Most struggling novelists are penniless, pathetic, poorly dressed wretches who piss and moan about how no one appreciates their "Art." Thankfully, "Absurdistan" author Gary Shteyngart isn't struggling. The Russian-born scribe makes a handsome living off bestsellers that satirize ethnicity, love, Jewish identity, Iraq war contractors and everything in between. "I don't know what explains it," the novelist told us, "but [my books] do sell in the hundreds of thousands, and that enables me to really keep my caviar ratio up."

We asked Shytengart to share some secrets of the writing trade, from appropriate booze choices to matters of dress -- and let's not forget the importance of a little depression and tragedy. "If you're happy, things are not going well," he advises. "Stop being so goddamn happy! Unless you want to join the Obama transition team, this is not the field for you. It's all about despair."


Click here to read Shteyngart's musings on the essential qualities a true novelist must possess.

Have a Daily Writing Schedule
"Take a lot of Xanax in the morning to really calm the hell down. Try to wake up no later than 11. Work from 11:30 to 4:30, then go see the shrink, then meet some friends for drinks. Find a good bar where everyone knows your name and you can get a nice buyback. Try to relax. This is the major problem. Writing is both boring and stressful, it's the worst combination. Sometimes I go to the gym, but it's very hard to lift things there, because they're so heavy."

Finding Inspiration
"I think all good books come from heartbreak. Focus on the worst thing that's happened to you -- usually it's interpersonal. Could be your parents drank themselves to death; an ostrich killed your baby brother. Or focus on the worst, horrible break-up. Go off from that. Feel something. It's very hard to feel something these days because we're living such electronic lives; everything's just some weird electronic echo. Try to access what human beings used to have -- emotions. Go from there."

Coping with Writer's Block
"I don't have it. Often what I write is crap, so that's not writer's block, that's writer's crap. You know what I do? I take long showers, sometimes three hours long. It's really helpful."

Masters Degree in Fiction: A Necessary Evil?
"Everyone has an MFA. You can't not have an MFA. Its like the farm team for the rest of literature. I can't think of any writers that I admire that don't have MFAs. Only cool foreigners like Aleksander Hemon don't have them. Everyone else is MFA'ed up."

Drinking Like a Novelist
"'Intellectual' and 'alcoholic' are not that dissimilar. I would drink an Ardbeg 25-year-old single malt, neat. Authors are always pretty sweaty, so you want to drink less liquor that will result in perspiration. Stay away from the beer family. If you come from some kind of culture, try to drink that drink and then you can talk about it. Lets say you're Turkish -- you should be drinking raki at a party, and constantly talking about how you love raki, and how it's really shaped your outlook. A writer should drink no more than nine drinks at a party. Nowadays you see people drinking zero. This is a health-conscious thing. I don't know what to make of it."

Dressing Like a Novelist
"You want to dress down. Sometimes I see dudes in jackets. I think that's trying too hard. You want to look like you spent some money but look distressed, basically. Stuff that's a little not right. You want to match the unhappiness of our time. Everything I wear is somewhat ugly. Plaid is now in for writers. The male writer should probably shop at Odin in New York, on Lafayette, or Opening Ceremony. There's a wonderful jacket I just bought there that looks exactly like a garbage bag. You can't go wrong with that."

A Novelist's Salary
"For the most part I would urge writers to come from very wealthy families. Make sure you've got that trust fund coming! Other than that -- teach. Also write for magazines that pay a lot of money, if they're still around. Playboy pays $5-7 a word. For $7 a word, I'll do anything. I'll write 'Mein Kampf: The Sequel.'"

How to Package Your Debut Novel
"If you can, try to pose with a really cute animal for your author photo. Most readers are women these days -- more than two-thirds. Research shows that they love to see a young author with a young animal. But then you want to get whatever is left of the male readership, so for that, put a beautiful woman on the cover. If you get a decent animal on the back, and a pretty woman on the front, you've covered all the bases."

Navigating the Literary Party Scene
"If you're a man writer, go to a party and find somebody who's even balder than you are. Stand next to them, so everyone says, "Oh, who's that cute guy next to baldy?" You have to talk to the bald man and say, "I loved your last book, Rachel's Promise or something," pretend you read it and that you care, just to make sure he's standing next to you, so that people passing by can appreciate just how comparatively hirsute you are.

The key is really to make yourself look as different as possible from your fellow competitors. Every author's going to have a goatee, $500 glasses, and the same receding hairline. Maybe you can do something like wear antlers to distinguish yourself from others in the pack."

Using Your Novel to Pick up Chicks
"The thing is literature doesn't have the same cache as it used to. I will say, 'Yeah, I wrote some literature, but I'm really trying to leverage that into a career in hip-hop, or blogging.'"

The Literary Feud: Still Worthwhile?
"Everyone's so nice in writing. Even the assholes are nicer than the assholes you would find in Hollywood or some other industry. Big nerds. Nervous people. Always at the margins at their high schools. You don't want to pick a fight with them! It's like challenging an aardvark to a duel. But yes, I do miss the feuds. The feuds were important back then, because people listened. Norman Mailer could get people to watch him on TV if he did one of the schmucky things he would regularly do. Nowadays, who cares? So I throw a glass of brandy in John Updike's face, what's going to happen with that? Nobody cares."

How to Spice up a Book Reading
"I do a little performance art thing. I do all the accents. I really put on a dog-and-pony show. Going to one of my readings is a beautiful thing. For my first book I did a song from the book. Maybe I'll have to learn the accordion for my next book, or wear a panda suit."

Dating and Marriage for a Novelist
"Don't date other writers. Are you kidding? Stay the hell away from other writers. Date a professional, like a lawyer or a doctor. Definitely date somebody who's not an artist. We live such ridiculous lives. I write in bed. Some days I don't even leave my bed. It's nice to be allied with somebody who's actually doing something with their lives. They'll tell you about the patients they saw or the lawsuit they fought. It makes me want to get some bulls**t internship somewhere. Or maybe do something with my hands. But they're such weak hands, what can I do?"