People often ask me for the origins of a particular book or story. In fact, the other day I was reading to my wife a short story I had written. When I finished my reading she told me she liked it and then asked, “How did you get the notion for that?” I had to
If you check my blog post for October 2, 2012, you will see something about one of my most important writing mentors when I was still a teenager, Lee Hays. In that blog I recount one of the most memorable things he (or anyone) ever said to me about writing. Since it was told to
The New York Times recently quoted Stephen King as saying, “If you listen to something on audio, every flaw in a writer’s work, the repetition of words and the clumsy phrases, they all stand out. As a writer I say to myself, how will that sound?” I sometimes think that instead of writers’ groups—which are organized around
Malcolm, from Atlanta asks: “How do you decide what blog post to write?” It works this way: I have never known two writers who work exactly the same way. Each has individual idiosyncrasies. At the same time I believe that ALL writers have the same BASIC process. That is, they write, then rewrite, read what they have
Avi_Connecting with Students Who Have Learning Disabilities from Mackin Educational Resources on Vimeo. Thanks to MackinVia for this excerpt from a longer interview I did with them recently. You can view more of Mackin’s videos here. If you haven’t already read Catch You Later, Traitor, here’s more about the book.
SCENE: My granddaughter, (a second grader) is riding in the car with my son. GRANDDAUGHTER: (Out of the blue) Daddy, who is Cleopatra? MY SON: She was a very famous queen of Egypt a long time ago. But most people probably know about her because Shakespeare wrote a play about her. [Pause] GRANDDAUGHTER: Who is Shakespeare? SON:
Kylie, of Orange CA writes, “Do you write for adults?” Dear Kylie: In my long career as a writer, I began as a playwright, trying to write plays for the stage. I was not very successful but, without question, at that time I was writing for adults. At a certain time, being discouraged, an older
Paige, from Milan, MI, writes, “How does it feel when one of your main characters dies?” That is a question I have never been asked before, and it is an interesting one. It is really asking, what is the writers’ relationship to the characters we create? How real do they become? To what extent does the
One of the pleasures of writing for young people is that they write you letters, lots of them. Call them fan letters. They are supporting, encouraging, often touching. The best of them derive from a deep and special connection to a particular book, which the letter-writer expresses in their own terms and in their own
Avi_Writing About the Red Scare from Mackin Educational Resources on Vimeo. Thanks to MackinVia for this excerpt from a longer interview I did with them recently. You can view more of Mackin’s videos here. If you haven’t already read Catch You Later, Traitor, here’s more about the book.