Jericho Brown

How did you become a writer?

I got really excited about reading poetry and about its possibilities when I was a kid. And I wanted, then, to make things that could create feeling in people in the same way that poems I was reading created feelings in me. I just never stopped wanting that.

When and where do you write? 

Whenever I can. On my lap. Right now, because of how I’m leaning, it’s a cream-colored couch in the Hurst apartment for visiting writers at Washington University. Sometimes, it looks like that tray that comes out of the back of the chair in front of me on an airplane. My gray bare kitchen table. Or my gray kitchen table with mail and books strewn all over it when I haven’t cleared it of clutter. Or the glass dining room table. Most often, though, my lap, and sometimes, in front of a window where I can see my front yard or my back yard. 

I wake up and eat something. Then I read something by Ernest Holmes, usually just a few paragraphs. Then I pray. Then I open my laptop and see what lines are in the single file I have of all my lines that eventually (and magically, it seems) turn into poems over time. I do that for about an hour and a half to two hours and then I stop because by that time two to three hours have passed, and I know it because I’m hungry again. So I get up again to eat, and that means I’m done writing for the day unless some unexpected inspiration appears.

What are you working on now? 

These questions. I'm giving them my all.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

No, because I don't think typing is writing as much as thinking is.

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

"Never say no." -Nikki Giovanni

What’s your advice to new writers?

"Never say no, but always use condoms unless you have another plan in mind."

Jericho Brown is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon in 2019. His poems have appeared in The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is an associate professor and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University.

Joe Moran

How did you become a writer?

I was shy and introverted when I was growing up (and, for that matter, now). I suspect that the art of sentence writing, which lets you endlessly rework your words until they fall right, appeals to people like me who in life are tongue-tied and slow-witted.

I started my career writing academic articles and monographs. Writing in academia is regarded as a fairly neutral activity – simply a way of disseminating your research findings. But this does at least get you into the habit of writing and publishing. And so, when I moved into journalism and writing books for a broader readership, I’d learned some of the ropes.

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

I tend to like writers who write in clean, elegant sentences: Annie Dillard, Diana Athill, Jamaica Kincaid, James Baldwin. I’ve also been influenced by a lot of new nature writing (Richard Mabey, Roger Deakin, Kathleen Jamie, Robert Macfarlane) – not because I write that kind of book, but because I liked its combining of deep, scholarly knowledge with a personal, intimate voice. Academic writing tends, for perfectly good reasons, to hide itself behind an anonymously professionalised voice and I wanted to move beyond that.

When and where do you write?

I can write anywhere. But my favourite place, when I have time, is at my office desk at work, where I have the luxury of two screens: good for checking facts and multitasking, bad for getting distracted. 

What are you working on now? 

I’m working on a family memoir about the island that my grandmother came from in the west of Ireland. It will hopefully have a bit more of a story in it than my previous writing but will also be about bigger things: the relationship between Ireland and Britain, postwar history, families, memory and grief.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Not fully, although I’ve had many bad days and many false starts. I’m quite an incremental writer, chipping away gradually, so although it’s a bit of a slog and I never ride on a wave of inspiration, it never quite grinds to a halt either. If you write non-fiction, as I do, there’s always something else to do if you get stuck with the writing: fact-checking, research, reading, reading. The American poet, William Stafford, said something like ‘if you get stuck, lower your standards and carry on’. So if you get writer’s block, just lower your standards. You can always improve it later on.

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

My late father, who was also a writer, said that writing was like dropping a stone down a very deep well. For ages it feels like nothing is happening, and even when you’ve published something, it seems to disappear into nowhere. But then you might hear a tiny “plop” in the water as it makes contact with someone. You never quite know what impact your writing will have, so you just have to write in a way that feels right to you and hope that it connects with someone when it finally reaches the bottom of the well.

What’s your advice to new writers?

First, focus on technique as much as on ideas and subject matter. The painter Edgar Degas once complained to the poet Stéphane Mallarmé that, while he had great ideas, he couldn’t seem to write a great poem. Mallarmé responded that, alas, poems are made of words, not ideas. That feels right to me: writing is made up of words. The only way into your ideas is through the words, so you need to learn how to choose the right words and put them in the right order.

Second, remember that writing is rewriting. Get a first draft down as quickly as you can, and then the hard work begins.

Third, read your work out loud to yourself or, better still, get someone else to read it to you. It may help to clear your head of what you think you’ve said, and introduce you to what you’ve actually said. In other words, it will turn you from a writer into a reader of your work.

Joe Moran is the author, most recently, of First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing … and Life (Viking). He has written for the Guardian, New Statesman, TLS and other newspapers and magazines. He is Professor of English at Liverpool John Moores University, UK.

Michael Meyer

How did you become a writer?

I worked as a journalist from age 16, but I really started after volunteering with the United Farm Workers on the Texas border, which led to applying to the Peace Corps -- which sent me to China. I was one of the first volunteers there, and had a lot of time to read, to write, and to learn the language. It was great training, being in a place where my story was the least interesting one to tell, and where I could afford to sit and watch other people's stories unfold over time. 

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

I'm the product of the public library, which is to writers what an art museum is to painters. And just as you'll see students sitting on a museum floor, sketching a picture to see how the artists put it together, I have always done the same with books, pulling them from shelves, one after another, and figuring out the structure the writer decided to use. 

When and where do you write? 

I've written two of my books while living for spells in London -- once in a hotel, once in a rented flat. I wish my muse had less expensive taste. Now that I'm home, I work first thing in the morning, at a desk facing a big window overlooking trees. Then I go for a run.   

What are you working on now? 

A book about the amazing afterlife of Benjamin Franklin. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I don't think there is such a thing. If you suspect you're infected, do what John Steinbeck did -- taking Emerson's advice -- to kick-start his writing "East of Eden": write a letter to a friend. There is an inspiring book of these letters, "Journal of a Novel."

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

You know it's time to write a book when the book you want to read doesn't exist. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Don't wait for permission to write. Nearly everything I've sold came not from querying editors and publishers, but by submitting a finished essay, article, and even book manuscript. Nothing builds confidence and momentum like actually doing the work, instead of talking about it.   

Michael Meyer is the author of the acclaimed nonfiction books “The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed” and “In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China.” He first came to China in 1995 with the Peace Corps, and for over a decade has contributed from there to The New York Times, Time, the Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Architectural Record, Reader’s Digest, Slate, Smithsonian, This American Life and many other outlets. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Lowell Thomas Awards for travel writing, and residencies at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. He has taught Literary Journalism at Hong Kong University’s Journalism and Media Studies Center, and wrote the foreword to The Inmost Shrine: A Photographic Odyssey of China, 1873, a collection of Scottish explorer John Thomson’s early images. He is a member of the National Committee on United States-China Relations‘ Public Intellectuals Program, a recipient of a 2017 National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar fellowship, and Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches nonfiction writing. The final book in his China trilogy, The Road to Sleeping Dragon: Learning China from the Ground Upwas published by Bloomsbury in October 2017; Mainland and Taiwan editions will appear in 2019.