Richard Walter

How did you become a writer? I came to California for what I thought would be a couple of weeks, tops. That was forty-five years ago. I fell into film school at USC where my classmates were George Lucas, John Milius, Walter Murch, Randal Kleiser, Bob Zemeckis, Caleb Deschanel, and a host of other phenomenal, youthful talents. I enrolled in the legendary Irwin R. Blacker’s screenwriting course, wrote a feature length script. Never sold it, but it served as a worthy showcase, winning me representation at what is now ICM and a job as a staff writer at Universal. Never looked back!

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.) The aforementioned Irwin R. Blacker, first of all.  Billy Wilder. Preston Sturges. Charlie Chaplin. Orson Welles. Charlie Dennis, my swim coach at Harpur College, who taught me not to fade in the stretch. Yetta Rosenblum, photographer and photography teacher, who taught me to look at the frame and that “photography” means “writing with light.”

When and where do you write? Whenever I can (pretty much every day) at my aerie—a wonderful studio with preposterously beautiful, distracting views-- high atop my house in the Silver Lake Section of Los Angeles.

What are you working on now? The working title is Richie’s Greatest Hits. It’s a memoir-ish collection of charming, sweetly frustrating lessons I’ve learned from forty years writing in Hollywood.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Only every minute of every day. Actually, I preach that there is no such thing as writer’s block. Writer’s block is the natural state of the art and the craft of creating narratives. Thanks to my position at UCLA there are few people who know as many writers as I do, and I’ve never known even merely one who flew eagerly to the word processor early in the morning, peppy and perky and ready to write.

What’s your advice to new writers? Remember that every single successful writer, without exception, was once brand new and totally inexperienced and unknown. Contrary to one among the many myths about Hollywood, as I profess in my most recent book, Essentials of Screenwriting, it’s not connections, it’s not who you know but how well you write that drives success in screenwriting. The two biggest mistakes writers make is 1) we write too much – descriptions of action and lines of dialogue must clearly and constantly advance the story in a palpable, identifiable, measurable way and 2) we show our scripts too soon, before they’re truly ready. It’s wise, before exposing a new script to the industry, to engage the services of a worthy consultant who can provide notes, who can help you get rid of what you need to get rid of.

Bio: Richard Walter is a celebrated storytelling guru, movie industry expert, and longtime chairman of UCLA’s legendary graduate program in screenwriting. A screenwriter and published novelist, his latest book, Essentials of Screenwriting, is available in stores now. Professor Walter lectures throughout North America and the world and serves as a court authorized expert in intellectual property litigation. For more information and to order the new Essentials of Screenwriting, visit www.richardwalter.com. Contact Professor Walter at rwalter@tft.ucla.edu if you would like to subscribe to his monthly screenwriting tips newsletter.

Robert Lipsyte

How did you become a writer? I was a fat kid and in elementary school I started writing stories in which skinny kids died horribly. I discovered that stories were a way to control or at least contain my world. I still feel that way. After I lost my weight, around 14, I kept writing because it was the most satisfying part of my life. Still is.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.) My parents were public school teachers and encouraging. That became a pattern - teachers in middle school who let me write crazy sci-fi (what else did I know about besides aliens?) and high school and college teachers (and Gay Talese in the NY Times sports department) all of whom patted me on the butt and said, "Get into the game, big guy, you can do it."  A little encouragement is all you need - your imagination enlarges it. As for writers - John Steinbeck when I was a kid. I loved his compassion, social conscience, story-telling.

When and where do you write? At home, in de-basement, often sparsely dressed, early, lots of coffee. First drafts of fiction in pencil on yellow legal pads, next drafts and all else right on the computer.

What are you working on now? My memoir, An Accidental Sportswriter, just came out in paperback and it's led me back to more sportswriting, for The Times and for online mags, Salon, Slate and Daily Beast. Also, my first middle grade novel, The Twinning Project, comes out in October, 2012 (Clarion) and I'm on the sequel, pencil and pad so far.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Not yet. Remember, I started my professional career in the press box, boxing and baseball, on deadline, and if I choked I'd be dead meat. I make outlines, know what I'm going to do, but I love to write, I live to write, and being blocked would be like being unable to breathe.

