Anne Marie Pace

How did you become a writer?

I think I was writing stories as soon as I could form sentences on paper. One of the first stories I wrote, back in first grade, I eventually turned into my book PIGLOO, so I’m grateful to my mom for keeping all my work. In middle school, I had a stack of manila folders, each with a different story in it. I liked to draw the characters (families always had 10-12 children) and maps. So I don’t know that I became a writer—I just was a writer. That said, I decided to work towards becoming a professional writer when I realized how much I loved the books I was sharing with my children, and I wanted to write books like those.

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

Because I loved to write, I always gravitated to the teachers who supported me. Mrs. Grinder let me be in the sixth-grade creative writing club, even though I was in fifth grade. In high school, Mrs. Catron and Mrs. Picardi encouraged me to write fiction. More recently, I was inspired by Lin-Manuel Miranda and HAMILTON to write a more densely layered rhyming manuscript. My published rhymers are in simple couplets, and writing something more complicated was both a challenge and a joy.

When and where do you write?

Mostly I write on the couch. I know that’s not very exciting, but it’s true. I could describe the couch, I suppose, but it’s nothing special—just a green couch. Usually my dogs are nearby and my cats come to visit occasionally.

What are you working on now?

In the last few weeks, I’ve been doing final edits on the two picture books that are coming out in the next year: VAMPIRINA IN THE SNOW from Disney-Hyperion, and SUNNY’S TOW TRUCK SAVES THE DAY from Abrams Appleseed. I also just attended a fabulous writing workshop with legendary editor Patti Gauch and one of my favorite writers, Newbery Honor- and Printz Honor-winning author Gary D. Schmidt. So I’m diving back into the middle-grade I’ve been working on for some time.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I don’t think it’s possible to be a writer and not be occasionally, or frequently, plagued by self-doubt, which is really what writer’s block is. So yes, of course!

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

Well, all the writing clichés have some truth to them, so at any given time, I could probably find something like “read read read” or “butt in chair” is resonating with me currently. I’m not sure this is advice, but back when I worked on a desktop, I printed this out from Jane Smiley and taped it to the computer because it reminded me to remain focused and not worry too, too much: “Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.” 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Set goals that you have control over—you can’t set a goal to win an award or to reach a certain level of sales. You can have a goal to write the best books you can. And try every day to move forward, even if it’s just an inch. As Vampirina says in the first Vampirina book, “It doesn’t matter if you take one giant leap or many tiny steps, as long as you are working toward your goal.”

Anne Marie Pace’s books include GROUNDHUG DAY (Disney-Hyperion, 2017, illustrated by Christopher Denise); PIGLOO (Henry Holt, 2016, illustrated by Lorna Hussey); and the VAMPIRINA BALLERINA series (Disney-Hyperion, illustrated by LeUyen Pham), the inspiration for the hit Disney Junior animated series VAMPIRINA. New in 2018 are BUSY-EYED DAY (Beach Lane Books, illustrated by Frann Preston-Gannon) and the fourth Vampirina book, VAMPIRINA IN THE SNOW. Find her at: http://www.annemariepace.com https://www.facebook.com/VampirinaBallerina and @annemariepace.

Elizabeth Rush

How did you become a writer?

Katie Ford, the fabulous poet, is the person who turned me into a writer. I had been working on a collection of poems that would become my senior thesis and Katie had been assigned to mentor me through the process. I remember handing her the drafts I had labored over for months. She read them and gave them back a week or so later and told me, “this isn’t poetry.” I was a little devastated at first. Then I became determined. Katie sat down with me for an hour every week (now as a professor myself I understand what a tremendous time commitment this is) and she taught me how to edit my own work. How to return to it again and again and again until the language yielded wisdom all its own. She always told me to aim towards exactitude while editing in the mystery. 

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

I read as much poetry as I do nonfiction. One of the biggest influences on my latest book, RISING: Dispatches from the New American Shoreis Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl, which recently won the Nobel Prize in literature. She tells the story of the nuclear explosion from the perspective of those who lived through and returned to the land after the event. The entire book is written in the voices of real residents of the region and is the result of nearly a decade of interviewing and meticulous transcription. The cumulative effect is that of a kind of polyphonic chorus, that depicts with incredible specificity what it was like not only to live through this environmental catastrophe but also to bear witness to the end of the Soviet Union. And of course I am always indebted to the work of so very many poets: C.D. Wright, Jamaal May, Robert Haas, Brenda Hillman, Ada Limón, Tracy Smith, I could go on and on. 

When and where do you write? 

I have an office in my house and you can find me there Monday-Friday from roughly 6 am (or 7 am) until 1 pm. Mornings are my sacred writing time and I try, when I can, to defend it fiercely. 

What are you working on now? 

Well, it looks like next year I will be sailing, with the National Science Foundation and the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council to Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. Thwaites is literally one of the most remote regions in the world (only 28 people have ever stood atop the glacier) and yet in many ways the rate at which this glacier melting will determine the future of coastal communities around the world. That’s because Thwaites is considered “the cork” to the West Antarctic ice sheet. Its deterioration destabilizes the whole of the ice sheet behind it. And because Thwaites is so remote we have little data from region and so I will be accompanying three research teams as they investigate how quickly this glacier has retreated in the geologic past and just how quickly it is retreating now. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Discipline is what helps me push through writer’s block. Writing is my job. I show up every day. Some days are better than others. If I am having a particularly tough time with a piece I tend to wake up super early and get to work. Sometimes writing with a foggy mind––in the space between dreaming and wakefulness––helps me to take chances I might not otherwise. If that doesn’t work I take a long walk or bike ride. Sometimes wringing my body out helps my mind make creative leaps. 

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

Revise. Revise. Revise. Revise. Revise. Revise. Revise. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Create a writing practice. If you want to be a hotshot basketball player you carve out time to practice. Do the same with your writing. Figure out when your mind is most lithe and write during that time. You need not carve out five hours of every day. Start with an hour or two. Are you best early in the morning? Then set aside the same hour every day and fill it with your writing. 

Elizabeth Rush’s work explores how humans adapt to changes enacted upon them by forces seemingly beyond their control, from ecological transformation to political revolution. She is the author of Rising: The Unsettling of the American Shore (Milkweed Editions, 2018) and Still Lifes from a Vanishing City: Essays and Photographs from Yangon, Myanmar (Global Directions, 2014.) Her work has appeared in Harpers, The Atlantic, Pacific Standard, Granta, Creative Nonfiction, Orion, Guernica, Le Monde Diplomatique and others. Rush is the recipient of fellowships from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Oregon State University’s Spring Creek Project, the Society for Environmental Journalism, the National Society of Science Writers and the Metcalf Institute. In 2016, she was awarded the Howard Foundation Fellowship in creative nonfiction by Brown University where she teaches creative nonfiction.

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.