Interview (Written): Don Winslow

Interview with novelist and screenwriter Don Winslow, author of the current New York Times bestselling Novel “The Cartel”:

How did you become a writer?

Basically by writing. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, and I’ve been doing it — or trying to — since I was six. (My neighbor, Joey Palumbo, paid me a quarter to write a play, and it was a long time before I got paid that much again.) I started seriously trying to write crime novels much later. I’d heard Joseph Wambaugh say that when he was starting, he decided to write ten pages a day, no matter what. I didn’t think I could do ten, but I could do five. So I wrote five pages a day on my first crime novel, no matter where I was or what I was doing. After a while (okay, quite a while) I had a book. The first fourteen publishers I sent it to disagreed. The fifteenth thought it was a book (it was nominated for an Edgar) and I’ve been writing since.

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

There’s not time or space for me to list all those. Shakespeare was a huge influence when I was a kid. In my genre, Elmore Leonard, Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, Lawrence Block, Joe Wambaugh, T. Jefferson Parker, Robert B. Parker, James Crumley, Ken Bruen, Ian Rankin, John Harvey…it goes on and on, and I’m always afraid I’ll leave someone out. Tolstoy inspires me, so does George Eliot. I don’t ever want to ‘close the list’ on my inspirations — I want to find new things every day.

For the rest of the interview, go here.

Via Advice To Writers.

Twitter: @donwinslow.