Sari Botton

How did you become a writer? I think I might have been born a writer. I've been taking notes on everything in my surroundings since I was a small kid. But I became a professional writer the summer of '86, between my junior and senior years of college, when I had a paid internship on the arts desk at Newsday/New York Newsday. I assumed they'd have me fetching coffee for reporters, but they threw me in the deep end, and I wrote about two short features a week. After some time in arts journalism and trade journalism, I focused on becoming an essayist and memoirist. I started publishing personal essays in the late 90s, and that was my jam.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies was the first book that made me want to write a memoir in essays. Joan Didion's personal essays have always knocked me out, especially Goodbye to All That, first published in the Saturday Evening Post, and later in her essay collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, about arriving in New York City starry-eyed at 20, and leaving bleary-eyed at 28. That essay was the inspiration for my bestselling anthology, Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving & Leaving NY.

When and where do you write? I write pretty much every day. I try to journal a little bit in the morning, shortly after I arise. I write frequently for my three newsletters, Oldster Magazine, Memoir Monday, and Adventures in *Journalism*. These days I do most of my writing at home, in my dining room. I have a home office, where I wrote my memoir, And You May Find Yourself...Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo, but for some reason I haven't felt like working in there since I published that book last June. I'll probably head back in there when I'm ready to work on my next book.

What are you working on now? In addition to my newsletters, I'm working on some personal essays I hope to publish elsewhere soon. I'm also beginning to work on a proposal for an Oldster Magazine essay anthology.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? I've had a few terrible bouts of writers' block. It can be very demoralizing. You feel as if you'll never be able to write again. Most recently, I felt blocked because I was a witness in a court case and my journal and several of my personal emails were subpoenaed. It was a terrible invasion of my privacy, and it involved the one place where it's always felt safe to express myself, and empty my head before writing drafts of essays. Until the case's recent resolution, I felt afraid to journal or write anything too personal. I'm glad that's over. Unfortunately, the only cure for writers' block is...writing.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? When perfectionism halts you (which it always does), lower the stakes and give yourself permission to write lousily. It also helps to write lousily while racing a timer. I'm a big adherent of the Pomodoro Method.

What’s your advice to new writers? Don't be in a rush to publish. Realize that all good writing takes time to develop. Learn from my mistake of, in the past, publishing half-baked essays I'm now so glad you can't find anywhere. Take time between drafts; put your writing away for a week or so before you come back to it, when you have added perspective. Give yourself time to change your mind, or have your thoughts shift about what you're writing about. It's natural to feel impatient, or competitive with other writers who are further along. But in the end, you won't regret having taken your time. 

Sari Botton is the author of the memoir in essays, And You May Find Yourself...Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo. She is a contributing editor and columnist at Catapult, and the former Essays Editor for Longreads. She edited the bestselling anthologies Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NewYork and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York. She teaches creative nonfiction at Catapult, Bay Path University and Kingston Writers' Studio. She publishes Oldster Magazine, Memoir Monday, and Adventures in Journalism. She is the Writer in Residence in the creative writing department of SUNY New Paltz for Spring, 2023.

V.V. Ganeshananthan

How did you become a writer? I became a writer in, I think, the way that most people do. I was an avid reader and it just seemed to me like there was no better job than telling stories. From a very early age, I was pretty decisive that that was what I wanted to do. Then my mother encouraged me also to pursue journalism as I went into high school, and I kept doing that in college and a little bit afterwards as well. And all along, I was always writing fiction. I do consider myself first and foremost a fiction writer, but I was published first as a journalist. So those were the paths that I took to those two genres.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). I was privileged to have amazing teachers very early on. In high school I had a teacher who was both the creative writing teacher and also the journalism advisor. She was extraordinarily encouraging and has published fiction of her own. Her name is Jan Bowman. In college, I studied with Patricia Powell and Jamaica Kincaid, and then at the Iowa Writers' Workshop I studied with ZZ Packer, Jim McPherson, Elizabeth McCracken, Marilynne Robinson, James Hynes, Frank Conroy, Chris Offutt, and Ethan Canin. I basically took class with almost everyone who was on the faculty there. They had varied styles, and they were incredibly generous. So I'm grateful for that. As a working journalist, I also, for a period of time, worked for James Fallows—after graduating from college, I worked at The Atlantic, where Jim was writing about higher education. I did research for him and also wrote a piece with him and he was a fantastic mentor and gave great advice as well. But, again, in a separate genre. So in both the creative writing world and in the journalistic world, I was lucky to have a lot of people editing me, really. And I think that was how I learned the most.