What’s your advice to new writers? One - READ. Sounds obvious but it's amazing to me how many new writers don't read enough, and don't read as writers, looking for examples of how other writers handled transitions, character descriptions, etc. the same way young athletes watch pros at work. Two - REWRITE. Also obvious, but there's too much satisfaction with the first draft, which is never as good as it could be.

Bio: Robert Lipsyte, a long-time sports and city columnist of the New York Times, is the author of a recent memoir, An Accidental Sportswriter. His first middle grade novel,The Twinning Project (Clarion) is due out October, 2012. Lipsyte was a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning and for the NBC Nightly News. In 1990, he received an Emmy as host of The Eleventh Hour, a nightly PBS public affairs show on WNET in New York. He won Columbia University’s Mike Berger Award for distinguished reporting in 1966 and 1996, and in 1992 was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary.

His books also include Dick Gregory’s autobiography, Nigger, and SportsWorld: An American Dreamland. In 2001 he won the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in Young Adult literature. His YA novels includeThe Contender, One Fat Summer, andCenter Field. He lives on Shelter Island, NY, with his wife, Lois B. Morris, a writer, and their dog, Milo.

Andrea Pitzer

How did you become a writer? My grandparents owned a small-town bookstore just blocks away from my childhood home. I tried to weasel everything I could out of them, from Isaac Asimov to S.E. Hinton and Nancy Drew to Tolkien. Some things they wouldn’t give me, of course. I was eight years old when Interview with the Vampire came out. I remember going to the county library and sneaking it off the display case when the fiction lady wasn’t looking.

In the sixth grade, I won a Daughters of the American Revolution contest with an essay on Benjamin Franklin. Already sold on the writing life, I should have taken more note of the fact that the prize was a check for $5. I wish I still had that check.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.) Beverly D’Orazio introduced me to Yeats and Joyce, and seemed to think it was perfectly normal to be obsessed with words. She also let me eat lunch in her high school classroom when I was beyond poor and had no friends.

The wonderful poet Roland Flint revealed the glories of Theodore Roethke and Elizabeth Bishop during my freshman year at Georgetown—and locked me out when I was late to his class. He demanded a similar accountability to writing, insisting on an unbelievable level of specificity when discussing how a given piece worked (or didn’t). George O’Brien helped me with fiction, and taught me be wary of using any character as an easy mark. Dan Moshenberg opened up whole new worlds of literature (Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Leslie Marmon Silko) and spurred me to think about the intersection of politics and literature.

As for writers whose work has influenced me... Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Bruno Schulz’s stories, and Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding were all important to me early on—not to mention Philip Levine’s wild love, Lucille Clifton’s smarts, and Breece Pancake’s sorrow.

Walker Percy’s fiction and nonfiction were formative, too. His books taught me how to work with despair as literary material. I once did a portrait of him as a gift, and he wrote the kindest note in response.

More recently, I’ve been taken with Edward Jones, Michael Chabon, Aminatta Forna, Colm Tóibín, Katherine Boo, and Vladimir Nabokov. Five years ago, I started a collection of short stories in which I realized all the protagonists were unlikable. There’s no one quite like Nabokov for driving to the heart of that.

And then there are the beautiful one-offs—single poems or stories so good they make me afraid to look at the rest of the writer’s work for fear of disappointment. Two of my favorites are Tessa Rumsey’s “Poem for the Old Year” and Jim Shepard’s story “Sans Farine,” about the man who was Royal Executioner to Louis XVI during the French Revolution. I’ve been thinking about that story for five years.

I also adore Flann O’Brien without sense or discrimination, and wish he would influence me more.

When and where do you write? I write anytime and anywhere I’m alone, which is harder than it sounds, because I have two small children. So I drag my laptop to an upstairs room in our home on weekends and write standing up at the dining room table during the day when the kids are at school. I stay up after everyone goes to bed, and my best stuff tends to surrender itself between 11PM and 2 AM.

