Aaron Shulman

How did you become a writer?

I decided I wanted to become a writer when I was 17 in two steps, one that was rational and the other less so. At the time, I wanted to be filmmaker, but I read Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and loved it, and then saw the movie, and thought it was so weak compared to the book. Knowing that it had swept the Oscars the year it came out--in other words, that it was a masterpiece, but felt paltry compared to to the novel it was based on--I decided that books were the superior form. Then I read Kerouac's On the Road, and as a bored suburban teenager, the writing life portrayed in that book seemed heady and wild, which appealed to me. Of course, I grew out of that when I went from wanting to be a writer to actually becoming one, which took years and years of hard work sitting at my desk, failing at a few novels, getting experience as a reporter, researcher, and essayist, and then finally landing on the non-fiction project that felt custom-made for me, my first book: The Age of Disenchantments.

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

Fiction writers I adore, who I've tried to learn from, include: Don Delillo, Thomas Pynchon, Kafka, Marilynne Robinson, Deborah Eisenberg, Vladimir Nabokov, Roberto Bolaño, Jorge Luis Borges, Joan Didion, Elena Ferrante, Enrique Vila-Matas, Ben Lerner, Javier Marías, Javier Cercas, James Salter, Megan Abbott, Rachel Cusk. Non-fiction writers include: Stacy Schiff, Joan Didion, Jon Lee Anderson, Michael Paterniti, Catherine Bailey, Janet Malcom, Tom Reiss, Brendan Koerner, Alice Bolin, Emmanuele Carrere, Maggie Nelson. By those writers, some especial favorite books are: White Noise, Pale Fire, 2666 and The Savage Detectives, A Heart So White, Leaving the Atocha Station, Housekeeping, Outline, The Journalist and the Murderer, Vera, The Skies Belong to Us, The Secret Rooms. As an undergraduate, I studied with Alice McDermott and Stephen Dixon, who gave me a lot of important encouragement, and for non-fiction the journalist Tina Rosenberg mentored me at key points.

When and where do you write? 

Most days I'm at my desk in my home office from around 8am to 5pm, though not all of that is writing time. There's email, escapes to go surfing for an hour or two, time set aside for reading, and occasionally a bit of procrastination.

What are you working on now? 

I'm working on a longform magazine piece and doing research for a possible new non-fiction book.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Not really in the kind of clinical way people often talk about it. I'm very disciplined about just sitting down and getting stuff onto the page, but often I have periods of reading and research during which I don't write, storing up ideas and information so that when I do finally sit down it comes pouring out of me.

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

Oof, so many good nuggets I've heard it's hard to choose. In terms of storytelling, that it's very important to always keep at the front of your mind what your characters/subjects want and are going after, since if you know that usually you won't get blocked because you'll know what happens next. As for process, that you have to be prepared for more hard, tiring work than you want to do or are likely prepared for.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Work really hard. Be patient. And try all the different forms (fiction, essays, journalism, screenwriting) to discover where your strengths are--and know that your strengths might not lie where you want them to. 

Aaron Shulman is the author of the non-fiction historical narrative The Age of Disenchantments: The Epic Story of Spain’s Most Notorious Literary Family and the Long Shadow of the Spanish Civil War (Ecco/HarperCollins, March 2019). After growing up in Michigan, Aaron attended Johns Hopkins as an undergrad and then the University of Montana, where he received his MFA in creative writing. A former Fulbright scholar, his work has appeared in The Believer, The New Republic, The American Scholar, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among many other places.

Anna Smith

How did you become a writer?

I was writing when I was a child and teenager, and then worked as a daily newspaper journalist covering stories and investigations all over the world. I gave up the day job to write full time.

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

As a teenager I loved J D Salinger (Catcher In The Rye), and the poignant voice of the young character. Later, I would read everything from thrillers to romances, from Irwin Shaw to Harold Robbins to Michael Connolly. One of the great Scottish crime writers who influenced me was William McIlvanney who created the cop character Laidlaw, and that has spawned a raft of police procedurals from authors across Scotland and beyond. 

When and where do you write? 

I write mostly in Ireland where I have a house on the West coast, or I go to Spain to the Costa del Sol, mostly locking myself away to write. I do write sometimes here in Scotland, but I find it easier to work if I’m away from people. 

What are you working on now?

At the moment I’m working on the third novel of a gangland crime series, set in Glasgow, London and the Costa del Sol, featuring a strong female protagonist who is the reluctant head of a gangland family.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I never suffer from writer’s block, because I believe if you just sit and write something, then before you know it a character will speak to you. 

