Your favourite authors spill the beans on their writing habits and other fun things!
Fabulous authors from Doubleday, Knopf, Random House, McClelland & Stewart, (and more!) answer light-hearted questions about their books, writing habits and tips, and other miscellaneous goodies.
We'll share the scoop on what Joy Fielding wears when she writes, or the one book John Boyne wishes he had written, or what Lisa See's guilty pleasure reads are. You'll get helpful writing tips and an inside view of a writer's process.
Here, we can chat about their answers, you can ask questions of your own, and who knows – perhaps some of them might pop in to say hello!
1. How would you summarize your new book in one sentence?
The unconditional love a boy has for his calf and the possibility of losing him determines the boy's attitude toward every living thing.
2. How long did it take you to write this book?
Two years. It started off as a picture book and my editor wanted more.
3. How did you choose your characters' names?
They usually cry out to me in some way. I can't write about my main characters without them having a name. In Little Joe, Eli came to me in a dream. In fact, the first chapter did the night I got home from the county fair.
4. How many drafts did you go through?
I fret over every word once I get my first draft done, even when it's with my editor, so I'd say, six times.
5. Who was the first person to read your manuscript?
My husband, who's also an author. He never lets my voice stray and cleans up the manuscript before it even gets to my editor.
6. If your book were to become a movie, who would you like to see star in it?
For Eli, a nine-year-old version of either Haley Joel Osment from Sixth Sense, or Lukas Haas, who starred alongside Harrison Ford in the 1985 movie, Witness
7. What's your favourite city in the world?
Well, I usually head for the countryside, but now that I don't live in Canada anymore, I miss it terribly. Quebec City for fondue and frosty village nights. I can wear my full length Hudson's Bay blanket coat and not get freaky stares. Vancouver for its mountainous sunsets, sushi, and Granville Island where the cheese vendors are so darn nice.
8. Did you always want to be a writer?
I always wanted to be a storyteller as a way to make friends in school. We moved around quite a bit.
9. What was your very first story about? When did you write it?
Santa Claus and how he wasn't my parents. I actually believed he existed into my early double digit years. I thought my friends were just plain wrong, misguided and cynical.
10. What was your favourite book as a kid?
Charlotte's Web.
11. If you could be any character from any book, who would you be?
Laura Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie.
12. If there was one book you wish you had written what would it be?
For kids, Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree, for adults, Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea
13. If you could talk to any writer living or dead who would it be, and what would you ask?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich every year. But we wouldn't talk about writing, I'd take him for a good meal and enjoy every morsel of food.
14. How do you organize your library?
I don't. I'm unable to part with books so I keep them in boxes in the cellar and in jagged piles on our dining room buffet for easy access.
15. What's on your nightstand right now?
Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us. I keep reading the pages on the Sargasso, which is unlike any place on earth and where weeds can achieve a kind of aquatic immortality.
16. Where is your favorite place to write?
In my little red office, but my imagination prefers my car or a bed. I've got plenty of notes on Dunkin' Donuts napkins and tissues.
17. Do you have any writing rituals?
After an hour in front of the computer, if nothing really happens but jibberish, I meditate. If nothing shifts after that, then it becomes a research and script polishing day.
18. When do you write best, morning or night?
Morning for fleshing out key phrases and scenes that I got in the middle of the night.
19. What is the best gift someone could give a writer?
Time, money and a belief in our work. Not necessarily in that order.
20. What is the best advice someone could give a writer?
When something comes to you that touches you deeply, write it down, in the heat of the moment. That's usually when dialogue, in particular, is the truest. You can always examine it from all sides later. But if you think you'll remember it again in the same way, you won't. So excuse yourself from the table, go in the bathroom and write it down.