Asking a Writer: Andy Weir

If you want to know how to be better at anything — ask an expert. We want to write better. We asked Andy Weir, the author of highly acclaimed novel, The Martian, for his advice.

I was honoured to take part in live chat with Andy happened on Product Hunt and to ask Andy about his writing habits and inspiration. There was a number of other great questions and answers that could be interesting for all of us.

Read, learn and write better:

Q: Andy, honoured to meet you here. For all aspiring writers: could you tell us about your daily writing routine, do you have any habits or instruments that help you write on a regularly basis?

A: I have no set routine. I tend to write in the evenings. I have to be alone in the house and I can’t have music playing. Other than that, it’s just work.

Q: At what age did you knew you were going to write a book or become a writer?

Andy: Well I always wanted to be a writer. And The Martian was actually my third book (the first two sucked).

Q: Who were your earliest readers, other than your immediate family?

Andy: Random people online that I never met. I started out with a webcomic called “Casey and Andy”. I built up readers slowly over time.

Q: How much research did you do for your most successful novel, The Martian? Did you talk to anyone at NASA?

Andy: Research effort ended up being tons and tons of Google searches and a bunch of math. I didn’t know anyone in aerospace at the time I wrote the novel, so I was on my own. But I like researching, it’s fun for me. So it wasn’t a problem. I spent about three years writing the book and I’d say half of that time was spent researching.

Q: How long did you have the idea for The Martian and how long did you plan on writing it as a novel?

A: I came up with the idea around 2002, but didn’t start working on it until 2009. I finished in 2012. It means I had come up with the concept years earlier and finally started writing it one day for the hell of it. I had two other serials going on at my site at the same time.

Q: What tools (note takers, word processors, etc.) did you use to write The Martian?

Andy: I wrote it in OpenOffice Writer. However, once I got a print deal, the editing process pretty much required me to use MS Word, so now I use that. You need collaborative editing features in publishing and Word is hands-down the best at it.

Q: What’s your favourite app?

Andy: Excel. I know it’s boring, but I spend a lot of time using it for math and research and it’s awesome.

Q: Huge fan of the book and especially loved the audiobook version. Do you listen to audiobooks? And if so, do you have any specific favourites?

Andy: I don’t listen to audiobooks very often. Though I did listen to the audiobook of “Ready Player One” read by Will Wheaton. That was awesome. And I also have to give a shout out to R. C. Bray who did the reading of The Martian. He did an AMAZING job and he won an award for it.

Q: Who are your favourite authors?

Andy: Robert A. Heinlein, Isaak Asimov, and Artur Clarke are my “holy trinity”. I also loved Terry Pratchett — his Discworld is the only fantasy series I really enjoyed.

Q: What’s your opinion on ‘inspiration’? Is it something you can have or should wait for? Do you feel you need it in order to write?

Andy: If you wait for inspiration you’ll never get anything done. Most of the time it’s a slog. But here’s the thing: sometimes you’re inspired and crank out words and other times you have to fight for every sentence. If you look back at that writing a week later, you can’t tell the difference between when you were inspired and when you weren’t.

Point is: your quality of writing isn’t actually affected by your level of inspiration. Sometimes you have to just gut it out, but you still create quality work. So just press through.

This Q&A is based entirely on Live Chat with Andy Weir and I only asked a couple of questions and accumulated the most interesting into this article. All praise goes to Product Hunt and Andy Weir. Please mention that I edited some comments to make this essay more comfortable to read but I didn’t change the meaning.

PS: this does’t mean we won’t conduct interviews ourselves. See you in brighter future! :) Write. Please.

Feel free to subscribe to the publication, hit recommend button below and follow us on Twitter!