Chris Cander

How did you become a writer?

The same way Mike Campbell in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises went bankrupt: "gradually and then suddenly." As a child, I wrote poems. Stories in my teens and early twenties. Non-fiction during my thirties. When I started my first novel, at age 37, I realized that was where I wanted to focus my literary energy. Since then, I've written over a million words in various drafts, and have kept about a third of them. Now I'm 49 and releasing The Weight of a Piano--the fourth novel I've written and third I've published--and am working on a fifth. 

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

There are so many of each. My parents read to me, told me stories, took me to the library, let me live with my nose in a book. My sophomore English teacher, Mrs. Carol Blaine, recognized something in me and encouraged it--even though I never got higher than a B on any essay in her class. The novels I read in college, in particular The Decameron. The novels I've read since then. The writers I've admired, befriended, leaned on, learned from. Their names would fill a phone book. I'll start with the Brothers Grimm, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Charles Baxter, Annie Proulx, Nevil Shute, Harriet Doerr, Italo Calvino, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Isabel Allende, Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, and a thousand others.

When and where do you write? 

In my upstairs home office at the hybrid art deco/midcentury modern desk I bought myself when I was 18 and plan to use until I'm dead. I'm surrounded by books, art, trinkets, and totems. To my left is a big picture window overlooking a crepe myrtle tree. A set of pentatonic windchimes hangs just outside; it's the only music I listen to when I write. I don't have a particular time of day, but I try to get my fairly modest goal of 350 or so words done before the kids get home from school.

What are you working on now? 

A novel about the unseen forces that affect and connect us. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I don't believe in it. I also don't believe in inspiration. Muses can be mercurial, and "blocks" are usually the result of something else: fear, procrastination, hangovers, etc. My writing life is governed instead by determination. It’s scary sometimes, and I suffer the same crises of confidence that any writer has, but in the end, the only way to start is to calm down, sit down, and begin.

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

I don't know who--if anyone--gave me this advice, or if it was just something I figured out: never, ever give up. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Try to be fearless when you confront a blank page. (I tell this every day to my third-grade Writers in the Schools students, and it works.) Don’t think—feel. Don’t critique each word as it lands. Give into that Dickinsonian “bolt of melody.” Even if it’s nonsense, write it down. Liberate your imagination on the page and you’ll discover something to pursue. And that critic inside your mind that’s tugging backward on your pen? Tell her to settle down—you’ll deal with her later, after you’re finished.

Chris Cander is the award-winning author of the novels WHISPER HOLLOW, 11 STORIES, and the children's picture book THE WORD BURGLAR. Her latest is THE WEIGHT OF A PIANO, forthcoming from Knopf in January 2019, which has already received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal. For seven years she has been a writer-in-residence for Writers in the Schools, serves on the Inprint advisory board, and stewards several Little Free Libraries in her community. A former competitive bodybuilder, Chris currently holds a 3rd dan in taekwondo and is a certified women’s defensive tactics instructor.

Alyson Hagy

How did you become a writer?

I was always a reader, but the idea of becoming a writer never occurred to me until I left home for college and my head and heart began to overflow with language. My freshman English professor, a poet, suggested I take a creative writing class after reading the wild tangle of my required essays. I was petrified…and transfixed. I fell flat on my face more times than I can count, but I kept at it. I just couldn’t stop playing with language.

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

Reading fiction by Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and Carson McCullers gave me permission to write about the rural South. George Garrett, one of the most generous writing mentors around, provided affirmation and counseled patience. Richard Ford kicked me in the behind when I needed it. Writing isn’t supposed to be easy. We don’t deserve easy. He reminded me of that fact. Joy Williams has been a powerful recent influence. Her fiction probes what’s truly existential, the unknowable and forever strange.

When and where do you write? 

I work best in the mornings…in a small, quiet study with a window that keeps the weather and birds right at my shoulder. But my process has shifted when it’s had to. When I had a baby at home, I grabbed any hour I could find. When I was working 60-70 hours a week at my job, I scribbled on the weekends and during holidays. Turns out I can write under less than ideal conditions when not writing at all is the alternative. It’s been good for me to discover (and rediscover) that truth.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a collection of very short stories, some of which look more like fables or parables than “regular” stories, at least to me. And I’m reading a lot, trying to blaze a trail for the next novel.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No. I’ve always been able to find a short story to work on. I love the form. It just cries out liberation to me. Whenever I feel stickiness setting in, especially if I’m clawing at a novel, I try to counter it by reading—classics I love, crime novels, exciting new fiction, anything that shuts down my editorial mind and takes me into that reader’s kingdom of wonder.

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

Don’t believe that graduate school will somehow make you a writer. Go into the world, get a job that sustains you, and write. If you are writing because you have to, if you are writing when no one is looking and no one cares, then you may indeed be a writer—and you need to cope with that. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read. Read like a crazy person. And read what you love. Don’t shackle yourself with other people’s tastes. Just bury yourself in all the great work that’s out there. Reading is the foundation we all need, and we’re building, and repairing, that foundation each and every day.

