D.W. Gibson

How did you become a writer?

I have a file folder filled with rejection letters sent to me by editors and agents over the years. They aren’t really letters but boiler-plate sentences, usually beginning with “Thank you…” (Note: if you ever get a message from and editor or agent that begins with those two words you don’t need to read the rest because it’s not what you want to hear.) Many of the rejections aren’t even printed on full size pieces of paper; they’re mere slips, which, in a way, I admire because it saves paper. The file folder reminds me just how long I’ve been accumulating rejections: I go back as far as the days of paper. 

I still get rejections—any writer who tries to convince someone that rejections go away is not being honest. But those early days of paper, of mounting rejection, were the hardest. Each time I received one of those cold, stale sentences it depressed the hell out of me. But usually by nightfall I was on fire again, ready to stick it to the person who had sent the latest slip of paper, ready to prove them wrong. And that’s the thing about rejection. It can have two very different effects, depending on the recipient. The first possible effect is complete deflation, either with one defining blow or as slow seepage over time. The second possible effect of rejection is that it ends up fueling an inextinguishable fire. Those who are deflated – and, ultimately, defeated – are not writers. Those who are set ablaze by rejection can’t help themselves. So I guess that’s how I became a writer: when I came out of my mother’s womb as one of those people bound to catch fire. 

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

When I was a kid both of the ministers at my family’s church—Paul Thomas and Andy Wall—spent many hours over many years reading and responding to my work. As a teenager, I read mostly playwrights, a lot of Tennessee Williams, Sam Shepard, August Wilson. It was all very dramatic, probably too dramatic, but I gained a deep appreciation for beautiful sentences, raw emotion and reading between the lines. James Kelman was the first serious writer to take me seriously as a writer. I took a workshop with him in college and he gave us all a list of a couple dozen writers we should read. I had never heard of most of them, there were very few white men and they didn’t all write in English—I am still grateful to him for that list. He introduced me to great voices like Tillie Olsen, Sam Selvon, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Lu Hsun. There are several writers I return to, again and again, for clarity: James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Carlos Eire, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Toni Morrison, VS Naipaul and Vladimir Nabokov among them. 

When and where do you write? 

Before I became a father, I was very sanctimonious about where and when I could write: a minimum of two hours, please, uninterrupted, preferably late at night, probably with some Lee Morgan or Herbie Hancock in the background. These days, give me a cup of coffee, 10 minutes and laptop and I’ll make the most of it. I’ve learned to carry my work in my head better, let it maturate there, and I’ve learned to get into the text more immediately when I sit down because the clock is always ticking. 

I have a desk and work at it sometimes but I’m apt to move around in my family’s house. Sometimes I find it helpful to feel a certain newness to the spot where I’m working—it can be invigorating. It depends on how the work is going. If I get into a groove then I stay in the same spot for a few days, to keep the mojo going. It’s kind of a feel thing, like with slot machines. 

What are you working on now?

I just published a story about the Kumeyaay, a nation of indigenous Americans who have been living in their region of present-day California for 12,000 years. It’s a region that was cut in half 172 years ago when the Mexico-U.S. border was established. Now the federal government is building a wall through the Kumeyaay’s ancestral land, bulldozing burial grounds and lives in the process. 

Right now I’m working on a story about the “Explorer” program run by Border Patrol. It trains kids as young as 14 on what it’s like to be an agent. It’s an interesting lens through which to consider how we teach borders and talk about them as a society. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Look, I can always manage to get some kind of unreadable text down so I rarely come up empty but, yes, it’s safe to say that meaningful progress on any given text is never consistent and reliable. There are always bad detours and misguided love affairs with the wrong sentence. And some days all I can hear in my head is that song from Burt in Mary Poppins. If you can get past Dick Van Dyke’s cartoonish British accent the lyrics are haunting: “You’ve got to grind, grind, grind at that grindstone.” Some days I’m definitely grinding but it always—eventually—leads somewhere.

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

I had the pleasure of sitting in on an interview with Edward Albee and he said, “There are two things that can destroy a writer: success and failure.” While there is something deeply unsettling and depressing about this it is also really clarifying. It crystalizes an important truth for me: the only acceptable rudder for a writer is doing good work. You have to be able to get satisfaction and fulfillment from doing good work – it’s the only thing that you can control, after all. 

I think one of the great divides in the land of advice-to-writers is whether or not one should strive to write every day. I subscribe to the idea that it needs to be a daily practice. Even if it means some grinding every now and then—there’s value in seeing and understanding how, exactly, bad writing is bad. Also, see earlier point about the only acceptable rudder for a writer: doing good work. If I don’t at least try to do good work then the end of the day is definitely very hollow. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Get out while you still can! 

And if you don’t like that advice: welcome to the club. I’m your ally and happy to help however I can.

D.W. Gibson is most recently the author of 14 MILES: Building the Border Wall. His previous books include the awarding-winning The Edge Becomes the Center and Not Working. He shared a National Magazine Award for his work on “This is the Story of One Block in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn” for New York magazine. His work has also appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mother Jones and The Nation. He serves as director of Art Omi: Writers in Ghent, New York, and he co-founded Sangam House, a writers’ residency in India, along with Arshia Sattar.

Pete Beatty

How did you become a writer?

I was a creative kid, but not obsessed with writing more than anything else. Throughout college I wrote, mostly ultra garbage. But in my twenties I wrote infrequently, and often gave up for long stretches. I was avoiding failure by not trying, and also I was very depressed. Eventually I did therapy and gave myself permission to try, and started with short things, which led to longer things, and which led to an MFA program that afforded me enough time to finish a good draft of a novel. The novel is published now, but on a bad day I still don't feel like a real writer. I still get in my own head and go quiet. But now I sorta buy it when I tell myself I'm recharging my brain.

