I write in my house, at my desk, where I have Christmas lights strung over it to try and convince me that I'm having a good time. I can't really write anywhere else.
I get my inspiration from looking at the world and paying attention to people and just looking closely. Also from reading. I get so much inspiration from other authors.
I have always been a reader. I was one of those kids desperate to learn. I would read anything.
I've always been a doodler.
You have to learn how to write each book.
Everything about writing is hard for me except for that - the names pop into my head. That's one of the reasons why I always make sure I have a notebook with me.
I didn't really start to write until I was almost 30, and I started with the short stories.
I am stuck at 10 years old. I think.
I was a kid who loved to read. I read everything I could get my hands on. I didn't have one favorite book. I had lots of favorite books: 'The Borrowers' by Mary Norton, 'Paddington' by Michael Bond, 'A Little Princess' by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 'Stuart Little' by EB White, 'A Cricket in Times Square,' all the Beverly Cleary books.
I read a couple of books a week. About 80 percent of what I read is contemporary literature for adults. The other 20 percent is made up of non-fiction and children's books.
I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have found what I am supposed to do and to get to do it.
I have no talents. But I do have hope. And wonder. And love. Maybe those are talents?
My father - he was an orthodontist - was supposed to sell his practice and move down to Florida, but that never happened... I would sometimes spend the summer with him and visit him, but he never lived with us.
I think hope and magic are probably connected.
When I was a kid, it never occurred to me that human beings wrote books. It was a kind of cognitive dissonance for me... I just didn't think it was something that people did.
We have this thing as human beings: we have a profound need for story. That's what kids need.
When you write for kids, people always ask you what lesson you mean to impart. I don't think adult writers get that question. I never mean to teach anybody a lesson, because I don't know anything myself.
I have a part-time dog. I'm actually an aunt to a dog, and he's an awful dog, but I love him. He's only interested in doing what he wants to do.
My parents are separated. My father left when I was six years old.
I had it in my head when I was in college that I wanted to be a writer, but it took me a long time to commit to being a writer. Up until then, I had worked one dead-end job after another while writing on the side.
