In recent separate interviews, soundings asked these three accomplished authors about their inspirations, their approach to craft, and how they teach creative writing.

What do you do when you get stuck?

Turkle: I revise and polish already written parts of the book, and try to immerse myself in my argument in a fresh way. Lightman: When I am dissatisfied with what I’ve done, I will go back and find one page, or one passage, or sometimes just a single sentence that I wrote that I felt, "Thats good. That has truth in it, it’s honest, it has strength. And that’s why I’m doing this." Díaz: I get depressed and lie on the floor of my bathroom.

How much of what you write do you keep?

Lightman: What I do when I’m writing is, I throw away most of what I write, especially when I’m struggling with a long project. Díaz: About 10 pages for every hundred. This is no exaggeration; I have the proof right next to me. Turkle: In a technical sense, nothing, since I always rewrite. I always revise. But in another sense, everything, because an idea, discarded, from one argument can find new purpose in another place. I often go over familiar ground in my writing, but add new ideas to familiar examples. I am always working with the voices of those I have interviewed or those who have written for these collections in my mind.

Who are some of the writers you admire?

Turkle: For thinking about memory and objects, I admire Joan Didion and Oliver Sacks. They make the meaning of things come alive. They show and never tell Lightman: I admire different things in different writers. The one commonality I can think of is originality. I put great value on that, and I try to be original myself. I think Oliver Sacks is doing something that almost no one else is doing—drawing on his personal experience with mental patients, and writing about it. Franz Kafka, of course, is a writer in love with ideas, and I’m particularly drawn to him because that’s something important to me: ideas. Díaz: So many. From the apocalyptic—Cormac McCarthy, Melville, Toni Morrison—to the genre writers—Stephen King, John Wyndham, Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany—to the more generally literary—Haruki Murakami, Francisco Goldman.

What do you learn from your students?

Lightman: Well, you learn humility. You always find students who know more than you do about this or that, or who have some raw talent that you don’t have. You learn also where the mind of young people is, which is very important. Even though I have children who are now grown, I find I have to constantly rub shoulders with young people and talk to them to find out what’s important to them. In a writing course you learn a lot about what’s on their minds because writing is a very personal thing. Turkle: From my students I learn what works as a teacher. Díaz: Better question: what don’t I learn from them?

What advice do you offer to your students?

Turkle: In terms of their writing, I tell them that writing is revision. I am always willing to accept a revision of a paper and count the revision as the paper that counts for the grade. MIT students want to do well, but they often don’t know what it takes to do well in writing. I try to show them how to do well as writers, by taking their first ideas as exactly that: first ideas. It takes a lot of practice to move away from the notion that there is "one best way" to get a writing assignment right. And of course, in terms of my subject, I tell my students that alongside what technology does for us, instrumental technology, we must be ever attentive to what technology does to us, as people, to our friendships, psychological development, ways of looking at the world. Lightman: I tell them to read a lot. I advise them to keep a writing journal, where you put down your thoughts and observations. There are different kinds of advice that I offer for fiction writing, versus science writing. For fiction writing I would offer the same advice that I offer to myself, which is that you have to listen to your characters, rather than tell them what to say. And you can’t plot your characters too heavily. You want to bring your reader into the creative process and use your reader’s imagination to do part of the writing for you. With science writing, it’s important to be careful in your research, to make sure you’ve got the facts right, to talk to a lot of different experts until you start hearing the same story over and over, so you know you’ve got it right. Díaz: View everything—the world, yourself, your context, your received beliefs—critically, and you will grow wise.

Are you compelled to write?

Turkle: Yes. Absolutely. Lightman: Yes. I’m compelled to write. I don’t have a choice about it. Díaz: Not at all. I’m compelled to read. Writing is one of the last things I do. Sadly!

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