Gordon Hutchison

How did you become a writer?

I don’t consider myself a “writer.” Not only have I never had that burning drive to write just to write, I’ve never felt I had the skillset for it. But in 1975 I landed in Japan with an English teaching job in Sapporo, and the next thing I knew, I was training in Zen for three years at a 500-year-old monastery, then specializing in Japanese folk religions at Sophia Graduate School of International Studies, then writing ad copy at the world’s largest ad agency, and finally heading up my own creative boutique. When I returned to the US in 2005 as a single father, I had three books in my head, only one of which I knew was there. That one came out first, Gangsters, Geishas, Monks & Me, a memoir, and a story most up-and-coming writers would kill for (http://gangsters-geishas-monks-and-me.com). Number two, the current offering, Reality (can be OK, but mostly it) Bites, is a collection of “original aphorisms and other philosophical fragments with teeth,” and there’s a nerdy academic “life work” on the way. 

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

My major influences came in the area of content—ideas—not style. First, in college, Norman O. Brown, who rethought Freud in his ground-breaking first book Life Against Death (1959). Second, Zen (see above) in the late ‘70s. And third, during those same years, twentieth-century spiritual teacher and mystic George Gurdjieff. (Brown held that man and society are not only neurotic, if theoretically redeemable, but driven by conflicting instinctual forces to make history, while Gurdjieff taught that man lives in a state of “waking sleep” with no unified consciousness.) Stylistically, my mentors were the copywriters of the International Creative Division at Dentsu, Inc., the “ad agency” above, and in particular, its beleaguered head wordsmith, who was contractually prohibited from refusing my non-stop requests to, “Take a look at this.” It was there, then—mid ‘80s—and thanks to him, the long-suffering Sir Eric Epling, that I gained some degree of facility with short, punchy headlines and body copy.

When and where do you write?

Any time, anywhere. I know novelists who get up early, write for however many hours or however many words, then wrap it up, rinse and repeat the next day. If that works for them or you, great. But running my own shop in Japan’s legendary bubble economy, I cut my teeth on brutal client deadlines. These days, with more say over my time, I find I write better—think clearer—in the morning. This usually happens on my threadbare “writing couch,” surrounded by stacks of paper that double as carpet.

What are you working on now?

Well, you asked. I’m currently finishing up the first draft of “a psychoanalytical comparison of Japanese and American amae, archaism, anality and sex,” that nerdy academic tome-slash-life work from Q1. Or, as I call it, The Continuity of Culture. Not the catchiest work of the decade, but I’m hoping it will prove as revolutionary as I believe it is to a limited audience of Japan experts as the first book to show not just howJapan and America are different, but why. (My old drinking crowd will never believe it came from me.)

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

To me, serious writing means overcoming blocks, but more important than any strategy is building the confidence that you can and will get through it. (It took me decades.) That said, after years of trial and error, I’ve cobbled together several approaches for dealing with stingy Muses:

(A) Put the manuscript down, walk away. Give your mind a break, to reset, ferment. Revisit with fresh eyes.

(B) Plow through it, write on. Even if it’s the worst shit you’ve ever turned out, keep at it. Finally, sift through the carnage for usable material—as many times as it takes. 

(C) Read other people. See how they handle the kinds of situations that have you blocked. 

(D) Read your manuscript aloud up to the point of blockage. Many times, the mind will keep going once the mouth stops.

Note for Plans B and C: You never know when a point will tip, or a light will go on, and you’ll be “back.” Experience is not only cumulative, but dynamic and interactive. One insight can glom onto another, like molecules combining, and you’re in one-plus-one-equals-three territory again. Full disclosure, I’m a serial ignorer of my own advice, which led to Reality Bite (82): “All the great wisdom has been said before, but much of it bears repeating.”

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

“If it’s not on my desk tomorrow, you’re fired.” Having spoken Japanese the majority of my adult life and having run with way more advertisers than writers, I don’t think I ever got the “Listen up, kid,” kind of advice you’re talking about. For me, it was more learn-as-you-go, but nobody had to tell me not to miss deadlines. I did, however, give Gangsters to two editors simultaneously, which I learned a lot from and highly recommend if at all financially feasible.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Be curious, observe, experiment. One of a writer’s most valuable assets, even more so than lucky breaks, is consciously acquired experience. Not just in order to write, of course, but you’ll write better, too. Reality Bite (365), “The ability to see wonder in the commonplace rests on the understanding that nothing is common,” is a note to self to do just that.

Gordon Hutchison has two books out and one on the way, all with distressingly long titles that keep getting longer. Gangsters, Geishas, Monks & Me: A Memoir of Three Years in the Underbelly of Japan and Reality (can be OK, but mostly it) Bites: Original Aphorisms and Other Philosophical Fragments with Teeth are commercially available, with The Continuity of Culture: A Psychoanalytical Comparison of Japanese and American Amae, Archaism, Anality and Sex still looking for a publisher. Not exactly the kind of resume that careers—or even platforms—are made of. Good thing he’s not a writer.

Joan Frank

How did you become a writer? 

I grew up with books and music, and the public library was my church. My parents were English teachers. I did not start until way late, after everyone was dead whom I'd have feared to offend or disappoint. It seemed genetically ordained.

