I discovered creative writing at the start of seventh grade, in a creative writing class that I would look forward to for the rest of that year. I don’t remember much of middle school, but I still remember with clarity the details of those weekly, fifty-minute periods; my red plastic binder filled with lined loose-leaf paper, the ticking of the clock, which was more of a dull, muted sound than a sharp click, the ambition to impress my teacher with my words. More than anything, I remember the pride I felt when I saw his encouraging comments at the bottom of my stories, the loopy handwriting that filled me up with so much confidence that I have continued writing to this day.

After that, I spent the entirety of high school determined to become a writer; I participated in creative writing competitions, got some of my short stories published in magazines, and applied to colleges as an English major. But it seems that now that the time has come for me to fully commit, when I am surrounded by some of the most brilliant English scholars in the world and have all the resources to effectively pursue my dreams, I struggle to do it. Even the simple act of sitting down and putting down any words seems a significant hurdle. 

To motivate me once again, and to remind myself of the reason why I chose the path of English and literature, I called my seventh-grade writing teacher to talk to him about his own journey as a writer, and any advice he had for aspiring authors. 

Mark Salzman is a writer who has published nine books, both fiction and nonfiction works; among his literary accomplishments, he has received the Christopher Award and Ross McDonald Literary Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his novel Iron and Silk. 

If you like telling stories, if you like putting things into words, it’s going to come out of you one way or the other. The hard part is to not block it, to not crush that spirit with all the extra stuff

Mark Salzman

When I took his class, I wasn’t yet old enough to recognize the significance of these things. In my head, he is simply my teacher, and I find upon the first minutes of our conversation that he is just as I remember– the same eccentric, bubbly person who used to recount his adventures studying Kung Fu in China and playing the cello for us in class. 

Before the interview, I had read Salzman’s most recent book The Man in the Empty Boat, an autobiographical novel that centers around his decades-long struggle with writer’s block and anxiety. It contains quotes that are so startlingly relevant to my own fears that at times it feels as if he is talking directly to me. That is part of the reason I was so eager to do this interview– selfishly, I wanted the opportunity to dig into these points further, to ask for answers from this person who seemed to understand my worries so clearly, at least at one point in his life. 

After catching up for a couple of minutes, I start with my most pressing question: How do you deal with the feeling that you’re getting worse as a writer or the anxiety that you’re never going to put out something that’s as good as what you put out before? 

It is a fear that is brought up a few times in his book, and he nods empathetically when I ask it. 

He tells me, “I feel like one of the most important challenges for me as a working writer, and just as a human being, is learning how to manage that internal motivation through punishment and fear. Because the rest is going to come if you’re a natural writer. If you like telling stories, if you like putting things into words, it’s going to come out of you one way or the other. The hard part is to not block it, to not crush that spirit with all the extra stuff”.

He goes on to give me an analogy. 

“I have an image in my mind of how we’ve kind of learned to motivate ourselves to get better; it’s like we’ve built this contraption that we put on our shoulders. It’s made of heavy machinery, and in front of us it dangles carrots like, ‘When I finish my first novel, what will that feel like when it comes out?’. We imagine we’ll be taken seriously, people will think that we’re smart, all those things. That motivates us. But we also know that others around us are working even harder and they’ve gotten farther. So the contraption also has a gigantic iron boot; that’s fear, fear of failure, of money, of mediocrity. That boot kicks us in the ass whenever we slow down. Between the thing we’re looking forward to and the thing we’re afraid of, the machine keeps us moving. Yes, there’s a lot to be said for that. It certainly makes us very vigilant and productive people. But sometimes we can be so crushed under the weight of our anxieties, our worries, our late-night fears, that the costs outweigh the benefits. That’s true for my temperament. I find it easy to overthink and to worry. My problem is, I overdo it. So my main work as an adult is just learning how to keep that from getting out of hand”. 

The examples he gives are strikingly on the nose. The desire to get published, to seek the validation that your work is good enough, that you are smart enough, to be read. The fear that going down this path will only lead to instability, poverty, or lukewarm responses. 

In his book, he also talks about how for the majority of his life, his writing has been motivated by “an itch,” a desire to work out the jumble of thoughts in his head on paper rather than a burning passion for literature. I ask him how he has adapted his process now that his anxiety has lessened and his life has become more settled, something he credits to becoming a father. 

There has been for some time a kind of a mindset, a sort of a popular belief that to be an artist, you have to be miserable, because great artists were miserable.

