Katie Ward

How did you become a writer? I wanted to be a journalist when I was a teenager. So I went to study journalism at university and threw myself into various unpaid work placements. I soon discovered, however, that I thought much more deeply about issues than reporting a topical news story allowed for. I felt compelled to write about things in greater detail, to develop narratives, and to explore characters and ambiguity. Philosophy became my major and has been part of my creative life ever since.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). I have written about Hilary Mantel as my friend and mentor of 15 years for the Guardian. It was not only the genius of her writing, but also her poise and kindness that has influenced me. Her Wolf Hall trilogy is the outcome of decades of experience, her most fascinating ideas finding full expression at the height of her powers. Other works of fiction that are important to me include: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh; The Waves by Virginia Woolf; and the Talking Heads monologues by Alan Bennett.

My new novel Pathways was inspired by the hard problem of consciousness (sometimes known as the mind-body problem). It wouldn’t exist had I not read the philosopher Mary Midgley’s Science and Poetry.

When and where do you write? My day starts with keeping a handwritten diary, while drinking my coffee at the table in my conservatory. I note the salient details of yesterday, so I can mentally clear them away and feel more ready for today. I will stay there, if I’m able to, and continue my creative writing on my laptop. In terms of good energy, the best time to write is the morning. And if I’m flowing, I will stay put until somebody stops me.

What are you working on now? Short stories.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? I have suffered from breast cancer which knocked out a couple of productive years. I had a manuscript in progress when I was diagnosed, which motivated me to return to creative practice when my active treatment was over.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? Back yourself. Hilary taught me there are two kinds of success for an artist: internal and external. Sometimes, these are at odds. The reality for a professional writer is that we need to find a way to navigate both: so have the courage of your convictions and believe.

What’s your advice to new writers? (1) Practice, practice, practice. Write regularly and attentively. The more you write, the more you will improve over time.

(2) Find a community, online or in real life, so you can tap into support when you need to. When you start talking to other writers, you soon realise how many of your struggles are normal and that they can be overcome.

(3) Write from the heart. Write for yourself. You will get out what you put in.

Katie Ward is an award-winning author from Suffolk UK. Her new novel, Pathways, is published by Fleet (Little, Brown UK 2024). Pathways is contemporary fiction: about Cara, a neuroscientist with a research post at Cambridge trying to make an impact in her field; and Heather, her almost-stepdaughter, who goes to Las Vegas on impulse without a backward glance. A novel of both the heart and the head, Pathways is perceptive, wry and unexpectedly moving – a love story of deep originality and intelligence.

David Chaffetz

How did you become a writer? I grew up in a household of books. My father read every book that dealt with the history he had lived through himself, the Second World War, Stalin and McCarthyism, Kennedy and Vietnam, Watergate and the Contras. My mother ran a great books reading circle that ploughed through about two hundred books in a cycle of 10 years, and then repeated. I traveled to Afghanistan in 1975 without a camera. When I returned home, I shut myself in my room with an Olivetti portable typewriter and turned out two hundred pages without stopping to eat.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). Since I started out writing a travel book I took inspiration from Bruce Chatwin and Patrick Leigh-Fermour. Also, in French, Nicholas Bouvier, and older writers like Peter Fleming and Robert Byron.

When and where do you write? I write at home on the dining room table or on a large card table in the living room, with plenty of sunshine and a little bit of noise distracting from the street. I try to use a big screen to soothe my eyes. I sit down at 9:30 in the morning, and often don’t get up from the table until 4:00 in the afternoon, when I need a walk to regain the use of my legs. 

What are you working on now? I have three projects under investigation: a history of the geographic idea of Europe and how different the frontiers of Europe are today compared to the past; a more comprehensive version of my 2019 essay on woman entertainers in Asia;  a fiction project about a famous 19th century stage actress and her circle of intellectual male admirers—this latter project in collaboration with my new muse.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Most of the time I have an idea which is eating me up leaves me itching to set something down on paper, often ten at a time.  That inevitably means the structure is weak, the prose flabby, the main point lost in the telling. Now the blockage that needs to be overcome, is to tinker, to rewrite, to throw out (see below), to start over. It can take weeks or months before the text looks like something I would want to read myself.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? Bruce Chatwin advised me to put my first typescript in the drawer and move on. I didn’t take his advice. My brother, a gifted drafter of legal briefs, made a less dramatic suggestion. “Sleep on it.” The mind works while we are not paying attention. An unsolvable structural or phrasing problem can disappear with a good night’s sleep. This is obviously of no use if one has a deadline, but good writing cannot be forced.