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

E. B. White was perhaps the earliest, with Charlotte's Web. Later, White's essays. Later, To Kill a Mockingbird. My beloved high school English teacher. Later, Thaisa Frank [no relation], Bob Hass, and Stephen Dobyns. Later, everyone who has ever intensely toured interior anguish in prose that makes distilled, wrought, irreducible, shapely music. I've loved the English, the Russians, the French; James, Woolf, McCullers, Mansfield, O'Brien, Porter, Moore, Silber, Munro, Colwin, Maxwell, Toibin, McGahan, Van Booy. There are many, many "sleepers" who mean inexpressible amounts to me—like tiny golden keys to an otherwise terrifying territory—and for which I hold permanent shrines in my heart, like J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country. Anne Michaels, Joan London. I write the still-living authors letters to thank them; invariably they are gobsmacked and delighted, because we all live in the tortured vacuum of our own heads. There are so many, many names to whom I owe a loving debt of gratitude I cannot possibly gather them all at a single bidding. So I keep a constantly-expanding written list of them, many pages single-spaced, and hand over that list or e-mail it to people when they ask. People are, of course, horrified.

Where and when do you write? 

When I worked a day job [most of my life] I wrote wherever and whenever I could steal two minutes. I stole time ruthlessly for years. Now, usually mornings until about 2 p.m., in a little studio converted from an old garage in our backyard. But the notes are always being scribbled and the mind churning.

What are you working on now?

A collection of essays for writers. 

Have you ever suffered from writer's block? 

Sometimes. I just try to accept it quietly and tell myself nothing matters anyway so if the writing comes, it comes, and if not, I'll hang out (in a state of relaxed attentiveness) until it does.

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

Various people have said it different ways. The gist is, shut up about everything else, kick fear aside (we're all gonna be dead soon anyway), and gather all your tools and resources and blind rude chaotic instincts to say what must be said. Also: annihilate expectations attached to its reception.

What's your advice to new writers? 

Shut up about everything else, kick fear aside, and gather all your resources to say what must be said. Also: annihilate expectations attached to its reception.

Joan Frank ( www.joanfrank.org ) is the author of eleven books; eight of literary fiction and three essay collections. Her newest novel, THE OUTLOOK FOR EARTHLINGS, appeared in Fall 2020. Prior recent works include WHERE YOU'RE ALL GOING: FOUR NOVELLAS (Sarabande Books), which won the Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction, and TRY TO GET LOST: ESSAYS ON TRAVEL AND PLACE (Univ. of New Mexico Press), which won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize. She lives in Northern California.

Suzanne Redfearn

How did you become a writer?

I didn’t realize I was a storyteller until I was in my thirties. I always loved to read and would make up elaborate daydreams that would last for hours, but it wasn’t until I actually sat down and wrote out one of my ideas that I realized how much I wanted to share my stories with others. My first story was nothing more than a bucket-list endeavor to prove I could write a novel, but after I finished, I realized how much I love writing, and then I was hooked.

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

The first book that truly moved me was THE OUTSIDERS by S.E. Hinton. It was the first time I got so entirely lost in a story and the characters, I couldn’t get it out of my head. The next great moment in reading was when I was in college and read Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED. Her ideas resonated so strongly with me and I realized novels could change perspectives. A few years later, I read, THE POWER OF ONE by Bryce Courtenay, and it was the perfect combination of both—a story and characters that stayed with me and a theme that altered the way I looked at life.

When and where do you write? 

I used to write at Starbuck’s, but with the pandemic, my routine has been changed to buying my coffee at Starbuck’s and writing in my car in the parking lot where I still have access to Wi-fi. I know it's strange, but I find it hard to focus at home where there are distractions. I write every day and always in the morning. I find, if I skip days, I lose my mojo and it’s hard to get back in the groove.

What are you working on now? 

I was working on a new novel, but then I got the opportunity to write an Amazon Original Story (a short story only 7,000 to 10,000 words long), and so I have switched gears to work on that. I’ve never written a short story, and I am finding it challenging but exciting.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Every day I suffer from writer’s resistance, the reluctance to sit down and do the hard work of writing, knowing it will hurt my brain and make me feel like I am an untalented imposter who has no right to call herself an author. But never once, have I sat down, and not had words end up on the page. They might not be very good words, but all of it is progress that leads me forward, so I am not a big believer in writer’s block.

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

If you want to be a writer, you need to write. The more stories you tell, the more chance you have for success.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Make your characters likable. They can have flaws, but readers want to root for your protagonists (and sometimes even the antagonists).

Suzanne is the bestselling author of four novels: Hush Little Baby, No Ordinary Life, In An Instant, and Hadley & Grace. Born and raised on the East Coast, Suzanne moved to California when she was fifteen. She currently lives in Laguna Beach with her husband where they own two restaurants: Lumberyard and Slice Pizza & Beer. In addition to being an author, Suzanne is an architect specializing in residential and commercial design. When not writing, she enjoys doing anything and everything with her family—skiing, golf, tennis, pickleball, hiking, board games, and reality TV. She is an avid baseball fan. Her team is the Angels.