Great writing is great writing. It's as simple as all that.
Life's so brief,” she goes on. “We're, at every juncture, staring mortality in the face. It's the very least we can do if we think it will be of any interest or value, to share the past. And although mine's been crooked, it's also been splendid. It's taught me to be vulnerable and humble, to write this book.
Usually I decide on what it is I'm writing next by the books I'm reading.
Actually, I can write anywhere - airport lounges, in bed, on a rattling train going north.
There’s only one difference between published and unpublished writers, and it is this -- the first group see their work in print on the shelves of Waterstone’s or Tesco or online at Amazon; the second group are yet to have physical evidence of the hours, weeks, years spent fashioning words into their patterns. You are already a writer.
Some say I'm an overnight success. Well, that was a very long night that lasted about 10 years. But while I do, of course, now feel the pressure having had books that have been very successful, I just know I have to concentrate on writing for myself. I can't worry about genres or markets or what might be commercial or not. That never works.
I love the structural part of the writing process.
People might think writing is a hard business, but it's nowhere near acting.
I simply love writing good stories, that's my passion.
If you want to write, you have to be willing to be disturbed.
Sometimes strange and wonderful things will pop into my head. And sometimes I will see something in the world that is the beginning of a story. I always have a notebook with me so that I can write down what I see and hear.
I journal for about half an hour, and by the time that's done, the business day on the East Coast has begun. The phone starts to ring, and the rest of the day is spent dealing with the business of writing. My workday is done at about 3:00.
This is the great thing about writing for kids. Adults might not do anything if they recognized me. But if they do see me, and they're with a kid, they'll tell the kid who I am. They think they should give that to the kid. So generally that sends the kid over.
For children: I'm writing a picture book about the Big Dipper and a novel about a cricket, a firefly and a vole. For grownups: I'm writing poems.
I've never worked with a co-author before [Alison McGhee]. Writing for me is a pretty scary thing, so it was a huge comfort to have someone in the room working with me. It became less like work and more like play.
I didn't know at the time I was writing Because of Winn-Dixie where the story came from, but in retrospect I can see that it was a response to a terribly harsh winter here in Minnesota.
[A businessmen in plane after 9\11] asked me, "What are you working on now?" And I said I was writing a story about a mouse who tries to save a princess. I was mortified. Here the world is falling down around us, and I'm trying to tell the story about a mouse who saves a princess. I said "It doesn't matter at all now."
As Elmore Leonard says, I write to find out what happens.
When I get to a point in my book writing when I don't know what I'm going to do next, I'll come back look at underlined passages and see if the images I wrote still have a certain amount of resonance for me.
When I journal, I write about images that I've seen that I think might make good stories. I write about things that I hear that I think I can turn into a story. I write about the story that I'm working on and where I think it might go.
I need to write, and I can't write when I'm on the road.
If I am just home and writing, I become very strange.
When I do it [writing] by myself, there's a lot more terror and uncertainty.
May God strike me down with a hammer on the head before I write a book with a teach-y goal!
I think we sent Tony Fucile pictures of ourselves, photos from like when we were seven years old. That's what he worked from. He captured exactly what we looked like. I'd love to do another one with Alison, not just for the joy of writing, but also for the joy of watching Tony bring it to life with his illustrations. I'm hoping at BEA, or ALA, I'll get to meet Tony and shake his hand and thank him.