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

Nikolai Gogol, the different shapes and seasons of the Bible, Toni Morrison, Anne Carson, Charles Portis, gnomic detective novels. I try to read eclectically, although my current 39-year old version much prefers honest feeling to literary virtuosity. I am skeptical to the point of self-defeat when it comes to taking advice, so I tend to avoid books about writing. A few exceptions: Stephen King's On Writing, Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. Teachers: Michael Martone. A profusely generous reader and kind human being.

When and where do you write? 

At a coffee shop, early, under a baseball cap, sweatshirt with hood up, on an old laptop with the Wi-Fi card removed. The pandemic has not been great for my writing, as I am minimizing time spent indoors with randos.

What are you working on now? 

Just taking notes toward a very hazy idea.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

There are many different species of silence-inhibition, emptiness, fatigue, distraction, self-preservation, fear, etc. I have hung out with all of the species at length.

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

Ass in chair.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Ass in chair.

Pete Beatty has taught writing at Kent State University and the University of Alabama, and edits books for a living. His first novel Cuyahoga published in 2020, and according to the New York Times it is "a breezy fable of empire, class, conquest and ecocide."

David Heska Wanbli Weiden

How did you become a writer?

I’ve been obsessed by language, narrative, and books as long as I can remember, and always had the idea that perhaps I could be a writer someday. But I grew up in a financially challenged home and felt compelled—like many first-generation college students--to follow a secure career path, so I became a lawyer and later a teacher. But the dream stayed with me, and when my children were past the infant stage, I started writing some short stories. I thought they were great at the time, but I cringe now at the truly terrible prose and dialogue I wrote! But I stuck with it, and took some classes at a writing center in Indiana. There, my teacher encouraged me to get formal training in creative writing, so I enrolled in the low-residency MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and later the Institute of American Indian Arts. It was wonderful to connect with like-minded people at those schools, and I soaked up as many craft books and articles as I could. Those years were really important to me, and I’m delighted now to help emerging writers as a faculty member at two MFA programs and a local writing workshop. 

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

My teachers at Vermont College of Fine Arts and the Institute of American Indian Arts were all fantastic. They guided me in a very supportive way and helped me identify the (many!) weaknesses in my writing. In particular, David Jauss’s craft books and articles were tremendously helpful, and I assign them now to my writing students. For learning plot and narrative structure, I recommend reading screenplay writing books, especially the Save the Cat! series. Although some people don’t like the screenplay template used in those books, I advise that it’s wise to first learn the standard three-act narrative structure before you try alternatives. In terms of novels, the works of Larry McMurtry and James Welch were crucial to me, both as a reader and writer. 

When and where do you write? 

As the father of two teenage boys, I have to carve out writing time whenever I can. Generally, that means very, very early in the morning and sometimes late at night. I have a home office with a wonderful view of some maple trees, but I get cabin fever easily and find that a trip to the coffeehouse will often help my writing. I strongly recommend changing your writing routine (time, place, music, anything different) if you feel you’re stuck.

What are you working on now? 

The sequel to Winter Counts! I’m truly delighted to share that there will be another Virgil Wounded Horse novel. The working title is Wounded Horse, and I’m working on it now. Virgil, Marie, Nathan, and Tommy will be back, as well as a surprising new character. Writing the second book in a series presents some challenges I haven’t faced before, and I’m learning as I go. For example, there’s a balancing act between presenting enough information for readers who may not have read the first book but not boring those who did. There’s also the challenge of having your characters grow and change, but not so much that you lose their fundamental nature. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Certainly. There have been times that I just can’t get my creative work going, and that’s when I turn to editing, research, or some other task related to my current project. I think it’s important to realize that sometimes you just won’t be able to create, for whatever reason. But it’s critical to use your time productively and keep your momentum going on a project. 

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

Be ruthless when editing your own work! When you think you’ve done as much revision and editing as you can, go over your manuscript one more time and take out any unnecessary language. A writing instructor said this to me years ago, but I didn’t really understand it until I had to edit the final manuscript for Winter Counts and take out 10,000 words. I didn’t think I could cut that much out, but I was wrong. I looked at every scene and every paragraph and mercilessly edited it. I ended up with a much tighter and cleaner book and learned a valuable lesson.

What’s your advice to new writers?

I often hear the advice, “Write every day without fail!” But I don’t agree with that. We all deal with family and career issues, and sometimes you have to put your writing down for a period of time. So, forgive yourself if you need to focus on other tasks for a bit. But let me be clear:  being a serious writer requires a considerable time commitment. Writing a novel, memoir, or other creative work takes a massive amount of time, and you will most likely have to sacrifice something to achieve the dream of completing your work. While writing Winter Counts, I had to give up watching movies and attending concerts, some of my favorite activities. But I promise it will be worth it when you finish your project.

Bonus advice! In a workshop, I find that new writers often discount the suggestions from fellow students and only listen to their instructors. That’s a mistake. Every reader—even if they’re not a well-established author—has something to tell you, and you should consider carefully what they’re saying. Of course, you’ll end up discounting many of those comments, but you may find that someone has discovered an area for revision that you (or the teacher) hadn’t realized. In other words, be open to all good-faith suggestions, whatever the source. 

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled member of the Sicangu Lakota nation, is the author of the novel Winter Counts (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2020), a New York Times Editors’ Choice, Amazon Best Book, Best of the Month by Apple Books, Indie Next Great Reads pick, and main selection of the Book of the Month Club. He also wrote the children’s book Spotted Tail (Reycraft, 2019), winner of the 2020 Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and finalist for the Colorado Book Awards. He’s the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, a Ragdale Foundation residency, the PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship, and was a Tin House Scholar. He received his MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts, and is professor of Native American studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver.