Steve Sheinkin

How did you become a writer?

When I was about thirteen, my younger brother and I decided to be a famous filmmakers. We wrote short comedy sketches, which we videotaped. I watched some recently. The acting is awful, and don’t ask about the production value, but a few of the ideas are pretty funny. We went on to write and direct a feature film called A More Perfect Union in our early twenties. A total flop, and it left us deep in debt, but I’ve never learned so much so quickly. 

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

Mostly Mr. Linderman. We’re talking fourth or fifth grade. He’d tell these stories that, in my memory, lasted for weeks. The stories were from Greek mythology, the Odyssey, that kind of thing—but it was all new to me. I’ll never forget the feeling of wonder and excitement as he began a new tale. I’m not saying I can recreate that in my writing, but it’s worth trying. 

When and where do you write? 

I’m lucky to get to do this as my job. So I’m in my office all day almost every day, either researching, writing, or revising. Pretty unromantic, I guess, but it’s way better than the dozens of crummy jobs I’ve had over the years.

What are you working on now? 

I’m adapting one of my nonfiction books, Bomb, into a graphic novel. It’s a great experience, since I started by dreaming of screenplays, and comics and film are so similar. Plus, I get to make up dialogue, which you obviously can’t do in nonfiction. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Sure, mainly in terms of how to quickly explain something. For years I worked as a textbook writer. I know, it’s terrible. I apologize to kids all the time. So now, when I’m trying to introduce a complex concept that young readers may not know much about, I’m terrified of writing something that could be in a textbook. I get stuck on this all the time, and have found no solution other than the classic clunky first draft + revision. 

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

I think Tim Gunn gave great writing advice on Project Runway. I mean, he was talking about fashion, but I heard it as writing advice. He’d look at one piece and say, “Turn up the volume.” Then he’d look at another piece and say, “You already have one ‘wow’ factor, you don’t need another.” The balance between those two reactions—that’s what I’m going for. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

There’s no magic formula. Just start. Write a terrible first draft, step away, and then revise. Then show it to a trusted reader without comment. Listen to their feedback, especially if they feel that something in the draft was either slow or unclear. Then revise again. There may be a faster way, but I haven’t found it.

Steve Sheinkin is the author of young adult nonfiction books including Fallout, Bomb, Undefeated, Most Dangerous, and The Port Chicago 50. Awards include a Newbery Honor and three National Book Award finalists. Steve lives in Saratoga Springs, NY.

Victor Methos

How did you become a writer?

I used to spend my summers on my aunt's massive, forested ranch, and one year, around fifth grade, I had an unexplainable encounter with an animal I couldn't identify (that's the non-crazy sounding way to say you saw Bigfoot). I can't tell you how profound an experience that was. In an instant, everything the world had taught me was true was suddenly cast into doubt. All my teachers were wrong, all the top scientists were wrong, all the adults were wrong. Little twelve-year-old me had gained a knowledge about the world that few people knew to be true. It made me think, well what else is everyone wrong about? and I became obsessed with the paranormal. My main passion was and is reading. My local library and my school library had pretty much no books on paranormal phenomena at the time, so I thought, Why not write one? So that was my first piece of fiction writing. The hero finds a monster and has to either run from it or face it. That's pretty much the same story I've written ever since. 

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

Every person has a handful of books that changed the course of their lives. The first one I remember was DEAR MR.CRENSHAW by Beverly Cleary. I was in 2nd grade. The book was about a kid going through his parent's divorce, wanting nothing more in the world than for his parents to get back together, and having to learn to cope with the fact that it wouldn't happen. My parents were going through a divorce at the time, and that's when I knew the power of literature: when words on a page made me feel better about my own life.

My more recent influences are much different than other writers', I'm sure. I did some graduate work in philosophy before going to law school (because I didn't want to starve to death as a philosophy professor) and philosophy has always been a passion of mine. So the writers that influenced me most are philosophers like Plato, Nietzche, Ayn Rand, Sartre, and especially Albert Camus. I'm not satisfied with books, even commercial fiction books meant primarily for entertainment, if they don't raise some deeper philosophical issue. I try to do this in all my own work as well.

When and where do you write? 

At any time and everywhere. I've written in Ubers, in the middle of screaming kids, even once in court when I had a deadline. I would write as quickly as I could when the jury took breaks. I see writing as work, and you don't wait for inspiration to work. Just sit your ass down and write. Even if you know it's crap. Crap can be fixed later. Empty pages can't.

What are you working on now? 

Just finished the start of a new series based loosely on the Zodiac killer. I lived in Northern California and, for some reason, we had, per capita, more serial murderers than anywhere else in the country at the time. So I would go places and hear people talking about "The Golden State Killer killed a person in that neighborhood" or "Ted Bundy came to this Red Robin" or whatever. When I heard about the Zodiac, I learned that not only had he never been caught but the FBI, CIA, and the Department of Defense couldn't break his last cipher. I thought I had to learn everything I could about someone like that, and so I've always wanted to write something about Zodiac. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

No. 

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

"Ninety-nine percent of show business is just showing up." – Woody Allen

What’s your advice to new writers?

