Ethan Joella

How did you become a writer?

I used to pass poems out to my teachers in second grade; I wrote a script for the TV show Growing Pains in middle school. In college, I wrote two novels in longhand after taking a fiction writing class. I did two graduate programs in creative writing, and in the midst of teaching and being a dad, I still tried to write whenever I could, relishing any small literary journal acceptance along the way. In 2019, after querying almost every agent in the country, I was so lucky to be taken on by Madeleine Milburn in London who has handled some of the biggest book deals in the world. She sold A Little Hope to Scribner, who was my absolute dream publisher, and from that point, I really felt like a writer.

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

Hundreds of writers have shaped me. Jesmyn Ward, Ernest Hemingway, Amy Hempel, John Cheever, Elizabeth Strout, Jamaica Kincaid, Jess Walter. The poets Naomi Shihab Nye, Ross Gay, and Marie Howe. But I think most of all, I remember reading Anne Tyler’s novels during my twenties and thinking, Oh, she’s doing exactly what the craft books talk about: using strong verbs, compelling characters, plot breadcrumbs. So I think she had one of the biggest effects on me. I learned so much from my MFA program and the Rehoboth Beach Writers’ Guild, too.

When and where do you write?

I don’t have a set time, but I feel best when I write in the morning. If not, I try to get something in after lunch. I have a writing desk in our basement, but I rarely use it. I like to sit on the couch and do most of my work there because I enjoy being in the center of the house’s action. If I’m having a hard time revising or editing, I’ll sit at the dining room table, which I think signals something in my brain that this is serious.

What are you working on now?

I’m revising my next novel and planning out some ideas for one after that. I also try to keep working on short stories as I think they are important to understanding structure and overall craft. I often have a couple projects cooking at once and more ideas than I have writing time. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, I can’t turn off that writer brain that’s taking in everything for possible later use. It’s like a big program using up all the memory on your hard drive, always running in the background!

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Not exactly. I think I’ve suffered from a lack of discipline or a lack of writing something I’m proud of, but if I force myself to sit down, I can usually cough up something. I just can’t guarantee it will be good.

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

Write toward that moment when your characters surprise you. That’s what you want, and that’s when the characters are so real that readers will want to follow them—the whole Robert Frost no surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader thing. I think it’s always about the characters. Never be locked into a plot point or an ending. It has to be what’s organic to the characters.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Call yourself a writer. Find the right community who will both encourage and challenge you. Be okay with criticism. If you care about your writing, prioritize it and don’t treat it as a secret hobby or an afterthought. I think my writing life changed for the better when I started placing writing more prominently among my daily priorities.

Ethan Joella teaches English and psychology at the University of Delaware. His work has appeared in River Teeth, The Cimarron Review, The MacGuffin, Delaware Beach Life, and Third Wednesday. He is the author of A Little Hope, which was a Read with Jenna Bonus Selection and A Quiet Life, which comes out in November. He lives in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, with his wife and two daughters.

Laura Warrell

How did you become a writer?

I started writing stories as soon as I learned to write letters and sentences. From early on, there was an innate desire in me to write, as well as an instinct for storytelling, and though it took me years to master the latter, I always knew I was a writer. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a movie star and went to a special high school to study acting; I even went to college as a first-year theater student. But I soon realized I didn’t love acting as much as I love writing. Writing was part of my nature – a huge, and probably the most significant part – and I couldn’t stop doing it, even decades later when I still wasn’t making a career out of it.

In the beginning, I simply wrote. My second year of college, I changed majors to writing and journalism, and later enrolled in an MFA program. So, yes, I studied, not only in academic settings, but also by reading the greats and trying to decipher how they did what they did with language, plot, character, what have you. Though I’ve hit the thrilling moment when my first book is in the world, I don’t think this means my studies are over. I’m still studying novels and reading craft essays to improve my skills.

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

I grew up in Ohio and while the state will always have a place in my heart, I felt kind of bored there, as if I believed there was a more exciting world to be explored. So, once I got to high school and started reading more literary novels, I gravitated toward authors who were living adventurous lives, especially as expats: Henry Miller, James Baldwin. I learned about and came to admire Josephine Baker, both as a performer and personality, but as an activist. I also discovered Toni Morrison, my favorite writer, and was transformed by her brilliance with language and abstraction. While I never attempted to “be” those writers or entertainers, I do feel them with me in a way because there’s always a search for freedom and the desire to self-actualize in my stories, and an attention to language in the prose itself.

Funny enough, the only teachers who believed in me growing up were my English teachers. I was one of those kids who fell through the cracks; I was even put into a remedial program in middle and high school. The issue was that I wasn’t challenged and I had a creative mind that went unstimulated. My English teachers got it though; they saw I could write creatively and analyze literature, so they always encouraged me. I’m grateful to them.

When and where do you write? 

