Dan Fesperman

How did you become a writer?

I started writing as a college reporter at The Daily Tar Heel at UNC, and from there I spent the next twenty or so years meandering through various newspaper jobs until the winter of '94, when I began writing my first novel, shortly after returning from a reporting trip to the besieged city of Sarajevo. I suppose I'd finally concluded that even the long, narrative pieces I was writing for the Baltimore Sun could no longer encompass all the vivid material that had piled up in my notebooks, or the ideas that were tumbling in my head. It took a while for me to get comfortable with the idea of letting my imagination take the helm whenever I sat down to write, but otherwise the transition to fiction was fairly smooth.

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

Carol Moloney, a high school teacher who turned me into a voracious binge reader by introducing me to the novels of Kurt Vonnegut at age fifteen; Claudia Stillman, a freshman English instructor at UNC who let me know right away that the bullshitting and imprecise writing habits of a lazy, under-achieving high schooler would no longer be acceptable; Jim Shumaker, a journalism professor who was an evangelist of clarity and simplicty; and, in one way or another, just about every writer I've ever read. And as long as you keep reading, the learning never stops.

When and where do you write?

Mornings are my most productive time, and as I move ever deeper into a novel my work days lengthen and become increasingly productive, increasingly absorbing. Once I'm past the halfway mark it's the last thing I think about before sleep and my first thought upon waking. My basement office has big windows that overlook woods that change with the seasons, and it's quiet and private.

What are you working on now?

I just finished what I think is my best book yet (and I'm not one of those authors who reflexively says that about each successive novel). It's called Winter Work, and it's set about four months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The main character is an East German spymaster who's about to receive his last paycheck, and isn't even allowed back into the office to clean out his desk. His life and his secrets -- and those of his colleagues -- are up for grabs. And their former friends and foes (chiefly the Russians and the Americans) are eagerly vying for both. It's a shadowy and chaotic espionage marketplace, with plenty of twists, turns and intriguing personalities, and there's no guarantee of safe passage for anyone.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I don't believe in writer's block. I do struggle sometimes to settle on an idea for my next book, but once I've made that decision I have no trouble beginning or continuing the writing.

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

Make writing a daily habit, even if you're not yet certain you have something worthwhile to say. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

See above answer. Also, read as needily as if books were food and drink. And by all means, get outside of your comfort zone to spend time among people who aren't like you, even if only in the name of research, and in doing so be a careful listener, an observant watcher.

Dan Fesperman is the author of a dozen critically acclaimed novels of suspense, including The Cover Wife, which the New York Times called “a sharp, smart novel that hits fast and hard, its reverberations echoing after the last page is turned.” Previous books have won two Dagger awards in the UK and the Dashiell Hammett award in North America. His work is drawn from his own travels as an author and reporter, experiences which have taken him to three war zones and more than thirty countries. His next novel, Winter Work, will be published in the coming year by Alfred A. Knopf. He lives in Baltimore.

Ashley Winstead

How did you become a writer?

I think it was one of those “born that way” situations. I was always a voracious reader and have very early memories of being fascinated by language choice, the rhythm of a sentence, the way it’s more than just the direct signifier of a word that contributes to the feeling you get when you encounter it. For a long time I thought I wanted to be a poet, but I used to stay up late at night telling my siblings elaborate stories, so I probably should have known I’d write books.

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

The poets Mary Oliver and Richard Siken have had an enormous influence on the way I write and also my tendencies toward earnestness, intensity, and vulnerability. Hands down the most influential teacher was my fourth-grade teacher Mrs. Ruth, who encouraged my writing to the point I actually gained a self-confidence that has remained fairly stubborn, despite all the rejections in the years since. The power of early support. And I love pop culture, so I have to credit Francine Pascal, Ann M. Martin, and the writers of Buffy, Veronica Mars, and Dark Angel for my obsession with narratives that center complicated, powerful women.

When and where do you write?

I try to write every day, all day, if my attention span will let me. And I write in my guest bedroom, which we’re slowing trying to turn into my office. Right now it’s a lumpy chair, an ottoman, and a side table. I can’t work at a desk to save my life. Feels too much like school.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on several projects: a sequel to my first romance/women’s fiction novel and two new thrillers, one of which is a high-drama feminist murder mystery, and the other is a dark, intense southern gothic. I love being able to switch between different voices and modes. Keeps things interesting.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

If I’m struggling to get words on the page, I’ll either listen to music or take a shower and then I’ll get inspired. Or I ask myself why I’m struggling, and the answer is usually because I’m bored. And if so, that means the plot needs to change to something I’m excited to write and readers will be excited to read. But not being able to get words on the page is a rare problem for me. Much more common is struggling to work out the puzzle pieces of my plot in the earlier plotting phase. But I give myself grace with that because it’s literally just hard to invent a story that will wow and surprise and also feel earned and organic. So when I’m drawing a blank, I feel like that’s pretty earned and I give myself time and space to come to the right answers.

