Catherine Dang

How did you become a writer?

My parents owned a liquor store when I was a kid, and occasionally my sister and I were stuck there. We did our homework and read books in the backroom, but I’d get bored. That was when I started writing short stories in a notebook. They were often about shows that I wished I was watching instead.

I was a pragmatic kid. Writing never seemed like a “real” career. I figured I was supposed to do something more realistic, like law. Since my family never had much money, I wanted to change that in my own future.

I botched those plans in college, though. I told myself that I was only taking fiction and screenwriting classes for “fun.” But I think a part of me just wanted to test the waters. I wanted to see how my writing stacked up to my peers. I wanted to see if I could commit to writing whole projects. I started with poems, then short stories. Then I finished an entire two-hour screenplay for my thesis. And I understood that I was a decent writer.

I knew I was going to regret it if I didn’t take writing seriously. I wanted to give myself at least one chance to fail. So right after graduation, I started work on the manuscript that would become Nice Girls. I also entered the workforce. I got a day job, I hated the day job, and then I left the day job in 10 months. That experience changed my life, though. It made me desperate enough to finish Nice Girls. It kept me disciplined enough to edit the manuscript. And I began querying agents right after. Slowly, things took off from there.

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

I was a "Reading Rainbow" kid. LeVar Burton told stories in such a captivating way—he made me want to read everything. I also watched a lot of anime and true crime in childhood, then movies as a teenager. I think all those experiences taught me the mechanics of a good story.

Judy Blume and Sylvia Plath are probably the two biggest influences in my own fiction writing. Their novels felt so honest and confessional, and I happened to read them at the right times in my life. They resonated with me deeply. Blume gave me comfort, and Plath seemed to understand me. I’ve always wanted my own writing to have that same undercurrent of honest emotion. It doesn’t matter how light or brutal the feeling—it just has to feel real.

I also admire distinct prose. I love Sally Rooney, Ocean Vuong, and Haruki Murakami. Their prose is sparse and delves into the mundane (Murakami loves his food descriptions!), but they know how to pack an emotional punch. On the other hand, I’ve also been struck by Cormac McCarthy’s and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ prose. I read The Road and Between the World and Me in two entirely different summers. But the writing had the same kind of magic: just beautiful, elegant, winding prose about some of the most painful, brutal things. Their writing lingers.

I’m someone who gets influenced by a little of everything—music, articles, the way people talk. I even get impressed by memes.

When and where do you write?

I usually write in the mornings at home. But when I’m in a slump, I like to go to a coffee shop and pretend that I’m as productive as the people around me.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on my next novel. I told myself it would be lighter. So far, it’s…bloodier.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

It hits me fairly often. For me, writer’s block can happen for a multitude of reasons: I’m bored, I’m not inspired, something in the book feels “off.” If I’m feeling really stubborn, I’ll keep chipping away at the writing. Sometimes a good run or exercise helps get rid of the block. Other times, I get out of that funk by consuming other stories, whether it’s reading a book or watching a movie. I like experiencing someone else’s creation—it motivates me to get back into my own work. And honestly, some of the best writing comes after the writer’s block.

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

The one Nike ad: “Yesterday you said tomorrow.”

What’s your advice to new writers?

Talent is good; resolve is better.

Catherine Dang is a former legal assistant based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is a graduate of the University of Minnesota. Nice Girls is her first novel.

Nathan Gorenstein

How did you become a writer?

In the 6th grade I failed to complete the required reading for a book report, so I concocted something, don't recall exactly what, and got a B+. So I figured I could write. My next writing adventure was in high school, when I joined the student newspaper as a reporter and ended up as managing editor. As was reinforced by my college experience, I found the managing editor actually runs things while the editor does long lunches. Despite being managing editor at the college daily I gravitated towards writing rather than editing for much of my career.
Not that I am adverse to long lunches.

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

Oddly, for someone who has spent a career writing non-fiction, the author whose prose I admired the most when starting out was John le Carré, and I recall telling a friend in a burst of youthful hubris that I could do what le Carré did. Of course I could not, but his skill with language was something to aspire to. In college my enthusiasm for newspapers was mightily encouraged by the late, great Howard Ziff at the University of Massachusetts, who placed journalism's importance within the context of history, governance and democracy, lessons that have withstood the test of time. George Orwell’s work was also a major inspiration, and once I met Seymour Hersh, who was friendly to a young journalist. Despite a career in newspapers, I always wanted to write books, which I finally did after taking a buyout.

When and where do you write?

At a desk, in a home office, on a computer. I work newspaper reporter hours, starting from about 10 am with a break in the afternoon and ending between 6 and 8, depending on how the work is going. As I write non-fiction, the writing is almost always interspersed with reporting, as no matter how much one does before sitting down, new questions constantly arise. I couldn't do what I do – within a reasonable timeframe and without research assistants – if not for the internet. 

