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.

Jamie Harrison

How did you become a writer? Out of desperation! I’d lost my job as an editor and I lived in an area with extremely low wages—Montana—and didn’t want to move back to New York. I’d read mysteries all my life, and tried writing one, and managed to sell it as part of a series.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). My father was a novelist and poet and our house was full of books and talk of writing. I went to a tiny public school—most kids didn’t go on to college—but we had an English teacher who taught everything from Gilgamesh to Hamlin Garland, Goethe to Faulkner, and he let me spend study hour alone in the cafeteria, reading novels. There are too many writers to mention, but let me start with Louise Erdrich, David Mitchell, Edward Jones, Penelope Lively, Michael Ondaatje, James McBride. I’d also recommend Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode and James Woods’  How Fiction Works.

When and where do you write? Anywhere and anytime I can, but I usually start with a block of time in the morning, back in bed with coffee. When the weather is good (as I mentioned: Montana), I try for the picnic table. My office is currently a mound of paper.

What are you working on now? Another Jules Clement novel and an essay. I’m touring off and on, and because my work time is fragmented, I’m also letting my head float around another book linked to The Widow Nash.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? No. The problem is always distraction or avoidance, or simply not knowing how to approach a scene or an edit.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? I can’t remember any one perfect and succinct line, but here’s a couple that work: Reading makes you a better writer, and when you’re stuck, reading will free you up. Take time away from your manuscript for the sake of perspective, and embrace edits. Less is almost always more.

What’s your advice to new writers? Work through different ideas on top of the novel, and try to avoid I.

Jamie Harrison is the author of The Center of Everything, The Widow Nash, and five mysteries in the Jules Clement series, most recently The River View. She’s the winner of the Reading the West Award, a finalist for the High Plains Book Award, and a Ucross fellow. Before writing, she worked in food and magazines, and was the editor of Clark City Press. She lives in Livingston, Montana.