What’s your advice to new writers? Read a lot and identify what it is you like about the books you enjoy. Read books written a hundred years ago, so you have more diverse models.  I spent a certain amount of time trying to parody Henry James, mostly to get it out of my system. This made me aware of all the different styles and voices that one can deploy, until you naturally develop your own.

Bio: I was born in Chicago into a family of readers. I studied Middle Eastern languages at Harvard, which helped me start my career as a traveler and writer in Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey. The political turmoil of the early ’80s stymied these ambitions, and that despite my marrying the greatest Arabist of her generation. The need to earn a living, and then to raise children in a stable environment led us to spend 30 years in Paris working respectively in computers and banking. This enabled us to spend extensive periods of time in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and China. As soon as I retired in 2018, I wrote Three Asian Divas, and in 2020 started working on Raiders, Rulers and Traders. My companion on all these journeys did not live to see the publication of this book that she had so patiently helped revise.

Chad Taylor

How did you become a writer? I started as a music journalist, reviewing music and films, and interviewing people. I wrote some short stories, and they got longer. I submitted my work to publishers and editors – this was in the days when you mailed paper copies of a manuscript to people. I believed in myself and I got a little lucky. Even if I'd had nothing published, I would still be writing. I like doing it.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). I read English and Fine Art at university. My art teacher was an abstract painter, Ken Robinson who introduced me to a way of working with images that continues to influence how I work with words. He was a Buddhist, very experimental. So although I've always loved pulp fiction and narratives that are plot-driven, my roots are in the avant-garde.

Growing up, I read everything that fell under my eye. When I was a kid I read *Doc Savage* novels and Yukio Mishima – the local library had a full collection of Mishima's work, in translation, so I read those cover-to-cover. I picked up science fiction (Philip K Dick) and 20th century lit (Anaïs Nin, Hemingway), Joseph Conrad, and lots of crime: Patricia Highsmith, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Jean-Patrick Manchette. I went very hard-boiled for a while. I like clear prose and good stories, and I do like a short novel. If a book's bad, you tell yourself "I can do better than this"; and if it's good, you think "I have to work harder". So anything can be an inspiration.

When and where do you write? I write very late at night, when it's quiet and everyone's in bed, or first thing in the morning, before the phone starts ringing. In the last few years I've gone back to writing by hand, which is slightly laborious, because I work on computers all day (as does everybody, now) and sitting down at a keyboard does not inspire me.

When I'm beginning a work I'm very precious about the pen or pencil that I use, or the pad, or the font on the machine but once the work is going I can write on anything. I think I have three good writing hours in my day: if I stay longer than that, I'm tempted to second-guess myself. When I enter the text into my laptop, I make revisions. It's important to let the work sit. My worst habit is to over-revise: I fight that constantly.

What are you working on now? A novel which I'm really, really enjoying working on. It's become quite surreal. I don't think anyone will publish it. I don't care. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? No, because I've never been on anyone's schedule. For screen and TV writers, writers' block is a very real thing. A novelist's schedule is self-imposed. If something stalls then it's a sign that I'm not interested in it enough – in which case, I wouldn't expect a reader to be – or that I'm still thinking about the last thing I was working on, which means it isn't finished.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? Finish the work. Finishing a work is the most important part of writing. Otherwise it will loiter in your imagination and prevent you moving forward. Hate what you've written? Put it aside and come back to it. Still terrible? Take the bad writing out. Cut it down to the parts that interest you. 

What’s your advice to new writers? Be practical. Avoid debt. Get a job. Write before you go to work and when you come home. Believe in yourself. Don't spread yourself too thin. Write what interests you. Never chase "the market" or what someone tells you "the market" is. 

You're going to be stuck with a novel for a couple of years: it's a relationship. Treat the ms as you would treat yourself: respect it and see where it goes.

A lot of people find it helpful to workshop ideas and share them online or in groups. I wish I could be like that. I work alone while telling myself "no one will ever read this". Fiction is a dark secret you share with strangers.

Chad Taylor is the author of Blue Hotel, Departure Lounge, Electric, Shirker, Heaven, Pack of Lies, The Church of John Coltrane, and many short stories . He was awarded the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship and the Auckland University Literary Fellowship. Heaven was made into a feature film and his novels and stories are in translation. He wrote the movie Realiti which was selected for Fantastic Fest. Blue Hotel was a finalist in the Ngaio Marsh Awards.