Call me an Anglophile but I have an abiding interest in English, my mother tongue, and the literature that flowed—and still flows—from it. Which is why I read a book titled English Literature; A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University press, 2010). It was written by Jonathan Bates, a Shakespeare scholar at the University of Warwick. It
I was so very saddened by the death of Walter Dean Myers. I admired him and his writing so much. There was something Buddha-like about the man. He was big, big in person, big in voice and in his writing, so full of articulated compassion. He could delineate the souls, experience, and aspirations of African-American
During the course of the last school year—September to June—I did some 36 Skype visits with classes. These were classes all over the United States and from Thailand to Canada. This way of visiting with classes has enormous advantages for both the schools and for me. For classes doing author studies, the visit can be
Thornton W. Burgess (1874–1965) had an enormous influence on me. Coming out of poor circumstances, he resolved to become a writer, focusing on the landscape and creatures that inhabited his childhood around Sandwich, Mass. By the time of his death, he had written some 170 books, and 15,000 stories. For the most part, they were
One of the reasons for creating multiple drafts of your fiction is that you learn more and more about what you are writing. Consider your first draft as a view from the top of the mountain. You see the contours of the land. You know where the forest is, where large pastures lay. You may
Ivy, from Seattle, WA, asks, “What’s the best way to get ideas?” Well, Ivy, you are in luck. Just today a friend directed my attention to an article in, of all things, the April 21, 2014 Journal of Experimental Psychology. It concerned the effects of walking on creative thinking. After doing any number of experiments, four
Sally, from Kansas City, Kansas, asks “ If you had to choose one of your books to rewrite, which one would it be?” The short answer is, all of them. There is no such thing as a perfect book, a book that could not be improved. Not by me, anyway. I write as best I can for
I read a curious book last night about Homer’s Iliad, which I read when in high school. This book was written by a classical scholar, who was trying to lay out what might or might not be historically true about Homer’s epic. The most fascinating part for me was this: there was a city of
“Dear Avi, I am 10 years old and am in 4th grade. I have writers block. I’ve been trying to write books but they’re just not interesting. Do you have any suggestions? I like writing things that are suspenseful. What do you do when you try to write something but you can’t think of anything?
Emily, from West Newbury, Mass, writes: “I was wondering how you feel about negative criticism.” It is hard not to feel bad when you get negative criticism. I think the hardest part is when you have an inkling that the critic might be right. However, well-written, thoughtful criticism can also help you write better. You