I’m an adjunct professor, which means my schedule changes every semester. Moreover, depending on the week, I may have hundreds of papers to grade, so this means I have to manage my time despite the fact that my schedule constantly shifts. Each week, I make myself a schedule blocking out at least two hours every day to write, and fitting the rest of my daily tasks around it, including the activities I don’t want to miss but aren’t “required,” like yoga. For the most part, I stick to it. I also try to get the writing in first; this helps me psychologically because it confirms my commitment to the work and I’m also more apt to get it done.

I’d like to be exciting and write in cafés or other sexy spots, but no. I just sit at my kitchen table. Firstly, I get very distracted by other people; I wonder who they are and listen in on their conversations. I can’t help it – people interest me. Secondly, I’m often pressed for time so it’s easy to just sit down and do it at home. I’ve recently moved apartments and thought I’d set up a little writing nook in the new place but I’m still writing at the kitchen table.

What are you working on now? 

I’m working on my next novel, which is about a love triangle. I’m afraid to say more about it because I’m at that delicate moment when I realize I’m trying to construct a plot and perhaps even convey an idea that might be tough to pull off. If I can’t do it, I wouldn’t want people to have expectations. I’m loving it though and putting in the work. I hope I can achieve what I’m envisioning.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I’ve never really been blocked though there have been times when I just couldn’t fit the writing in, and I’ll admit, I’ve highly resented those moments. I try to sit down and do as much as I can, even if it’s for twenty minutes, even if it’s just doing research on character or some aspect of the world I’m building.

I do have a tip for writer’s block. Whenever I feel momentarily stuck, I go to my bookshelf and grab a book, sometimes a book of poetry, and page through looking for lines that stir something in me. Often, I’ll find a line that starts my engine running so I can sit back down and keep going.

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

Just write. But to me, this doesn’t simply mean, “write the next thing” or “keep going.” What this means to me is keep working on craft. Read others’ books, read poetry, listen to music, learn about the art of fiction itself, watch movies and television shows to understand different approaches to storytelling. This also means listening when people are giving you feedback, and in fact, reaching out to people for feedback. Devote yourself to improving your craft, which will not only help you get published, but will also help make the process of writing easier and more enjoyable.

What’s your advice to new writers?

My advice is similar to the advice I’ve been given in the question above. What I also might add is to understand that publishing is a business as well as a place to appreciate art and ideas. So, if the market doesn’t embrace your work or aspects of your work immediately, this isn’t necessarily an indication of its quality. Keep working at it. Don’t give up.

Laura Warrell is a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has attended residencies at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Tin House Writer's Workshop, and she has taught Creative Writing and Literature through the Emerging Voices program at PEN America Los Angeles, at Writing Workshops Los Angeles, and at academic institutions in Los Angeles and Boston. She currently writes and teaches in Los Angeles. Her writing has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Huffington Post, The Rumpus, The Writer, and Post Road Magazine. Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm is her first novel.

Kwei Quartey

How did you become a writer?

My imagination was captured as a boy of 6-9 years old when I read children’s mysteries and adventures, think Hardy Boys, etc. I always liked stories with a lot of intrigue, motion, and commotion—something with a twist and a surprise ending. It wasn’t only a passing interest I had; it was an intense urge to conjure up a world in my mind’s eye to create a tale that I could share with others. As a boy, I entered and won writing contests, once going on local radio to read my winning story. Once, in high school English class, the teacher called me up to read an assigned composition I’d written called, “What Is The Firmament?” I thought he was about to tell the class that this was an example of the worst essay possible. Instead, to the dead silent and attentive audience of my fellow students, he said, “Now, that’s how to write.” Which provoked a whole new level of embarrassment for me!

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

For context, I grew up in Ghana, West Africa, a former British colony. For better or worse, much of my reading and writing experience was shaped by the mark Britain left on Ghana and other countries I the so-called Commonwealth of Nations, an uncomfortable and arguably oxymoronic term.

My father, an academic and journalist at the University of Ghana, wrote nonfiction in his areas of expertise: African Studies, Politics, and Journalism in colonial and postcolonial West Africa. By osmosis, I absorbed his ethic of nose-to-the-grindstone work until the essay/article/chapter/book is complete to perfection. This is both a curse and a blessing because now I drive my editors to distraction by continuing to do what I feel are “light” edits to my submitted manuscript versions, but which they and the typesetters see as “substantial” edits.

My mother, a sociologist, was less of a formal writer than my father and more of a pragmatic one. None of her university students ever knew that she used to assign me, her teenage son, the task of prescreening their term papers into categories of excellent, good, fair, and poor, in order for her to more efficiently grade their papers. Mom, satisfied that my spelling and grammar was sufficiently more advanced than the students’, was also my writing cheerleading squad, encouraging me to write about whatever I wanted.