Alyson Hagy is the author of eight works of fiction, most recently the novel Scribewhich is a finalist for the Southern Book Prize. She lives and works in Laramie, Wyoming.

Victoria Johnson

How did you become a writer?

I’m a professor (my PhD is in sociology), and academic writing is a big part of my job description. American Eden ismy second book, but it’s the first book I had the freedom to write exactly how I wanted—as a work of narrative nonfiction with character development, pacing, and sensory depth. When I first stumbled across a mention of David Hosack and his lost garden at the heart of Manhattan Island a decade ago, I instantly knew I wanted to write a book that would reach readers of narrative nonfiction. To do this, I needed a kind of mentorship that was not available from my immediate circle of academic colleagues, wonderful as they were. I had the fortune of becoming friends at just the right time with Scott Ellsworth, the author of the brilliant book The Secret Game. He strongly encouraged me to write the book I was dreaming about. He has been my weekly “writing buddy” for many years now, and I couldn’t have written American Eden without his support and ideas. Every new writer should have a Scott Ellsworth in their lives—someone who is cheering you on, talking shop, and keeping you on track with deadlines. 

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

Among nonfiction writers, my three big influences are Ron Chernow, Erik Larson, and Andrea Wulf. I’ve studied their books over and over on my own and have also had the pleasure of conversations about writing with two of them. Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton is indispensable for me, not just because David Hosack was Hamilton’s (and Burr’s) doctor, but because Chernow knows how to make a 700-page book utterly riveting. Larson’s Devil in the White Cityis a masterclass in how to sweep a reader up in the emotional stakes of a character’s life and ambitions. Wulf has written gorgeous, rigorous works of scientific history whose narrative pacing makes the heart pound—especially TheInvention of Nature, her biography of the great Alexander von Humboldt. 

I also read novels constantly; my favorites are Dickens, James, Trollope, and Woolf, and they have definitely shaped my tastes as a writer. But in terms of direct writerly influence from novelists, my sister Elizabeth Kostova (author of The Historian, The Swan Thieves, and The Shadow Land) is at the top of the list. She’s an incredibly imaginative and generous person, and she’s taught me so much about both the craft of writing and the practical aspects of being a writer. 

When and where do you write? 

Every day that I don’t have to be on campus for teaching or meetings, I work in my Manhattan apartment, which is on the top floor of a 21-story building. There’s a lot of sky. I am a cocooner—I have to have music playing in my noise-canceling headphones to settle into my manuscript. I stayed off social media almost completely for years, because it would have ruined my concentration. Some people can toggle back and forth easily. I can’t. Some days I write for ten hours; other days I get only an hour, or even nothing. On days when I don’t get any time to write at all, I try to at least open my writing file and read a little of what I’ve done. It keeps the story and people alive in my imagination until I can write again.

What are you working on now? 

I’ve got some new book ideas percolating, but I’m currently on a sixty-stop book tour, and I also teach full-time. In my spare moments, I’m working on a very short documentary about David Hosack with the graphic artist Markley Boyer. Our video will include a virtual-reality version of Hosack’s botanical garden, which he built on twenty acres of rural Manhattan he purchased in 1801. Today that land is home to Rockefeller Center. You will be able to “walk” toward 30 Rock and suddenly find yourself strolling through Hosack’s fields of grain and up the hill into his conservatory (now the site of Radio City Music Hall). I find it thrilling that we are always moving through layers of history when we go about our daily lives. I tried to convey that thrill in the pages of American Eden. Now I want to make it visually immediate for people.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Not in a way that lasted more than a few hours. I had a ritual while writing American Eden. If I was stumped on how to bring an event or character to life with my words, I would open Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City to a random page and read for a while. Because that book is so vivid and intense, this ritual always shook loose whatever had gotten stuck in my own writing. American Eden is a very different kind of book from Devil, and I’m not Erik Larson. But as a way to keep me writing, it worked every time. I think it’s called inspiration. Everyone can find some version of this technique; it’s just a matter of figuring out what unfreezes your imagination.

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

“Write relationships.” A truly great biographer suggested this to me before I started writing American Eden. (Eternal gratitude.) He pointed out to me that people are absolutely fascinated by watching humans interacting. Will they love each other? Hate each other? Snipe behind one another’s backs? Reconcile after falling out? I rushed to apply this advice to my mountains of archival documents and realized that it was the secret to both the structure of my book and its emotional core. After that, I never had any doubts about the form it should take.  

What’s your advice to new writers?

First, if you haven’t read it yet, read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. The title story of this book helped me get my first draft written. The other seven or eight drafts were easy compared to that one—and often very fun. When writing is going well, there’s almost no feeling more joyful and absorbing. Second, if you feel driven to write and would be unhappy if you can’t, you should feel fine about protecting your writing time. It’s not a comfortable choice to make, often, and it’s not without consequences, but it’s legitimate. It might even preserve your sanity and bring you intense happiness, which is good for everyone around you.  

Victoria Johnson is the author of American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2018), which was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award in nonfiction and a New York TimesNotable Book of the year. She is an Associate Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College of the City University of New York. For more go to americaneden.org.