Blogfest 2009

For me, my third book (which was for grown-ups) was actually the easiest, but I think that’s because I was floundering to find a direction and had lost my writing compass. So it didn’t matter what I wrote because I didn’t understand where I was going or where I had been. The next easiest was my first book. For the first book, you have all these pent-up emotions and stories from your life. After the first book, you’ve kind of used up a lot of your stories from your childhood and have to research and use your imagination more. I enjoy that quite a bit, but it’s definitely harder. I do think, however, that whether a book is easier or harder to write had nothing to do with the quality of the book.

I’d like to be able to fly fast – then I wouldn’t ever have to get on a plane again!

It was just a hunger I had to write. I don’t know where the hunger came from. It was just in my heart. I remember one summer during college I worked at Sears in Hollywood, and I told the other sales clerks that I wanted to be a writer. They all laughed and one of them said, “What are you going to write about – working at Sears?” Then another one told me to marry a doctor or a lawyer and forget about writing. And my mother wanted me to go to law school. My dad said if I was going to write, I should write mysteries because I would make more money. I didn’t listen to any of them because my hunger was just too strong.