I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Well, I always wanted to write from the time I was very little, and my mother encouraged me. She wrote a journal from the time she was 15 up until about the age of 76.
I started to write when I was eighteen or nineteen. However, until I was about twenty-three, I didn't take it that seriously.
I've been writing since I was 19.
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.
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.
I started writing at the age of seventeen because I had a teacher in high school who said that we had to get something accepted by a national magazine to get an A. The teacher later withdrew that threat, but the writing bug bit me.
Writing for adults and writing for young people is really not that different. As a reporter, I have always tried to write as clearly and simply as possible. I like clean, unadorned writing. So writing for a younger audience was largely an exercise in making my prose even more clear and direct, and in avoiding complicated digressions.
Since the moment I could hold a pencil, I have spent nearly all day every day writing. And there is not an age group that I have not written for. You can read me from birth 'til death.
I didn't write anything until I was well over 30.
I was nearly 40 when I started. I had no fear that I wasn't going to write. I knew it was just delayed. Then, my goodness, I never stopped.