Paul Zeidman

How did you become a writer?

I think I’ve always been a writer. Started with fiction, dabbled in one-act plays, then went all-out on screenwriting. I get a real kick out of telling stories, and especially love to spin a ripping yarn. There’s nothing like taking your reader/audience on a rollercoaster ride they can’t wait to get on again.

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

Writers: John Steinbeck, Ernest Lehman, Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges, Lord & Miller, the writers for The Jack Benny Show and Rocky & Bullwinkle. Teachers: Mr. Truitt (film) and Mr. Fisher (fiction) from high school. I also really enjoy old pulp fiction stories like The Shadow and Doc Savage

When and where do you write? 

Because my day job ends at noon, I’ll usually set aside some time in the afternoon to write, and into the evening if possible. Also depends on what else I’ve got going on. Even if I can only crank out one page for that day, that's still one page more than I had when the day started. Most of the time I’ll work in my home office, but if I’m going somewhere that might involve waiting (doctor’s office, meeting somebody for coffee and they’re running late, etc.), I’ll bring a pen and notebook to work on whatever project I’m working on at the time.

What are you working on now? 

Splitting time between a new draft of an animated fantasy-comedy spec and working with a producer on the story for their microbudget feature project. 

I’m also working on publishing a collection of the Q&As I’ve done over the years. Looking at sometime later this year.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Lots of times. It’s frustrating, but I’ve found the best way to overcome it is to either work on something else, or step away and do something entirely unrelated to writing. You never know when inspiration will hit; more often than not it’s when you’re not actively writing. What’s also been a huge help has been to take the dog for a walk. I can’t explain why, but simply taking the dog out for a leisurely stroll through the neighborhood has yielded some great results.

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

Don’t be boring. Write something you would want to see. Write as if ink costs $1,000 an ounce.

What’s your advice to new writers?

IT’S A MARATHON, NOT A SPRINT. Things will take much, much longer than you think (or want) to happen. Be patient. Keep trying to get better. Read scripts! Get to know other writers. Don’t hesitate to share your good news and congratulate others on theirs, and offer sympathy and understanding for when things don’t work out. This is an extremely tough business to break into - disappointment, heartbreak and frustration are everyday occurrences. It’s not enough to be thick-skinned; you need to be bulletproof. 

Paul Zeidman is an award-winning screenwriter based in San Francisco who loves to create a ripping yarn that grabs the viewer and takes them on a rollercoaster ride of thrills and excitement that they can’t wait to experience again. He’s also a notoriously meticulous script editor and proofreader, with the ability to spot a rogue comma or misspelled word at a hundred paces (give or take 99 paces). When not writing, rewriting, or reading scripts, he enjoys watching movies, reading books in multiple genres, running somewhat long distances, and trying new recipes in the kitchen, along with making what could possibly be the best pecan pie west of the Mississippi. Check out his screenwriting blog Maximum Z at http://maximumz.blog or follow him on Twitter, @maximum_z.

Isaac Fellman

How did you become a writer?

Well, like a lot of writers, I'm mentally ill. To become a writer, you need drive and you need practice, and the drive to escape something -- whether it's inside your brain or outside -- is a great way to make sure you get the practice. But pure escapism will only get you so far. You'll burn out that way, and run out of ideas, and you won't learn to build a practice. At a certain point, we have to learn to care for ourselves in ways other than writing, so that writing can be a sustainable lifelong practice. It's like how a singer needs to learn not to force their voice through their throat, but instead to use their whole body to support the sound. We become writers by learning to support it.

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

I didn't seek out teachers when I was young. The problem was that I was confident in what I wanted to do, but not skilled enough to bring it across. When people didn't get it and suggested that I write differently, I would just go off and practice, certain that I could make them understand if I just got good enough at writing my way. This is a very slow and lonely way to do it. But that was the person I was in my twenties and early thirties -- patient, but painfully rigid in my thinking. 

That said, I definitely had writers who influenced me, my favorites being Scott Fitzgerald and Vladimir Nabokov, who were also memorably patient but rigid in their thinking. Both of them have a brilliant sense of rhythm; they compose in the wildest time signatures, which to me is the hardest thing to learn. Ursula Le Guin came a little later, a writer who really shines in the rhythm of how the chapters themselves are juxtaposed, as well as on a sentence level. And then I learned from Fyodor Dostoevsky and Helen DeWitt that there aren't any rules about perspective or sentence-level usage, or what's "important' in a scene, so long as you can impose its rightness and importance on the reader. The influences on how I think about character are mostly fanfic writers, but that's an aspect of my reading and writing that I prefer to keep private.