What are you working on now? I’m finishing The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov, a narrative nonfiction project for Pegasus Books. The story of Nabokov’s family is the story of his century, and he folded both into his fiction in ways that have been missed. Forgotten concentration camps, Nazi film sets—it turns out the magician kept some things hidden up his sleeve.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? When I was in college, I composed poetry obsessively but was never able to write a short story longer than four typed pages. Now I can make myself write without difficulty. I’ve come to accept that a lot of the time I’m going to write badly at first, and then fix it or toss it.

What’s your advice to new writers? In the short run, set a schedule and write something. In the long run, find a story you can’t not tell, and keep faith with it.

Bio: I grew up on the Ohio River in West Virginia, where a sizable chunk of my childhood was lifted from a second-rate hard-luck novel. I snookered a degree from Georgetown University, and as a respectable adult, founded Nieman Storyboard, a site on narrative journalism, for the Nieman Foundation at Harvard. In recent years, my writing has been online at Storyboard and HiLobrow.com, and in print with USA Today and The Washington Post Magazine—where my fondest hope is to be remembered for a brief piece about an underwear mishap at a law firm.

I’m married to a science reporter, and we live with our two children in a tiny house outside Washington, DC. It’s a pretty quiet life, which suits me. But I once tried to foil an armed robbery, taught self defense in gay bars, and had a terrible joke flop and die in front of Mick Jones, formerly of the Clash.

My poetry has appeared in Poet Lore, and The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov will be my first book.

You can follow me on Twitter at @andreapitzer.

Jenny Wingfield

What did you read growing up? Basically, whatever was available. We always lived in small towns, most of which didn’t have libraries. When I was in third grade, we moved to Robeline, Louisiana, and they had one. It was only about the size of my living room, but it was packed with books, and I thought I’d found Wonderland. There were five kids in our family at that time. Mama would line us up like little ducks and lead us the whole two blocks across town to the library. Each of us would check out the limit—five books. We’d walk home, get lost in the books for three days, then walk back to the library for more. Mama also read to us from the books she took out for herself, and she was so expressive, it was like watching a play.  She was a sucker for stories and so was I.

Which ones? In grade school, I read a lot of Mark Twain, every biography I could get my hands on, all the Albert Payson Terhune dog books. (Actually, I had a bit of a crush on Terhune because of his rugged good looks and his sense of respect in dealing with animals. He shaped my thinking in that area.) By the time I got to high school, we were living in towns-without-libraries again, so I read whatever my older sister was reading. That ranged from Frank Yerby to Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Gibran to everything in between.

When did you start writing? In the third grade. We had to write a story with our 20 spelling words. I had these two little baby chickens, Chip and Dale, in a box with a heat lamp, on the back porch, and I wrote about them. When the teacher read it to the class, I took that to mean that I had talent. As soon as somebody tells you that you're good at something, that becomes a part of your identity.

Actually, I’d have become a writer, anyway, even without that incident. My mother wrote poetry and songs and stories, and my father could spin a tale like nobody else. There would have been no way for me to resist the lure of storytelling.

My first writing job was a fashion column for a little dress shop in Hope, Arkansas – which is kind of wildly funny, since I’m one of the least fashion-savvy females on the planet. Somehow I faked it. After that, I wrote greeting card copy – the crazy stuff, not the hearts and flowers – selling to Hallmark and several other companies. That was great fun, partly because I couldn’t turn it off. I’d be in the shower and some line would come, and I’d jump out and go write it down. It blew me away to realize that I could make $200 for maybe a dozen words. Of course, I wrote plenty of words that nobody wanted, so it wasn’t exactly steady income.

I was in my thirties before I started selling articles to magazines, and I hit forty before I sold my first screenplay. Now I’m sixty-six, and my first novel has been out all of nine months. To say I’m a consistently late bloomer is something of an understatement.

