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Avi is one of the most treasured and celebrated writers of our time. His work spans nearly every genre and has won nearly every major prize, including two Newbery Honors, for NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH and THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF CHARLOTTE DOYLE, and the Newbery Medal for CRISPIN: THE CROSS OF LEAD. He lives in Denver, Colorado. You can visit him at www.avi-writer.com.
WHEN WERE YOU BORN?
1937, in the city of New York. I was raised in Brooklyn.
WHERE DID YOU GET THAT NAME?
My twin sister gave it to me when we were both about a year old. And it stuck.
WHY DON'T YOU TELL YOUR REAL NAME?
The fact is, Avi is the only name I use.
WHAT WERE YOU LIKE AS A KID?
Shy, not into sports, but someone who loved to read and play games of imagination.
WHAT DID YOU READ?
Picture books, then chapter books, comic books, and I listened to lots of kids' radio.
WERE YOU A GOOD STUDENT?
Not very. In elementary school I did well in science, but I was a poor writer. When I got to high school I failed all my courses. Then my folks put me in a small school which emphasized reading and writing. Even beyond that I needed special tutoring.
THEN WHY DID YOU EVEN WANT TO BECOME A WRITER?
Since writing was important to my family, friends, and school, it was important to me. I wanted to prove that I could write. But it took years before I had a book published.
WHEN DO YOU BECOME A WRITER?
I think you become a writer when you stop writing for yourself or your teachers and start thinking about readers. I made up my mind to do that when a high school senior.
DID YOU WRITE KID'S BOOKS RIGHT FROM THE START?
I began as a playwright. Only when I had kids of my own did I start to write for young people.
DOES YOUR FAMILY HELP YOU WRITE?
They help by supporting my efforts, not by giving me ideas, or suggesting changes.
IS WRITING HARD FOR YOU?
Yes. But then it's hard for every-one to write well. I have to re-write over and over again so that on average it takes me a year to write a book.
ISN'T THAT BORING?
If you do anything all the time it's nice to get away from it now and again. My hobby is photography.
WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR IDEAS?
Everybody has ideas. The vital question is, what do you do with them? My rock musician sons shape their ideas into music. My sister takes her ideas and fashions them into poems. My brother uses his ideas to help him understand science. I take my ideas and turn them into stories. Now, what do you think you'll do with your ideas?
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE BOOK?
The next one.
DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO WRITE?
I believe reading is the key to writing. The more you read, the better your writing can be.
ANYTHING ELSE?
Listen and watch the world around you. Try to understand why things happen. Don't be satisfied with answers others give you. Don't assume that because everyone believes a thing it is right or wrong. Reason things out for yourself. Work to get answers on your own. Understand why you believe things. Finally, write what you honestly feel then learn from the criticism that will always come your way.
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AUTHOR TALK
August 2008
Children's authors Avi, Susan Cooper, Sharon Creech, Patricia MacLachlan, Katherine Paterson and Richard Peck have collaborated to produce ACTING OUT--- a collection of unrelated one-act plays, connected only by the six random words each writer has chosen to be included in every piece. In this interview, the playwrights share their varied backgrounds in writing and/or watching plays, and discuss the similarities and differences in their writing processes. They also reveal how they picked their random words and share advice on how to use this collection in the classroom.
Question: Did you read plays when you were young? Did you write plays? Perform in them?
Susan Cooper: My parents said they first took me to the theater when I was three, and when the curtain went down I sat there and howled loudly because it was over. They were very embarrassed. When I was eight, I was doing puppet plays with the boy next door; he built the theater and I wrote the plays, and we both performed them to our captive parental audiences. I loved listening to BBC radio plays (we had no TV till I was fifteen), reading plays, and going to the theater, and by the time I was eighteen I got the lead in the school play. I was awful. I looked okay, but I mumbled, and nobody could hear me past the fourth row. So I went on writing plays but not acting in them.
Q: Each of you chose a word at random that had to be used in every play. How did you pick your word, and was there any special significance to your choice?
Katherine Paterson: I was desperate. I closed my eyes, opened the dictionary, and poked my finger and took the word pointed at when I opened them.
Richard Peck: I've told this before, and I don't think the editor wants to hear it again. My word was "justice," left on his voice mail. He heard it as "Justin" --- his own name. The rest is history.
Q: Did you collaborate at all with the other authors?
Patricia MacLachlan: None of the writers, as far as I know, collaborated on any of our plays. We did take some jabs at word choices, trying to figure out who chose what words!
Sharon Creech: No. Was that an option? Haha.
Q: Have you written plays before? If yes, how was writing this play different, and if no, how was it writing a play for the first time?
Susan Cooper: I've written plays for radio and screenplays for TV and film, and with the actor Hume Cronyn I wrote a play called Foxfire. We did it at the Stratford Festival in Canada, then at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, and then it ran for eight months on Broadway. Later, I adapted it for television. You can still find it on DVD, and another one I wrote called To Dance with the White Dog. Hume was in both of them.
Sharon Creech: Yes, I've written plays before. One was produced Off-Off Broadway in the early 1990s. The difference this time was that it had to be more compact (one act) and had to have at least one young character.
Avi: I haven't written a play in forty years!
Q: Is the process of writing a play different from writing a novel?
Richard Peck: Writing a one-act play turns out to be far more like writing a short story than a novel. It must have the tight shape, that compression of time, and timing. And it must be a canny combination of word and deed.
Q: What is your process when you sit down to start a new writing project?
Patricia MacLachlan: My process of sitting down to begin a new project means a lot of sighing, complaining, and playing hundreds of games of solitaire on my computer before I actually begin. Then, when I ACTUALLY begin, I become very happy and engaged with my writing.
Susan Cooper: With a novel, I know the main characters and the beginning and the end, and I discover the middle as I go along. With a play or screenplay, I know the beginning and the end and the high points. For instance, if you're writing a two-act play, there has to be something at the end of Act One that makes the audience want to come back for Act Two.
Q: What advice do you have for teachers planning to use plays, or playwriting, in the classroom?
Sharon Creech: Keep it simple and have fun. Let students try all aspects of theater: writing, directing, staging, and acting. Some will be better at, or more interested in, one area than another. That's okay!
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