When and where do you write?

I don't have the discipline to write before work; I write in the evening after dinner, almost always at home on the couch. It's easier to write when you're comfortable, although writing at my desk is sometimes fun if I want to feel like the guy from Sunset Boulevard. I write most days. I take a day or two off per week.

What are you working on now?

A gay historical novel about a 19th-century naval tragedy. I wanted to work in a gay literary tradition; I've done more lesbian work and bi work and trans work, but a lot of my queer influences are gay men.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

All the time. It's another word for exhaustion and burnout. You can force your way past it, but you'll pay for that later. Take the day. Just like you don't save any time by darting in and out of traffic, you don't save any time by throwing yourself against your problems, as opposed to sitting with them in the background.

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

Write the book you actually want to write, not the book you feel you should write. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Don't forget that your heroes are just people, and not a different kind of person from you, either. All the masterpieces of literature were written by people who struggled with their jobs, their relationships, and the unreliability of their bodies and minds. All of those people were tired and distracted. You can be like them. Since you share their very common problems, you already are like them.

Isaac Fellman is the Lambda Literary Award-winning author of The Breath of the Sun and the upcoming novella The Two Doctors Górski. His newest book is Dead Collections, about an archivist who is a vampire. Isaac is an archivist, but not a vampire.

Candice Wuehle

How did you become a writer? 

By trying to be something else again and again. 

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

The poet Mary Szybist was my mentor in high school. She pulled me aside one day when I was seventeen to tell me I was a good writer and should think about college. My life took a new course after that. There have been many times over the years when I’ve felt pathless and have thought back to Mary. Joyelle McSweeney is also a major writing influence. I aspire to have even a little bit of her energy, style, curiosity, intelligence, and sense of the beyond.

Other writers: Edith Wharton, Ottessa Moshfegh, Jane Bowles, Tara Isabella Burton, Raven Leilani, Mona Awad, Rachel Yoder, Esi Edugyan, Clarice Lispector, Chelsey Minnis, Olivia Cronk, Kate Chopin, Lucy Ives, Virginia Woolf, Jessica Knoll, Carmen Maria Machado, Henry James, Shirley Jackson, Lauren Berlant, Gillian Flynn

When and where do you write? 

Usually my campus or home office during the late morning into early afternoon. If I’m working intensely on a project, I’ll go to the university library stacks to try to convince myself the day has reset. 

What are you working on now? 

Too many things! A prequel to MONARCH that traces MKUltra’s origins from WWII into American universities. Another novel, tentatively titled ultranatural, that’s sort of like Blonde (Joyce Carol Oates) or Rodham (Sittenfeld) in that it follows a celebrity reminiscent of Britney Spears. Finally, my partner and I are in the planning stages for a legal thriller about the opioid crisis inspired by living at the edge of Appalachia.  

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I’ve experienced writer’s rest for longer than I allowed myself to feel was acceptable. At the time, I thought it was writer’s block but now I see that it was just a dormant phase. Much of the media and literature and art I took in during that phase absorbed deeply and eventually emerged when I began to write again. I suppose I think feeling as if one is experiencing “writer’s block” is like a butterfly thinking it’s having a “creation block” because it’s in a cocoon. 

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

Probably Joan Didion’s advice in “On Keeping a Notebook”: “I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be whether we find them attractive company or not.” Of course, Didion suggests doing this through the keeping of notebooks. If I hadn’t remembered and kept space for many different versions of myself, I wouldn’t have written a lot of what I’ve written.

What’s your advice to new writers?

My practical advice is to find a job that doesn’t involve looking at a screen. Professional writing is so much more physical than I had ever imagined. My more holistic advice is simply to get curious about what you think is a mistake, to follow it to its mysterious core.

Candice Wuehle is the author of the novel MONARCH (Soft Skull, 2022) as well as the poetry collections Fidelitoria: Fixed or Fluxed (11:11, 2021); 2020 Believer Magazine Book Award finalist, Death Industrial Complex (Action Books, 2020); and BOUND (Inside the Castle Press, 2018). She holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Kansas. Candice currently teaches in the Jackson Center for Creative Writing at Hollins University.