Avi

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Blogging decisions

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

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Connecting with Students Who Have Learning Disabilities

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.

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Fame is Where You Find It

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: 

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“Do you write for adults?”

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

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When characters die

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

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Fan letters

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

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Catch You Later, Traitor:
Writing about the Red Scare

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. 

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Behind the Book: Old Wolf

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

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Returning to books we love

The two books that most enchant­ed me as a young read­er were, The Wind in the Wil­lows, by Ken­neth Gra­hame, and Trea­sure Island, by Robert Louis Steven­son. I adored these books when I first read them, and have esteemed them as much, if not more over the years I have reread them and reread them.

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Less, Not More

An edi­tor recent­ly told me that when she sug­gests that a writer cut a man­u­script, it often comes back longer. Anoth­er edi­tor com­plained that some­times there are more would-be writ­ers than read­ers. Look at the shelf of new books at your local book­store. Notice how many mas­sive books there are. Con­sid­er how few short novels

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