When and where do you write? I write mostly on my couch or in my bed. I also sometimes write at my desk. And I write whenever the time presents itself. I probably write best in the afternoon or late at night but I do write at all hours and I'm a little bit of a binge writer. So if I am on a writing streak, I might wake up and start writing and basically write until I go to bed. And then I do have streaks where I don't write at all. Because I have a motor disability that limits my typing, I sometimes have been concerned about my ergonomic setup, but when I'm just talking to the computer using voice recognition, that's obviously less of a concern, and I'm able to move around as I would like.

What are you working on now? I'm now working on some short stories and essays that I started while I was working on my novel, but that I hadn't brought to the finish line. I'm having a lot of fun with those; I don't really have a sense of where they're going, which is delightful. It's interesting to return to the space of not knowing what the end product is, or trying to decide what it might be, what is its form. And I have to reteach myself how to do that. I don't know at what point I decide, oh, I'm working on a short story collection, or oh, I'm working on an essay collection, or oh, I'm working on a mixed genre collection with the same themes, or oh, this short story wants to be a novel. So I guess I'm in the period of figuring that out.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? I guess I have suffered from writer's block, although I don't know at the time that I called it that. I don't think that I've ever been very good at admitting that I can't do something. I'm probably more likely to do it badly. So probably writer's block, for me, looked like writing a lot of pages that were just really terrible. And that definitely happened. So I think I have a tendency to hurl myself against the closed door rather than walking away from it, and I'm not sure that's the best habit. Sometimes walking away from your work for a little while seems like it could be really helpful.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? The best writing advice I've ever received is probably from Jamaica Kincaid and Elizabeth McCracken. So Jamaica Kincaid would always tell us to read our work aloud. And she's certainly not the only writer who's said that, but she's the first one who said it to me. She's also the first person who ever made me read my work aloud to her in her office. And she would edit me verbally as I went through each sentence, which was excruciating and also extraordinarily useful. And that, I think, is tied to Elizabeth McCracken's instructions to think about each story teaching you how to read it, which is also something that I think about pretty often.

What’s your advice to new writers? I always feel funny giving advice. I think that, at the beginning of each new project, anyone might feel like a new writer. And I also think that any writer can benefit from just having someone around to cheer them on. There's a lot that's been said about workshop and critique. And I think that those things are really valuable. But when a project is kind of young and tender, I know that I have benefited hugely from having people say, “This is good, keep going!” In the early stages of certain projects, including my first novel, including my second novel, that was the feedback, that was what readers said. That was what helped me to keep going.

V.V. Ganeshananthan (she/her) is the author of the novels Brotherless Night (a New York Times Editors’ Choice) and Love Marriage, which was longlisted for the Women's Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among other publications. A former vice president of the South Asian Journalists Association, she has also served on the board of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and is presently a member of the boards of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota, where she is a McKnight Presidential Fellow and associate professor of English. Since 2017, she has co-hosted the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast on Literary Hub, which is about the intersection of literature and the news.

Michael C. Bland

How did you become a writer? I’ve always loved telling stories. When I was 10 years old, I created three comic books featuring robotic bugs I’d created from drafting paper. Yet I didn’t pursue writing at first; instead, I focused on business. After college, my first job was in collections, which included repossessing cars. That made me ask myself what I wanted to do with my life. (Something I should have pondered before I graduated.) This led me to explore writing. Yet other than buying a few books on writing, I didn’t take any formal training for a number of years. That was a mistake. It was only after I began taking classes at the University of Iowa’s summer writing program that my skills as an author began to improve. I also found a partner in Robert Kerbeck, who edited my writing while I edited his. That elevated my skills. Having someone who gave blunt feedback, who pushed me to be better, helped me become the writer I am today.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). Robert Kerbeck, who I just mentioned, is an influence both as a writer and editor. He has two nonfiction books (Ruse and Malibu Burning) which are both excellent. I’ve been influenced by the more classic science fiction authors, Robert A. Heinlein, Carl Sagan, and Isaac Asimov. My father was a big sci-fi reader, and I would read his copies of their books when I was a kid, dazzled by their stories. I’ve also been inspired by Pierce Brown with his Red Rising series. The voice of his main character is outstanding. And I’ve loved Blake Crouch’s work, with his stories centered around technology that could really happen, and how they impact the main character(s).