What are you working on now?

Just finished my second book, published in May 2021 by Simon & Schuster, “The Guns of John Moses Browning,” a social history/biography of the man whose inventions, as my elevator pitch goes, started World War One and won World War Two. I’m casting about for another topic sufficient to sustain my interest for three years…all suggestions welcome.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Not in the usual sense. I do struggle on how to structure complex non-fiction timelines, say where an event in 1900 only becomes significant in 1920, while in the meantime I need to write about events in 1910. As my editor at S&S, Rick Horgan, told me, you need to keep a linear timeline or else risk loosing the reader. It was a struggle but I figured out how.

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

Not sure who gave it, or whether I figured it out myself, but you need the ability to see what is actually on the page, not what you think is on the page. That requires the brutal ability to be a candid critic of yourself. And that means tossing pages and pages of supposedly finished text, and much research, upon realizing the approach you’ve taken isn’t working. For my latest book I spent much time researching and writing about a young man who used a lightweight flintlock “squirrel gun” to track and shoot the “last” wild deer in Indiana. (Yes, deer were almost extinct 120 years ago). Yet it just didn’t fit the chapter and I ended up using one sentence from all that work.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Re-write. And then re-write again. And once more. Don’t let anyone tell you no if, after an honest self-critique, you believe you are right.

Bio: I grew up in Medford, Mass., went to UMass Amherst, majored in Journalism/English, barely graduated, worked on the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton Mass., the Wilmington Delaware News-Journal, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, where I did long investigative pieces, daily reporting, political reporting, and was an editor for a few years, which helped with my writing. My first book was “Tommy Gun Winter,” about a once-infamous 1930s Boston criminal gang: an MIT grad, a minister’s daughter, and two of my relatives (first cousins twice removed.) Its on option to the left coast, but we’ve all heard that before! Then the John Browning book. It’s pretty good. Actually, both are! :)

Tom Lin

How did you become a writer?

I’m not sure I have a satisfying answer to this question—I’ve always written stories for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t really think of writing as something I could do until probably high school. So high school, then. But I didn’t publish anything before The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu.

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

For sense of place and momentum: John Steinbeck, whose East of Eden is one of my favorite books. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick as well as “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” For beauty of language: José Saramago’s Death with Interruptions, Blindness, and The Double. Wallace Stevens’s poems and aphorisms, as well as Mary Ruefle’s luminous genius in both poetics (Dunce) and criticism (Madness, Rack, and Honey). For the intersection of the surreal and the real: Jorge Luis Borges and his mind-bending shorts, as well as László Krasznahorkai’s weird and twisty Satantango and his single-sentence The Last Wolf (which, in my edition at least, comes bound in an inverted pair with Herman, also great). Art is also a huge influence: I love the vibrance and color of James Turrell’s Skyspace installations, the arresting topologies of Richard Serra’s Joe and Torqued Ellipse series, and J. M. W. Turner’s inconstant, delicate Rigi watercolors. I’m lucky enough to have had some truly excellent teachers. Among them are my undergraduate advisor, the late and brilliant Arden Reed, and Jonathan Lethem, who taught the one and only creative writing class I’ve ever taken.

When and where do you write?

When the mood strikes me, I write on my laptop at my desk. I wish the mood would strike me much, much more often. I also have a baby-blue IBM Selectric sitting on a bookshelf—it once occupied a little writing desk, but I had to move it up and out of reach of the cat’s reach—and I use it for no-stakes freewrites of scene or character sketches. I like to write in near-total silence in long, uninterrupted stretches, which means that (though I’d very much like to!) I can’t write in a coffee shop, or really any other fun, interesting place.

What are you working on now?

Right now I’m working on my second novel, which is still in its early stages. I think it’s a really interesting idea and I’m excited to see where it goes.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

All the time. For me, writer’s block gets worse the more you try to push through it. So I try to find a way around it—going on a walk, doing some more research, going for a drive—and trust that my mind will keep working on it even when I’m not literally sitting at my computer trying to make sentences. 

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

Keep going. And the old chestnut, write what you know, but with an addendum: you know a lot of things, more than you’d think. In writing, “what you know” can put on any number of disguises.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read as much as you can: good writing so you can figure out what makes it so good, bad writing so you can learn what to avoid. Fiction and nonfiction and poetry and criticism. Old stuff, new stuff. Everything. A text is magical not because it retains some history of its being written, but because it offers the possibility of its being read. Writers must always be readers first.

Tom Lin was born in China and immigrated to the United States when he was four. A graduate of Pomona College, he is currently in the PhD program at the University of California, Davis. The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is his first novel.