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9.
AOTW: What authors, or works, if any, helped to guide you when
you were beginning to take your first tentative steps toward making
a living by writing?
NM
Kelby: Stewart O'Nan was, and is, a tremendous source of support
for me. We met when I won the "Mentor Series" at the Loft
(a Midwestern writers guild). He was one of the four mentors who
worked with the winners. At our first private meeting he said, "I
want to write your cover blurb." I just about fell over.
Angels
was still a graduate thesis back then. My committee was chewing
on me. One of my professors told me that I "raised the bar
too high" for myself and the book would never be published.
I didn't think I could even graduate. So, when Stewart told me he
loved the book, I just went out to my car and started to cry in
the parking lot.
He
always believed in Angels and that made all the difference in the
world.
Thisbe
Nissen: I feel like I've been voraciously fascinated for a long
time by the ways in which writers are able to structure their lives
so that they can write, so I've studied in whatever ways I could
HOW it is people make their lives as writers, learning both things
that I wanted to emulate and things that I absolutely did not. I
talk to people, mostly, I guess. And I've lived by "Poets and Writers"
magazine, and "The Novel and Short Story Writers Market." Being
in the MFA program at Iowa was probably the greatest teacher of
all, being around other people who were also constantly asking the
same question: "How do I really DO this?"
Sallie
Bissell: Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott should be on every
writer's bookshelf, right next to his or her Strunk & White. It's
a joy to read, over and over again. It gave me so much comfort when
I wasn't publishing anything and was very depressed about the whole
thing. Now that I've had a book published, I go back and realize
how true everything she says is about getting published. Another
good book is The Writers Survival Guide by Rachel Simon.
Writing is lonely, isolating work. Any book that gives you a sense
of community and camaraderie is to be treasured!
Michael
Leahey: For the J.J. Donovan series, I read a lot of mysteries,
but focused more on the old timer's --- Dashiel Hammett, Simenon,
Raymond Chandler, Rex Stout, and John D. MacDonald - because I think
they were much better writers then the people who are popular today.
Besides, I like character driven stories and today there seems to
be an unnecessary emphasis on the explicit.
Stephanie
Gertler: I've been writing professionally on and off since I
am twenty one years old. Probably my first inspiration was an article
that appeared in the New York Times Magazine when I was around seventeen.
It was by Joyce Maynard and called, I believe, "Looking Back". I
thought, Hey, I could do that...I WANT to do that.
Suzanne
Chazin: I love mysteries, particularly the works of Jeffery
Deaver, Lee Child and Dennis Lehane. Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird
inspired me when I was starting out as a fiction writer. For practical
advice, I found James Frey's books on writing very, very helpful.
My agent recommended a book by agent Albert Zuckerman, How to
Write a Blockbuster that I also found helpful.
Cat
Bauer: Dean Myers was my mentor. Writing a Novel by John Braine
was my Bible. J.D. Salinger was my hero. In terms of guidance, it
wasn't books about writing per se, but Carl G. Jung, Joseph Campbell
that reinforced what I wanted to do with my life.
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