Don't have unrealistic expectations (or preferably any expectations). Accept failure and rejection and do the work anyway. The fact is, a writing career is not a Gaussian distribution: There's no bell curve of the great plethora of mid-list authors taking up the bulk of sales. Five authors account for almost 95% of all book sales worldwide. It's a winner take all market. The odds of becoming one of those authors are astronomical. So if you're telling yourself you're not going to be happy unless you're the next Stephen King, you may never be happy. We need to be happy now; it's a choice. Rather than, "I have to be the next Stephen King," tell yourself how privileged you are that you can write something and have other people read it. Writers, I would say especially commercial fiction writers because we're the ones people are actually going to remember a hundred years from now (no one will remember who won the Pulitzer Prize a century from now, but people will still be reading John Grisham and Anne Rice), are the keepers of the history. If I want to know what life was like in ancient Greece, I don't read the historians, I read the great playwrights. Fiction is an expression of the spirit of a people at a specific time. It's important. If you love writing, the fact that you get to do it at all is incredible. If you can make a living doing it, you're in the top 1% of all writers who have ever lived. Be happy now, and don't worry about the future. It's out of your hands anyway. 

At the age of thirteen, when his best friend was interrogated by the police for over eight hours and confessed to a crime he didn’t commit, Victor Methos knew he would one day become a lawyer. After graduating from law school at the University of Utah, he sharpened his teeth as a prosecutor for Salt Lake City before founding what would become the most successful criminal defense firm in Utah. In ten years, he conducted more than one hundred trials. One particular case stuck with him, and it eventually became the basis for his first major bestseller, The Neon Lawyer. Since that time, he has focused his work on legal thrillers and mysteries, winning the Harper Lee Prize for The Hallows and an Edgar nomination for Best Novel for his title A Gambler’s Jury. He currently splits his time between southern Utah and Las Vegas.

Dara Yen Elerath

How did you become a writer?

I came to writing late in life. I pursued my MFA and began to work toward the idea of creating a book of poetry. I didn’t know much about the literary world at the time and never felt my writing was good enough to publish. I held off on submitting my work for years, which ultimately paid off, as my first serious poems were placed in reputable, established journals. These initial publications encouraged me to set my sights high and gave me a bit of credibility that has served me over time, publication-wise.

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

There are many writers I love but only a few who’ve influenced me directly. I grew up reading Nabokov, D.H. Lawrence, Sartre, Dostoyevsky, Anaïs Nin, Virginia Woolf and other canonical greats, but found that when it came to personal inspiration I was better served by looking to writers who spoke to my own abilities and personal quirks. To this end I’ve spent a lot of time studying the writing of Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Robert Walser, Francis Ponge and Mary Ruefle.

When and where do you write?

I write in the mornings, especially when I’m working on poetry. This is when my mind is most flexible. I usually lie on the floor, as this seems to open me to a playful, less logic-bound mode of thinking. I suspect this is due to the fact that I often sat on the floor to write or draw as a child. I also strive to write in silence. I find it important to listen to the music of my language, which means that I have to protect that space of quiet that allows me to hear it.

What are you working on now?

I’m currently working on what I hope will be a collection of pieces that straddle the line between prose poetry and flash fiction. When I find myself unable to write in this vein, I switch over to essays; these let me to focus my thoughts on the world around me rather than my interior life, which can easily become exhausted.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I think, more than anything, I’ve suffered from a fear of writer’s block; I’m always afraid I’ll lose track of the muse. When those moments of emptiness arise—those times when I can’t seem to access my voice—I usually shift genres. I find that, at any given time, there’s at least one mode of writing I can engage with. If I’m overflowing emotionally and a lyrical register seems appropriate, I turn to poetry, for example. When I’m less emotional I turn to hybrid fiction where my ideas can do more of the heavy lifting. Writing is my anchor, so I try to write as continuously as possible.

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

I’m not sure that I’ve received any single piece of advice that has fundamentally transformed my writing process, it’s mostly been a slow accumulation of habits that have shaped me over the years, but, as a poet, I have been advised by various mentors to be wary of using academic, hypotactic language. I can easily fall into wordy, clause-heavy writing, and while this might elevate the tone of the language, it also detracts from the poetry and the intimacy of the writing, creating distance between writer and reader, so I remind myself to simplify my language and focus on being more direct. Writing with an ‘academic’ or ‘lawyerly’ voice is a security blanket I often need to toss away in order to reveal myself more honestly.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Becoming your own writer is a process of self-recognition and self-acceptance. I’ve slowly begun to discover my own voice, and learned that you have to trust yourself and lean into the things that make you weird. Don’t be afraid of being different from other writers. I write hybrid poetry/fiction that I sometimes fear is unclassifiable, but I’ve come to understand that there’s no way to escape your true self in art. You have to honor your interests, abilities and inclinations above all, instead of trying to fit yourself squarely into any category or align yourself with any group. It’s okay to be alone as a writer. The body of work that you build becomes your companion over time. It is the conversation you are having with yourself that you share publicly. Eventually, if you trust that conversation, it grows longer, more revealing, and hopefully more nuanced and interesting.

Dara Yen Elerath’s first book, Dark Braid (BkMk Press), won the 2019 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry. In addition to poetry, she has received prizes for her hybrid flash fiction, including the Bath Flash Fiction Award and the New Flash Fiction Review Award. Her work has appeared in journals such as the American Poetry Review, AGNI, Green Mountains Review, Plume, Boulevard, Poet Lore and elsewhere. She is an alumna of the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA program and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.