Mark Salzman

“There has been for some time a kind of a mindset, a sort of a popular belief that to be an artist, you have to be miserable, because great artists were miserable. I’m not too happy with that idea, because I think we tend to romanticize that, and people who would otherwise be perfectly happy, make themselves miserable because they think it’s necessary to be an artist. I just think that defeats the purpose of art because art is supposed to make life good in some way,” he says. 

“I’m grateful for all the great art that has come out of people who suffered and took the time to create stuff out of it. But I’m a little skeptical that that’s the only way to do it. The writers I admire most are actually the Chinese and Japanese Zen Buddhist poets that I’ve been reading for 40 years. And they were the opposite of unhappy. It was their freedom from unhappiness that they chose to write about, and that has inspired me all my life. So I think it’s also possible you can be happy and write as well.”

He adds the contingency that he isn’t sure if that kind of writing would be commercially successful. Readers want drama, they want conflict. 

“But I do feel like I live in a place of peace now, and I’m grateful for it, and what I want more than anything on earth is, to be able to write something that would convey to someone who felt the way I did earlier in life, that it is possible. Freedom is possible. Happiness is possible”.

Suddenly, I am reminded of the way I felt when I first started writing, the reason I continued. It had been the feeling of connection, that I was able to foster understanding at a level I couldn’t verbally. I was a quiet kid, but on paper, I could express myself wholly and with the greatest possible accuracy. 

Later in our conversation, he mentions that this is what he enjoys most about teaching; he has taught both juvenile felons and soft, wide-eyed private school kids, but he says that the writing he has seen produced in both environments was deeply similar. 

“The thing I found has been amazing about teaching is that so many of the kids, I mean, by far the majority, are willing from day one to write sincerely. And by the way, we do that the rest of our lives, as writers, or as artists of all kinds. We’re trying to remember what it felt like to be a kid because we saw things so directly with such intensity and such deep magic”. 

It is amazing to hear from his perspective, now that I am much past the stage of “seeing things with deep magic”, what made my childhood writing so successful. And it felt as if he had identified the root of my problem as a writer– I had forgotten to write for myself, had forgotten the endorphin rush I used to get from seeing someone react to my writing or meet the version of myself that I felt was most true. Today, I am bogged down with my desire to be well-received, by both real and imagined readers, and the words I put down feel much emptier than the ones I scribbled in my little red plastic binder.

His last piece of advice to me: “I would say that the great lesson of my adult life for me has been learning that it is acceptable to learn how to quiet my mind because until then, I thought that was conceding. You’re slowing down while the rest of the world is speeding up, you’re giving up. I don’t think of it in those terms anymore. I don’t think it’s giving up. Imagine if culturally we developed to the point where we believe that sleep is a waste of time. So none of us allowed ourselves to sleep. We’d all be going crazy, right? And if someone were to say, actually, eight hours of sleep, that’s a good thing. People would be saying, Are you kidding? That’s eight hours wasted!”

When I tell him that at Berkeley, sometimes it does feel as if sleep is a waste of time, he smiles ruefully. 

“There’s plenty to be said for intensity and going for it and pushing and staying up all night and everything. And that has its place. But what I had to learn was that if I only had that, if I got to the point where I couldn’t appreciate the other side, I was in trouble. The costs began to outweigh the benefits, and then it just became self-defeating. Rather than making a beautiful life, I was building just a very, very noisy and uncomfortable life. And that’s not what I wanted. You know, it’s not what I would want for my kids”.

Perhaps, the key to going forward had been to revisit my roots. 

In an environment where it seems everyone is chasing the same fast-paced, adrenaline-fueled lifestyle, it is refreshing and relieving to hear this perspective. The validation that taking life a little slower can still result in contentment, and taking it too fast can lead you somewhere you didn’t want to be. It’s especially encouraging hearing it from someone who has seemingly obtained everything I want from my own life.

Days after our conversation, I find his words motivate me more than my “carrots” or “iron boot” could. I am slowly writing again, sentences here and there in my notebook, and although they are jumbled and disorganized, they feel honest. 

Speaking with Mark Salzman, I not only gained insight into the process of a successful author but was also reminded of who I had been when he had seen me last, the person who spent hours after school editing stories with so much excitement they couldn’t sleep. Perhaps, the key to going forward had been to revisit my roots. 

Eight years after I left his class, Mark Salzman (or Mr. Salzman, as he will always be in my mind), has once again instilled in me the conviction that my voice is worth something. I hope that I will remember his wisdom as I go forward, building something for myself rather than for an audience, both with my writing and with my life. 

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— Audrey Ouh, Fall 2023 Staff