The first thing that attracts me to any script is the writing. If I find myself becoming lost in a good yarn, then I feel certain that others will, too.
I am the son of a hand-loom weaver. I have a connection with yarn. I thought, 'Why not try to make an affordable sanitary pad for my wife?'
Writing is incidental to my primary objective, which is spinning a good yarn. I view myself as a storyteller more than a writer. The story - and hence the extensive research that goes into each one of my books - is much more important than the words that I use to narrate it.
I was in 'Seussical,' and I was in a cage onstage in a purple yarn suit singing backup, and I was like: 'I've had it. I can't do this anymore.' I will say for the record that I did love the show, but I was like: 'I want to do something else. I need a little more.'
For a few years, skeins of yarn piled up in baskets around the house. There weren't enough humans in my mother's orbit to wear all the scarves and sweaters and hats she knitted. And then, as suddenly as she started, she lost interest, leaving needles still entwined in half-finished fragments.
My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.
I have my own office, and I'm there during the evenings and weekends. But during the week, I'm sitting in the middle of my studio, talking with everybody, deciding together every detail, every pallette, every yarn, every colour.
I'm just trying to tell a nice story. Whether you're a writer or a producer, all you want to do is tell a good yarn.
There was a time before I felt I was a real writer, when I was a yarn spinner and I just wanted to tell story until it was over. But then there came a time where I was like, 'No, I want to understand something through writing this that I might have not understood before. I want people to come away with something to think about.'
I've always done things the hard way. I was born like a piece of tangled yarn. The job is trying to untangle it, and I'll probably go on doing it for the rest of my life.