How did The Homecoming of Samuel Lake emerge? I started writing about the Moses family back in the nineties. I wrote about a hundred pages and had to quit to meet a screenwriting deadline. Then I had cancer and didn’t have any screenwriting work for three years. I don’t why I didn’t finish the book then. I was trying desperately to get work but nobody would hire me—I think they were afraid I’d die in the middle of a project. I wasn’t really sick—I just had cancer. I had surgery and one round of chemo, but I didn’t feel sick, except from the chemo. I finally started getting work and all of a sudden I had deadlines again, so I still didn’t go back to the book.

Then this friend of mine, Charlie Anderson, poked and prodded. We would just be talking and he’d say “How are ya?” and I’d say “I’m great but I don’t know how I’m gonna handle things,” and he’d say, “Finish the book!”

         I’d say, “You don’t understand, I haven’t paid my light bill,” and he’d say, “Finish the book!”

         “But I’ve got to make money now and I’m thinking I might . . . ”

         “Finish the book!”

         No matter what I said, he said, “Finish the book!”

         “You don’t understand what that’ll take . . . ”

         “Finish the book!”

So I sat down to write some pages and the story just started coming in waves. Every night I’d send Charlie my pages, and the next morning, he and his partner, Leon Joosen, would call and encourage me, and I’d write some more. This was about a three-month stretch where I wrote the rest of the book. Somewhere in there I started also sending it to a producer I particularly respected (Lynn Hendee), and she did the same thing. I did nothing but write, six days a week. Friday night would come, and I’d think, “Oh, no! I’m going to have to be away from it for a whole day?”

Talk about the differences between writing a screenplay and a novel. The main difference is that a screenplay is a distillation. You can’t really get inside the characters’ heads and tell their thoughts. But in a book you can explore the deepest feelings. Another difference is that a screenplay involves collaborating with other people. I didn’t realize at first that in writing for film, there would be so many other participants who would be adding their experience and their passions . . .

And their “notes”? Yes! When you go into a meeting, there’s this lovely little moment when they tell you every positive thing about your work, and it’s like getting your back scratched. Then comes, “We do have a few notes.” The great thing is that these people really know story, and their notes are generally helpful, so you learn to appreciate that part of the process. Still, in writing the novel, I was free to let the story reveal itself to me, and I’ve never felt anything to compare with that. It was like spending every day dancing, without ever getting tired.

When you’re writing a screenplay do you picture the actors? When I’m working on assignment and I know who is being considered for a part, or there’s somebody already attached, I can picture that person while I’m working and it gives more layers to the character. But I usually think of people I know and borrow their mannerisms, their quirks.

Tell us about your work habits. I get up before dawn almost every day. I make coffee and go to the computer. I sit down, and I work. I take a break when I need more coffee or food, or it’s time to let the dogs in (or out) – again – or go to the barn to feed the horses and the goats. If I went to the store or out to dinner, it would take me out of the writing, so I don’t do it. Doing things on the farm lets me stay in my world.

In the evening, I stop when I feel like it’s time. Several years back, my signal to stop would be when I couldn’t sit up any longer, but that’s changed. I may write until 5 or 6 p.m., or I may go much later, but I quit when what I’ve written for the day feels right. The next morning, I get up and read the previous day’s work and tweak a few things. By the time I’ve done all that, the story is flowing again, and I dive in. I don’t work on Saturday.

Why not? Because I believe it’s the true Sabbath and I can’t imagine that any bunch of bishops had the authority to change it. For me, the Sabbath is an incredibly loving gift we’ve been given – a chance to rest and think about what’s real and what matters. I feel that the things we can’t see are infinitely more powerful than the things we can, but we tend to forget that when we’re busy slaying dragons. I don’t slay dragons on Saturday.

What’s your advice to new writers? Read. Write. Read. Write. If you are moved by someone else’s work, study it to discover how they made the magic. What did they do with words that made you feel like flying, or moved you to tears? How did they pace a scene so that you were breathless with anticipation – or wracked with dread? What kind of pictures did they paint? What did they do to surprise you? Because, Baby, you’re romancing your reader with every word, every line. And when a romance runs out of surprises, the thrill is gone.

