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Hi, Leo,

I’ll try to answer everything. Here goes:

I wrote THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING AT MACDONALS HALL when I was 12. How did I manage it? I got an idea for a story, and started writing it, and kept at it until it was finished. The publishing wasn’t me. My Mom typed it and sent it to a publisher, and they did the rest — editing, illustrating, and turning it into a book.

My ideas come from plain old hard work, and a lot of thinking and plotting. No big mystery; it’s just work.

RESTART took about 8 months from the start of the idea until I had a manuscript ready to hand in. The longest a book has taken me is a whole year; the shortest (WHO IS BUGS POTTER?) took 5 weeks! Really!

Advice to an aspiring writer: read a lot, and write a lot too — a journal, letters, stories, anything that gets you comfortable with the use of language. And NEVER start writing until your story is well-planned first. You can’t say anything well unless you know exactly what you want to say. For me, planning is everything.

And that’s what I consider to be the most important part of the writing process — to plan your work so that the writing is almost like a release of something you’ve had in your head for a while. Also liking what you’re doing. Writing when you don’t want to be writing is a recipe for turning out some pretty bad stuff!

And if there’s a secret to writing stuff that other people will love, I sure don’t know it, and that’s the truth! It’s all about having good ideas, being modern and current, coming up with something that’s quirky, or interesting — hopefully both. Speaking in a voice that people relate to is part of it, I think. Basically, it’s writing something that someone else will want to read. I think that’s what some people call “talent.” I hope you have a ton of it!

Thanks, Leo, for trusting me with your questions.                              —–Gordon Korman—–