old Man with a Springbok.

Tom McAllister

How did you become a writer?

I think there are two parts to this answer: 1) how did I get into books and writing in the first place, and 2) how did I transition that into doing it professionally. 

I started reading and writing in earnest when I was in 7thgrade, after reading my first “real” book for school, Of Mice and Men. My father had always been a voracious reader, so the house was filled with books anyway, and we played lots of word games (Scrabble, games in the newspaper, etc), and so it’s not like reading was new to me, but it was the first time I thought about writing as a real thing one could do. 

In college, I started as a journalism major because I was pretty good at writing and knew that was a job that could lead to being paid for writing (in theory). I hated those classes, though. I took an elective with Justin Cronin, who had not yet become the big, famous author he is now, and that changed my life. Though it was probably more gradual than this, I remember it as a single moment of epiphany, saying, “Okay, this is what I want to do with my life. I want to be like him.” He helped me take writing seriously, and helped me get into grad school, where, for the first time in my life, I was surrounded by talented, dedicated writers who pushed me to demand much more of myself. 

I still didn’t publish anything at all for another 2 years after grad school, but that was how it got started. 

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

Teachers: Justin Cronin, Frank Conroy, Charles D’Ambrosio. Also a number of non-writers who taught me in high school and college and encouraged and supported me in incredible ways. 

I think the question of influential books is a little tricky, because the books I love now are not the ones I loved when I was 20, and vice versa. But some books that have had a huge impact on the writer I am right now: Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut), Pastoralia (George Saunders), Play it As it Lays (Joan Didion), The Antagonist (Lynn Coady), inscriptions for headstones (Matthew Vollmer), Jesus’ Son (Denis Johnson), An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination (Elizabeth McCracken), Men We Reaped (Jesmyn Ward), everything by Jo Ann Beard. 

When and where do you write? 

I teach at Temple University, and lately I’ve had early classes, so on teaching days, I try to get work done in the afternoon before my wife gets home. On non-teaching days, I try to write in the morning, getting most of my work done before lunch time, if possible. It’s when my head is relatively clear and it prevents me from doing that thing where you keep tricking yourself into thinking the day is infinite, and eventually you’ll get to it. I’m fortunate, too, that my job allows me a summer break, when I try to get a ton of writing done, if possible.

Where I write: the answer is boring. I have an office in my house, with a standard desk and a standard computer and the standard knick-knacks on and around the desk. 

What are you working on now? 

I’ve had two novels come out in the past 16 months (they were both written over a long period, and the release dates are sort of a fluke), and all the activity around that has slowed me down some. I’m in the very early stages of drafting a new novel, but I hate even calling it a novel; right now, it’s 10,000 words in a document on my computer. It’s nothing. Maybe in a year it will be something. 

I’ve always been working on a number of essays that I’ve been half-writing for years. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Right now, as I’m being more unproductive than usual, I don’t think I would call it writer’s block. I’m distracting myself. I’m on social media and I’m obsessing over the news, and I’m wasting time. That’s not about being blocked, though; that’s about slipping out of my good habits and doing sloppy work. 

The only time I could say I was feeling truly blocked, unable to do anything, was in grad school, when the deadlines paralyzed me with fear. Now, I have so many notes, and so many partially started ideas, and so many writing prompts I could use, that I only have myself to blame if I’m not getting something done. 

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

Is it cheating if I name two? 

One, from a variety of writers and teachers: if you’re getting bored while you’re reading it, then it’s boring. Don’t try to convince yourself it’s not.

Two, from my friend Dave Housley, who has written a number of books (most recently This Darkness Got to Give): don’t be afraid to get weird. Take that dumb idea you’re afraid nobody is going to like, and write that, because only you can do it. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Stop measuring yourself against other writers. Very, very few of us will ever achieve anything close to fame or longevity; the only goal is to tell the truest, best, most interesting version of the story you want to tell. Every single other thing is out of your control. 

Tom McAllister is the author of the novels How to Be Safe and The Young Widower’s Handbook, and the memoir Bury Me in My Jersey. He co-hosts the podcast Book Fight! and is the nonfiction editor at Barrelhouse. He lives in New Jersey and teaches at Temple University.

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.