Author Interview

What initially got you interested in writing?

Reading! I read a lot as a kid. Then later I got involved in my high school student newspaper. Luckily for me, we had a good paper, and there I began writing stuff that got published. I was an awkward, unconfident teenager, and that was the first time I ever did anything that I thought I might possibly, maybe, be kind of good at. That was big, for me! I went on to study literature in college, and my first “real” job after college was as a reporter on a community weekly newspaper, where I wrote everything from obituaries and sports to front-page news. That was great training.

What genres do you prefer to write in?

Most writers write the kind of books they like to read, which is natural. I like novels that are good stories, first and foremost. I like realistic fiction, either set in the present day or historical. So those are the kind of novels I’ve written.

Are there any authors you prefer to read and why?

Oh sure, there are lots! As a young writer trying to learn, the authors I loved and learned from the most were Ernest Hemingway, who showed countless writers how to write with simple, stripped-back immediacy — trying to, as he put it, make a thing or an experience rather than describe it; E.B. White, who showed me how you could write in a casual, natural-seeming way; and James Thurber, a close friend of White’s, who showed me how much serious, patient, painstaking work it takes to write in that seemingly casual, natural way.

How did you make the move into being a published author?

Through lots of trying and failure, as is true for most writers. My first book was rejected 75 times and never published. My first four books — two nonfiction books for adults and two picture books for kids — were altogether rejected about 120 times. None was ever published. I finally got a break when I was asked to write a book on a very short deadline, because someone else couldn’t do it, for the then-popular Choose Your Own Adventure series for young readers. I wound up writing 10 books for that series. That was my training in writing for young readers, and that’s how I finally got a start.

What do you find most rewarding about writing?

Two things. One, when you work through draft after draft after draft, meeting challenges, cutting stuff that doesn’t work, and wrestling to make the rest something readable, if you persist and if you are lucky you can get to a place where you realize that this is all coming together — that this may actually have become something real and even good. That’s a very satisfying feeling. It’s also very nice when you have a book come out and someone tells you it meant something to them. That’s really terrific — but the first, more private and personal reward is deeper.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

That there is, almost inevitably, a whole lot of failure, frustration, and rejection. The great majority of my books that have actually been published have not succeeded in terms of sales, even when I thought they succeeded as stories. You can work your guts out for years on a book and never see it published — or, if it does get published, you can watch it sink in the world without a trace, without finding any readers. That’s hard. And it happens, sooner or later, to almost everyone.

Do you have any tips for writers who find themselves experiencing writer’s block?

Yes! Give yourself permission to just write some junk, and go ahead and start. The hard part is just to start. What stops people most of the time is this mistaken idea that if it doesn’t come out brilliant, beautiful and perfect the first time, you are no good at this, you’re a failure. That’s nonsense — writing never comes out brilliant, beautiful and perfect in the first draft.

Think of the first draft, instead, as a sort of sketch, something to get down so you can build on it. Then go back and look honestly for what works, what you can build on, and what doesn’t work. Often what doesn’t work will show you what could — so everything you try has value. But the key is understanding that your first draft isn’t supposed to be perfect. It’s just a start. Looking at it that way takes a lot of the pressure off, and then you can start. Once you start, you’re okay.

What advice would you give to people that want to enter the field?

Find a way to learn the basic skills that writing involves, and to get good experience. For most young writers in past generations, like mine, that has meant going to work in journalism, where you can learn and build those skills: how to gather information, how to interview people, how to grab the reader’s interest, how to take criticism and feedback from an editor (this is vital!), and how to work on deadline. There are far fewer newspaper jobs today, which is really sad — but that’s still the best way. Find a small, community newspaper, and contribute however you can — covering sports, whatever, just to get started. If they’ll hire you, the skills you will build there will serve you well for the rest of your writing life.

What do you want readers to take away from reading your works?

I think what happens when good fiction is read by good readers is that the story and the reader come together, and together they make meaning. A good story is more than just a page-turner, it’s one that comes to mean something — and that meaning develops when you, the reader, bring your experiences, your emotions, you hopes and dreams, your mind as you engage with the story. There’s a huge difference between message, which is what a bad writer tries to shove into a story, and which always makes for a boring story — and meaning, which is what happens when a good story and a good reader come together. So the reader is half of it.

I hope that’s what happens, at least some of the time, when someone reads one of my books. It doesn’t happen with every book by anybody, or with every reader; but when it does, those are the books that you the reader, will remember forever. That’s my hope and aim, to make a book like that: to produce a book that might mean something, at least to some people, at least some of the time.

Is there anything else about you that you think readers might find interesting?

I like to play music, and I play in two or three rock bands, depending on how you count. And I’m six feet ten inches tall.