When and where do you write? I have an office where I do most of my writing, which at first looks very professional…until you notice the Star Wars figurines crowded under my computer monitor; the framed pictures are artists’ renditions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Flash; a lightsaber is resting on the back of the couch, and so on. I have a Surface, so I’m actually able to write almost anywhere. As far as when I write, I primarily write on the weekends, as I have a full-time job. Yet I never truly stop writing. My Notes app on my phone is filled with countless entries regarding my next book and ideas for other stories.

What are you working on now? I am working on the third book in The Price Of trilogy. The story has been mapped out, and I’m fine-tuning my notes before I begin the rough draft. Readers don’t need to read The Price of Safety before reading The Price of Rebellion. I wrote The Price of Rebellion as a stand-alone book, including the pertinent information readers need to understand Dray Quintero’s world. It’s more about the journey he and the other main characters take in this book, and how it changes their world.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Yes, but not in the traditional sense of staring at a blank screen, as I don’t turn on the computer if I don’t know what I want to write. I know that sounds like cheating, but don’t worry, there have been many, many times where I’ve been unsure what to write, how to develop a story, and so on. With The Price of Rebellion, I knew I wanted certain events to occur in the story, but the book didn’t come fully formed. I had to work at crafting the story. To me, it’s like walking in a fog, with the “fog” being the endless choices that could be made with the story. As I define my story, the fog clears, those endless choices coalescing (over an excruciatingly long time) into the final path the story takes.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? “Keep your day job.” This wasn’t a criticism of my writing ability. It was a harsh reality that few people can truly support themselves as a writer. Many do, but as I focus just on novels, that limits my income. As I produce more publishable work, I can build my readership and sell more books, but it’s a long process. Writers who support themselves with royalty income from their novels are few and far between. It’s not impossible, but don’t expect your first book to become a national bestseller that will enable you to quit your day job.

As far as writing, Stephen King’s advice to take your finished rough draft, stick it in a drawer for six weeks, and work on something else before editing the draft was great advice. I get a much better perspective if I step away from the book for a while. With The Price of Rebellion, after I completed the rough draft in early 2020, the pandemic hit, which forced me to put the book aside for over six months. When I was finally able to pick it back up, I was better able to see the parts that worked and the parts that didn’t.

What’s your advice to new writers? To go back to my fog analogy, there will be many times you will be frustrated and feel you won’t be able to see your story, your characters’ motivations, or even remember why you’re writing in the first place. Keep at it. Writing isn’t easy, at least not the level you need in order to get published. Take classes. Join writers’ groups. More than likely, your writing will be subpar at first. Almost everyone’s is. But just like playing the piano, snow skiing, or piloting an airplane, you don’t instinctively know how to write the first time you try. To be good at anything takes time, practice, training, and focus. The more you do it, and the more you strive to improve your writing, the better you will become. That second part is important, because if you just write without taking classes, getting feedback, reading others’ works, etc., you will just be spinning your wheels.

Michael C. Bland’s debut novel The Price of Safety, was published in 2020. Though released during a global pandemic, The Price of Safety reached #7 in Amazon’s rankings for Dystopian novels and received Finalist awards three times: by the Indie Book Awards for both Science Fiction and Thriller, and by National Indie Excellence Awards for New Fiction. The second novel in the trilogy, The Price of Rebellion, will be released on May 16, 2023. The novel recently won Best Science Fiction Novel of 2022 by Indies Today. Michael is a founding member and the secretary of BookPod, an online book support group. “Elizabeth”, one of his short stories, won Honorable Mention in Writer’s Digest 2015 Popular Fiction Awards contest, and two of the short stories he edited have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He currently lives in Florida. Website: www.mcbland.com.