I tell students they will know they are getting somewhere when a scene is so painful they can just barely bring themselves to write about it. A writer has to draw blood.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
One of the biggest challenges of writing for middle-grade or even young-adult readers is that I don't want to have too much violence in it - which really limits what you can do. It's important that they're not just bloodbaths or glorifying violence. I always try to show that a person who dies leaves a hole. There's grief in my books.
I like to tell students, 'I didn't burst on to the literary scene.' I'm never good at things at the beginning. I was terrible at the start. I need to work and work.
If you give me a typewriter and I'm having a good day, I can write a scene that will astonish its readers. That will perhaps make them laugh, perhaps make them cry - that will have some emotional clout to it. It doesn't cost much to do that.
I believe that everyone has a story, and it is important that we encourage all students to tell theirs.
There is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.
I'm constantly being surprised and finding unplanned things - because the writing is a process of experiencing things on the ground with the characters.
There's nothing more painful than writing.
I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.
I always talk to my students about the need to write for the joy of writing. I try to sort of disaggregate the acclaim from the act of writing.
I know I'm writing better now than I ever did for adults because I'm writing for an audience who know that they don't know everything.