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

I can’t write books without Lisa Cron’s Story Genius, so I could probably just point to that book as the answer, but something else that has been meaningful to me is the advice that you are who you are and you’re going to write what you’re going to write, and there’s tremendous value in not trying to be like someone else, whether in style or subject matter. I used to worry that the things I was interested in were too feminine or superficial for the crime fiction genre, or too dark and vulnerable for the romance genre, and on and on. But your particular voice and set of interests are strengths, not weaknesses. I’ve learned to embrace “Winstead style” and “Winstead subjects” wholeheartedly.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Embrace your unique lens on the world, first. Second, if you’re like most of us, there’s going to come a point in your writing journey where you feel so overwhelmed by rejection that you can no longer envision a future where you’re successful. It ceases to become a possibility even the most optimistic part of your brain will allow. The writers who do become successful are the ones who keep going, relying on whatever they need to—spite, sheer stubbornness—to push on. If you keep writing and growing, you will have a future.

Ashley Winstead is the author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife (Sourcebooks Landmark, 2021) and the forthcoming romance Fool Me Once (Graydon House, 2022) and thriller The Last Housewife (Sourcebooks Landmark, 2022). She has a PhD in contemporary American literature and a BA in English and Art History, and lives in Houston with her husband and two beloved cats.

Matthew Specktor

How did you become a writer?

Probably the way that almost everybody else does: by beginning as an obsessive and passionate reader. There are people who come at it otherwise, of course, but almost every writer I know has a similar origin story: books they read as a child, or as a teenager, obsessed them. In my case it was The Wizard of Oz (and all the subsequent books, like Ozma of Oz or Rinkitink in Oz), D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths, and Tom Sawyer, all books I read when I was very young. And then, when I was a teenager, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Barth's The End of the Road, and--perhaps strangely--Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. From there the die was essentially cast. The rest of it was just the effort of writing itself, and an extremely high tolerance for failure. (I started writing seriously--by which I mean regularly, almost every day--in my early twenties. I didn't publish until I was forty.)

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

I went to a strong MFA program, and my undergraduate school had some extraordinary professors of creative writing, so I was lucky to study with some amazing teachers, among them James Baldwin, Joseph Brodsky, Charles D'Ambrosio, Victor LaValle, David Shields. I've been lucky, too, to have exceptional writers as my friends and colleagues--Jonathan Lethem, say, or Renata Adler. But in the end my strongest influences--which are ongoing; one should never be "finished," in this respect, or outside the range of being influenced--are books. Far too many to mention in the end, but some that were particularly vital to me at crucial junctures were Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, Graham Swift's Waterland, James Salter's Light Years, Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater, Shirley Hazzard's The Transit of Venus, Henry James's Portrait of a Lady and The Ambassadors, and Baldwin's Another Country.

When and where do you write?

In the mornings, in my office--or wherever I happen to be--every day. I try to get to it as early as possible, so I don't get distracted, and so anxiety or uncertainty doesn't get the better of me first. And I go until I get tired, until--midsentence, always--intuition tells me to stop.

What are you working on now?

A chaotic memoir, that's also a social history of the movie business. I can't say much more about it than that, although I will say that these definitions--"memoir," "social history," "novel," "literary fiction"--feel more and more like marketing brackets, and less like useful aesthetic distinctions, to me. I write longform imaginative prose, underpinned frequently by research, interrupted now and again by flights of criticism, or personal, confessional narrative. (I suppose, too, on the evidence of three books running, that I have a subject, or subjects, that obsess me: Los Angeles, art and capitalism, the movies, etc.) But . . . my approach is a novelist's approach, and it will always be a novelist's approach. I don't really think it's possible to apprehend anything without the imagination interceding to interpret. So this is a book about my family and myself. But it's also a work of wild speculation. I wish I could be more succinct about it, but today of all days, I cannot.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Yes, of course. More so when I was younger, but--there were times (there are times) when I'm between projects, or when I'm stuck in the middle of one, and can't figure out what to do. That's "block." But I've stopped thinking of it as block, which helps. In the end, I think, there are two kinds of crises for a writer: crises of information (in which case, research or an intelligent edit/re-think can lead you back to a place where you're ready to succeed), and crises of confidence. It's the latter that leads to block, and while there's no known cure for that except time and good luck, I experience that one less--and less terminally, when I do--as I get older. One begins to recognize that periods of drift or confusion are an inevitable part of the process.

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

Years ago, when I couldn't sell my second novel, I opened my ears to all sorts of advice ("Fire your agent!" "Cut 200 pages!" "Don't cut anything, just retitle it and submit it again!") until someone said to me, "That's the trouble with writing advice. Eventually it all blends into a kind of white noise." I'd like to say that that's the best advice I've ever received, right there, but in reality it's probably this: there's the book a writer needs to write, and there's the book that other people need to read. Very rarely are they the exact same book. Which is a longform way of saying Listen to your editor, but I've found it useful to codify it as such, and to remember when I'm writing that certain things that feel absolutely essential are essential to the writing but might not necessarily remain so to the finished book.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Don't rush. Everybody worries about publishing, everybody's anxious to do it, and your first book is inevitably so hard to write (at least for most people it is) that we're inevitably deeply invested in publishing it. But . . . your first book is probably not your best book (unless you're really unlucky), and it's probably not as good as you think it is. I spent seven years writing mine, and when it didn't sell I was so deeply disconsolate I thought not just that my "career" was over, but that my life might as well be too. These years later, I am elated it wasn't. "Patience" is a hard thing to counsel, since writers are often impatient creatures by nature, but . . . insofar as it's possible: be patient.

Matthew Specktor is the author of the novels American Dream Machine and That Summertime Sound, and of the memoir-in-criticism Always Crashing in the Same Car. He is a founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books.