My primary school English teacher, Miss Mensah, must have seen something in me. She stayed some days after class to help me excel in reading, so that I skipped ahead several levels in reading assignments. I remember eagerly racing home from school on my bike to start on the brand-new storybook in my backpack. I loved the smell of the new pages.

Although British author Enid Blyton is not a well-known name in the United States, she was one of the most prolific children’s writers in the world. As Ghana had been a British colony, it was her novels, rather than those of the likes of The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew that gained prominence with children in West Arica, India, and so on. At the time I read Blyton’s books, they were already rather dated, but they had a timelessness that allowed the stories to stand up to scrutiny. Although Blyton wrote several different series, it was her “Famous Five” and the “Five Find-Outers” that I devoured most because they were mysteries. I couldn’t get enough of them. The sheer genius and simplicity of the solution to what on the surface is the most baffling mystery was revealed to me in Blyton’s “The Mystery of The Invisible Thief.” The aha moment in that story that every mystery fan loves was one of the most impactful ever for me.

After Blyton, I moved on somewhat to more challenging reads with Doyle, Sayers, and Christie, Sherlock Holmes being, hands down, my most important hero. Even now, I can’t resist one or two Sherlockian stories (see The Strange Juju Affair At Gacy Mansion) and a very Holmes-Watsonian scene in the upcoming Last Seen In Lapaz (Feb 7, 2023), the third Emma Djan Investigation.

I dabbled in other authors—Ian Fleming, John Le Carré, etc., but the pure mystery remained my favorite, and that spurred me into writing my own mystery novellas. With a penchant for drawing, I designed my book covers and stapled them to the pages—self-publishing before there was such a thing.

When and where do you write?

Pre-Covid, I could work either at home or at a café, but once Covid came along I restricted myself to home and have never really returned to the public sphere as a setting for writing. When I was a practicing physician (I retired from Medicine in 2018 to write full-time), I wrote early in the morning before clinic opened at 8 AM. Now, I do most creative writing in the afternoon between 1 PM and 6 PM every day.

What are you working on now?

Having completed Last Seen In Lapaz for 2023, I’m working on a new novel that shines a light on homophobia in Ghana, where all my novels are set. With few exceptions, all my stories have a backdrop of a socio-economic ill of some kind. Indentured servitude, religion, mining pollution, sexual abuse, and human trafficking are all examples—not light reading, obviously, but I aim to humanize these topics so that they become real stories rather than dry statistics.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I wrestle with the term and I’m not sure what it means. It’s the word “block” that bothers me. It’s annoyingly passive-aggressive. I feel as though, when I’m writing, I’m driving a car and there are times when it’s not so much a physical block as it is that, either the car won’t start and I need to get out and push it myself, or have someone push it, or walk away from it to return later; or, there are three forks in the road ahead and I must figure out which one to take. A block suggests something impassable, and I just don’t believe anything is really impassable. In the best and most blissful of circumstances, the car is in autonomous mode/cruise control, but if not, why isn’t the vehicle unable to move forward? The answer is always the internal mechanics rather than anything standing in the way.

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

That a terrible, horribly, awful bad review is only someone’s opinion, and the worse the review the more likely it is that the reviewer has an agenda or an ax to grind. Distinguish this from an observation or criticism from which the author can learn something. For instance, I took a new look at the word “virgin,” following a comment a reviewer made and I learned a good lesson, for which I’m grateful. And another thing: criticism is a sign that people are engaged. Remember: being ignored is much worse than being disliked.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Adding on to the above in #6, be skeptical of self-appointed experts you don’t know from Adam. A UK literary agent once told me that the two places in the world no one wants to read about are Africa and Afghanistan. A couple of years later, along came mega-bestsellers Khaled Hosseini and Alexander McCall Smith. The defense rests.

Don’t, please don’t ever, ask well-meaning friends or family to critique your work. You may love and respect them dearly, but they cannot possibly give you expert or impartial advice. It will either be too gushing or too harsh. There’s only one answer to your dear mom or siblings asking to read your manuscript. No.

Write about what matters to you, what impassions you. You need to be able to pour your heart and soul onto the page and feel the same pain and joy as your characters, who—whether loved or detested—must be important to you.

Kwei Quartey is a crime fiction writer and physician based in Pasadena, California. Quartey was born in Ghana, West Africa, to a Ghanaian father and black American mother, both of whom were lecturers at the University of Ghana. As a crime fiction writer, he made the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List in 2009. The following year, the National Book Club voted him Best Male Author. His Detective Inspector Darko Dawson and female PI Emma Djan series are set in Ghana. The Missing American, first novel in the Emma Djan series, was a nominee for the 2021 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel and nominee for the 2021 Strand Magazine Critics Awards for Best Novel. It won the 2021 Shamus Award for Best First PI novel. Sleep Well, My Lady, the second in the Emma Djan series was a 2022 nominee for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award. Last Seen In Lapaz, the third in the Emma Djan series, will be published February 7, 2023.