Come up with characters who have flaws, and let them fall on their faces every so often. Don’t make things too easy for them. It’s not important for the hero to win. What’s important is how good a fight did he put up? How much did he grow in the process? We read stories because we want to see someone go up against seemingly unbeatable odds, whether that’s solving a crime, or winning someone’s heart. “Once upon a time they lived happily ever after” is not a story.

Know the world you’re writing about. Know your characters, right down to how they smell and how they take care of their fingernails. And if they’ve got grime under their nails, know where it came from. Know your people so well that you can literally hear their voices in your head, and don’t diddle around with those voices when you’re putting them on paper. 

Don’t worry about being a writer. Be a storyteller. When you read my stuff, I don’t want it to sound like I’m writing, I want it to sound like I’m talking to you.

BIO: Jenny Wingfield is a screenwriter/novelist who lives on a farm surrounded by a slew of horses, dogs, cats and dairy goats. Her first film was The Man In The Moon. Her first novel is The Homecoming of Samuel Lake. Her passions include animal rescue, watercolor painting and organic gardening. She makes a mean lasagna.

Tom Hawking

How did you become a writer? The clichéd answer to this question is that "I've always been a writer," but in my case that's not really true. I've done all sorts of stuff, although I've always felt that writing was something I was good at and something that I should pursue. I didn't become a published writer until my early 20s, when I started writing for a music magazine in Australia. As to how it happened, I basically just rang them up and asked them if I could write reviews for them. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.) It's difficult to identify individual influences, I think, because I think your writing — as with the rest of life — is the sum total of your experiences, and I think my writing has been influenced in some way or other by pretty much everything I've read and experienced. But stylistically, I like writers who write in a style that's both literate and distinctive, but also accessible and unpretentious. I'm a huge David Foster Wallace fan — Infinite Jest is probably my favorite book of all time — and I also admire the work of Cormac McCarthy, Stephen Donaldson, Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Conrad, Philip K. Dick and innumerable others I can't think of off the top of my head. I wouldn't say I write like any of those people, but I'd like to think aspects of the way they approach their craft has rubbed off on me.

When and where do you write? At the moment, I work from home, although this isn't ideal — for all that it sounds awesome in theory to work from the couch, I've always found it's far preferable to have a separate space to go. I spent a month in Greece earlier this year writing, and found it hugely productive. I'm hoping to get hold of a dedicated studio or workspace sooner rather than later. If I've learned one thing over the last couple of years, it's that to work on fiction, I need to block out a significant amount of time and work all day, every day.

What are you working on now? Apart from my actual work, which consists of freelancing for various publications, I'm working on a novel.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Yes, although it's more generally just a case of things not sounding right or reading well. In this case, just stepping away and going for a walk/making a cup of tea/etc. is enough to get over the hump. I've never really confronted crushing existential writer's block, for which I am hugely grateful.

How has the Internet affected your writing? It's given me more outlets for my writing, I guess, although it's also meant a whole lot less cash, as blogs/websites generally have smaller budgets than print magazines do (or did). I wouldn't say it's affected the writing itself, except for making research much more straightforward than it used to be.

What’s your advice to new writers? I guess it depends on what they're going to write. If it's fiction, then my only real advice is (a) know what you're going to do before you start doing it, (b) stick at it, and (c) understand that unless you're some sort of once-in-a-generation genius, your work is only going to get better with oodles of practice and craft. If it's magazine work, then my advice would be, for the love of god, don't do it for the money. Do it because you want a job that's interesting and diverse and because you honestly can't conceive of wanting to do anything else.

Bio: Tom Hawking is a New York City-based writer. Born in Melbourne, he is a former editor of Australia’s Inpress magazine and also of RAVE, India’s biggest music monthly. He is a contributing editor at Flavorwire and The Vine, and a regular contributor to NME, Australian Rolling Stone, The Quietus, Frankie, Smith Journal and various others. He does his best to maintain a blog about music, pop culture and NYC life at nyconversation.com. He likes Siamese cats, David Lynch, and sleeping.