Jinwoo Chong

How did you become a writer? I started writing when I was nine or ten years old: a succession of really terrible derivations of things I was reading and obsessing over at the time: The Hunger Games, The Magic Tree House, etc., come to mind. I assume, all the usual suspects for someone my age growing up in the 2000s. You become a writer when you write, and forever after, so yes, I was a writer back then. I did not become a published writer until I was twenty-five, when the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum published a short piece of fiction in their annual anthology.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). My debut novel, Flux, was inspired by—among other things—Ellison's Invisible Man, Nguyen's The Sympathizer, Yu's Interior Chinatown, the short stories of Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, and Carmen Maria Machado. I am inspired most days by my dad, and his dad. 

When and where do you write? I write almost exclusively at night, after dinner but before any sleepiness has set in. I also tend to work in short, intense bursts that can take over an entire week/weekend, then come to an abrupt halt for a month or more.

What are you working on now? I'm writing a new novel, something more joyous, grounded, and autobiographical than this first one. I turned to writing and reading during the pandemic as a way to cheer myself up, and as a result found myself avoiding especially sad or desolate fiction. This has bled, somewhat, into the types of stories I'd like to tell moving forward.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? I seem to have the opposite problem: I am sometimes distracted by so many different ideas that I have a hard time making any real progress on any one thing.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? Stephen King wrote in On Writing that he often abandons his work for months at a time, comes back to it, and becomes energized by all of the opportunities for revision that reveal themselves after he's taken some time away from it. It is, genuinely, the only thing that I've tried that helps me revise.

What’s your advice to new writers? Writing and publishing are so different. They are two halves of the lifecycle of anything you put out into the world, in which it is at first yours alone, and, after you publish it, in which it no longer belongs to you but to everyone else. New writers: learn to let it go. Work on something new. I think about this every time a bad review begins to sting me. What am I going to do? Go back and change it? There's no point being upset. 

Jinwoo Chong is the author of the novel Flux, published March 21, 2023 in the US and UK from Melville House. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, The Rumpus, LitHub, Chicago Quarterly Review, andElectric Literature. He received the Oran Robert Perry Burke Award for Fiction from The Southern Review and a special mention in the 2022 Pushcart Prize anthology. He received an MFA from Columbia University and is an editorial assistant at One Story.

Henry Hoke

How did you become a writer? As soon as I could read – Calvin and Hobbes in the newspaper – I immediately began writing my own knockoff comics strips. Throughout childhood I was always more into the idea of being a writer (my parents were voracious book people), than of publishing. I illustrated and stapled together magazines about made-up celebrities. I came up with concepts for 20 bestselling novels, designed and drew their glossy covers, but never wrote a word of them. In middle school I wrote a serial romance/comedy series starring all my friends who were coupled up, and passed it around to them. I was not coupled up. It took me a long time to imagine I could put in the work to create a book for real, not just pretend.

Name your writing influences. I’m mainly inspired by musicians who have a particular, idiosyncratic cadence. Cam’ron, Joanna Newsom, Lucinda Williams. That’s what I strive for in my work: sustained voice punctuated with unexpected turns. My two writing goddesses have been with me for most of my life: Truman Capote and Suzan-Lori Parks. They have a thousand demi-goddesses sitting below them, dipping their toes in the dark pool where I’m treading water.

When and where do you write? The meat of my creation happens in bursts and fragments, in the middle of the night, at the end of a long walk. Notes typed on my phone or scribbled in journals. I record all the solid story moments and memorable lines when they come to me. Then I commit to concentrated collaging of all these elements, so I’m never starting with a blank page. Each book has been a little different, but the actual construction takes its time. In my daily writing practice I aim for a page, and sometimes I get two, or ten. It’s never worth it to beat myself up for falling short.

What are you working on now? I’m writing two different books. One for my mom, one for my dad. The mom one’s deep southern and haunted, a monologue in cassette recordings. The dad one’s a sprawling travelogue, and I’ll probably never finish it. I keep putting it aside. I wrote Sticker and Open Throat in those asides. So that’s the dad book’s function right now, to be cheated on.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Oh, honey.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? This was actually advice I got from a writer friend about playing squash, which was “It’s slower than you think.” Don’t rush for the ball. Cultivating patience in my practice was difficult, but vital.

What’s your advice to new writers? Besides the above, I think my career trajectory has taught me to ignore every obnoxious industry/workshop pressure or adage that doesn’t serve you, that rubs you the wrong way, and follow your own heart to write the most idiosyncratic, most you thing possible. Weaponize your juvenilia. Don’t leave anything behind if you love it. And, of course, life’s too short to write long books.

Henry Hoke is an editor at The Offing and the author of five books, most recently the novel Open Throat(MCD/FSG & Picador) and the memoir Sticker (Bloomsbury).

Becca Rothfeld

How did you become a writer? Professionally? By sending email after email to editors, begging them to publish my writing, until one day, they started paying me for it. Metaphysically? By writing at every opportunity, and writing in my head when pen and paper weren't available. And of course, by reading.

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

There are too many to name. But a few that spring to mind right now: James Wood, Christian Lorentzen, William Gass, Colette, Henry James, Dwight MacDonald, Norman Rush.

When and where do you write? Ideally, I'd write in the mornings, or at least immediately after I wake up (which, I must be honest, is often in the afternoon), in a cafe. I write much better when it's light outside, and I hate writing in my apartment. In reality, I often write at all hours, often at home.

What are you working on now? I'm revising the last essay of my soon-to-be- book.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Yes, often. The best remedy, I find, is to read really good prose for an hour or so, internalize its rhythms, and get back to work.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? To be honest, I haven't received much advice. Insofar as I've learned to write--I'm skeptical that writing can be learned or taught, really--it's been by following examples, not advice.

What’s your advice to new writers?

You should only care about the opinions of writers you think are good. Everyone else doesn't matter.

Becca Rothfeld is a contributing editor at the Point and the Boston Review. Her essay collection is forthcoming from Holt.