Most writers, by the time they're 60, must have revisited their childhood a dozen times.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
One likes to think one grows as a writer as one ages, else all you get is an 'old' young writer. Beyond that is the changing landscape of the universe and the stories I choose to tell.
I had a great childhood. I think writers are always better off when they have more twisted childhoods, but I didn't.
At this stage I am not involved with young adults as closely as many other writers. My children are grown up and my grandchildren are still quite young.
With the 'Old Kingdom' trilogy, at least half the readers were older adults rather than younger adults. I wrote them for myself with no particular audience in mind.
Some writers can only deal with childhood experience, because it's complete. For another kind of writer, life goes on, and he's able to keep processing that as well.
One tends to overlook the fact that all during the 30's and actually during the late 40's I was a highly successful writer and a great many properties accumulated during that period of time.
As a journalist for 35 years, and now author for 20, I've learned that there's always more.
Many writers were picked on as children. Why? Because they were weird from the get-go. They were often to be found at the back of the class smelling erasers, or talking to caterpillars, or walking down the street with an encyclopedia balanced on their head.
The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.
A twenty-one-year-old writer is likely to be inhibited by a lack of usable experience. Childhood and adolescence were something I knew.