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

I’m not sure I’ve been given a lot of advice on writing. I write from instinct, maybe even from need. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

If you are a new writer, then the message is to keep going, keep writing, never stop believing. And even if you get knocked back from a few publishers or agents, go back to your characters and move the story on.

Anna Smith is an award-winning journalist who spent a lifetime in daily newspapers, reporting from the frontline all over the world. Her first series of thrillers featured a gritty Glasgow journalist Rosie Gilmour, and Anna used her vast experience as a journalist to create the popular character. Her growing army of readers are now enjoying Anna’s gangland crime thrillers, and the first novel Blood Feud introduces Kerry Casey, who becomes head of a Glasgow crime clan with contacts all over the UK. The sequel, Fight Back, is in Amazon Kindle’s top five for the past month. It’s published in paperback on May 2.

Mitchell Zuckoff

How did you become a writer?

First, I became a reporter. I wrote professionally for more than a decade, mostly for newspapers and wire services, before I began to truly consider myself a writer. Even now, after eight books and more than 30 years of doing and teaching this work, I still have a hard time separating my identity as a reporter from my writing. The latter doesn’t exist without the former. Good nonfiction writing is wholly reliant on research: interviews, observation, documents, etc. I became a writer by learning how to be a good reporter. Then I sat in front of a keyboard and tried (and tried, and tried) to communicate all that I’d learned in the most engaging way possible.

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

When I was in college, I found a used copy of Lillian Ross’s book “Reporting” in a Cape Cod bookstore. I didn’t read The New Yorker, and I figured this tattered old book was an ancient textbook on how to work for a 19th century newspaper. I bought it almost as a gag. Then I read it and thought, “That’s reporting? How do I do that?” Soon after, someone pointed me toward John McPhee. I started with “Levels of the Game,” and since then I’ve read all his books and been influenced by every one. Scores of other writers and books come to mind (i.e., David McCullough’s “The Johnstown Flood” taught me so much), but only one teacher: the late Wilbur Doctor, who taught me newswriting in college and set my compass at true north.

When and where do you write?

I can write anywhere, a lasting effect of my work as a newspaper reporter. But I’m most productive in my home office, ideally with my dog sleeping nearby. It was originally a smallish bedroom, but now it’s filled with files and books and mementos. It’s a mess, but it’s my mess. I tend to “type” mostly at night, when the world is relatively quiet. But when I’m deep into a project I’m “writing” whenever I’m awake, if you include the time spent obsessively thinking about everything from the overall structure to the tangled sentences I need to rework. Hikes in the woods are especially good for that kind of writing.

What are you working on now?

I have a new book coming out April 30, a five-year project called “Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11.” I covered 9/11 for The Boston Globe and wrote the lead news story on the day of the attacks. This book is a comprehensive, character-driven narrative that includes all four hijacked planes, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, Shanksville, and the initial military and government response. Now that it’s complete I’ve got a few other ideas in mind, but for the moment I’m focused on teaching upcoming journalists at Boston University.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Not really. I’m repeating myself here, but so much of my work today is an outgrowth of my years as a daily reporter. Writer’s block isn’t an option when you’ve got a hole in the paper to fill, a looming deadline, and an editor losing patience. Having said that, I’ve definitely encountered periods where my writing is so lousy it should be blocked. The sentences don’t flow, the ideas are stale, and clichés grow like topsy (uh oh, wait, am I in one of those periods now?). The solution for me is to take a short break then get back to work, knowing that it’s usually easier to revise and rewrite junk than it is to face the blank page.

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

When I was a member of the Boston Globe Spotlight Team, my editor, Gerry O’Neill, urged me to “write scared.” That is, push yourself beyond what you think is possible or safe, to the outer limits of your research and your ability, to the point where it feels exciting and a little scary. When it works, it’s exhilarating for you and for the reader.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Write scared.

Mitchell Zuckoff is the Sumner M. Redstone Professor of Narrative Studies at Boston University and the author of eight nonfiction books. His forthcoming book is Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11, to be published by HarperCollins on April 30. His previous book, 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi, was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and became a movie from Paramount Pictures. His books Frozen in Time and Lost in Shangri-La also were New York Times bestsellers. Lost In Shangri-La received the Winship/PEN Award for Nonfiction. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and numerous other publications. He lives outside Boston with his family.