So tell me, James, when did you
realize you wanted to be a writer?
I was walking in
the woods one day and a giant pen landed on my head. It was about the size of a baseball bat. I took that as a sign.
What challenges do
you face in the writing process, and how do you overcome them?
The biggest
challenge is not to get distracted by ESPN or Facebook or Twitter or You Tube
or text messages. The key is to
stay focused. I wrote a poem about
it.
How Artists Ripen
Discipline
isn’t any fun,
but
oh, my friend,
it’s
brighter than the sun.
As a young person,
who did you look up to most?
I looked up to dogs and cats. They never get divorced. Isn’t that amazing? There is no such thing as child custody
in the animal world. (I mean
kitten or puppy custody.) You
never hear a female cat say to a male cat, “You get him on the weekends. The rest of the week he’s with me.”
Where do you write
your books?
At the bottom of
the sea. My sailing vessel is
called ‘The Submarine Of Literary Miracles’. Poems by Shel Silverstein are painted on its side. It runs on recycled plastic. I go around cleaning the bottom of the
sea and writing at the same time.
It makes me feel very productive.
What was your
favorite thing about school?
The trap door in
the cafeteria leading to another galaxy.
What was your least
favorite thing about school?
The pencil
sharpener that would follow me through the trap door and chase me across other
planets. I don’t like
pencils. I prefer pens. The pencil sharpener felt insulted by
this. It wanted to grind my
fingers and toes. But eventually I
made peace with it. I introduced
it to a female pencil sharpener.
They got married and had baby pencil sharpeners. I was the best man at the wedding.
What sparked your
imagination for You Can’t Have My Planet, But Take My Brother Please?
I was out
walking one day in LA. People
don’t walk in LA, so you feel really strange. People in cars stare at you like you’re a freak. “Look. He’s walking.
What’s wrong with that guy?”
Cops will actually stop you.
“Excuse me, sir. Why are
you walking?” I tell them it’s
because I’m a writer and I get my best thinking done when I’m out walking. Then the cops apologize and wish me
good luck. So anyway, I was
strolling along, seeing all the trash on the streets and the smog in the sky,
when suddenly an idea popped into my head. What if it turned out that we humans were merely renting
Earth? And what if we were about
to get evicted because we’re such lousy tenants? I pictured a sleazy alien realtor planting a For Sale sign
on our planet. All that stuff
suddenly appeared in my imagination and it wouldn’t leave me alone. “Please tell our story!” it said. “Please!”
So I told it.
What is your
favorite planet?
Earth. I’ve been
on 2,356 different planets and I can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that
Earth is the most magnificent.
Roses on other planets don’t bloom like ours do. Birds in distant galaxies don’t soar as
gracefully as ours do. Tigers in
other universes aren’t nearly as majestic. Also, they have a tendency to smell.
What did you want
to be when you grew up?
A professional
basketball player on another planet.
I wanted to play hoops with no gravity and do a reverse ‘in your face’
tomahawk dunk on a three headed center.
I dreamt about being a superstar in a galaxy that had popcorn machine
robots. The popcorn popper is
right there inside them! I wanted
to play ball in an arena where alien trolls lurked under the bleachers, and I’d
have to go rescue the cheerleaders at halftime.
Who is your
favorite fictional character?
THE BFG. How can you not love a giant who
practices non-violence?
What would you do
if you couldn’t write?
I would leak
words. Words would leak out
of my soul while I stood in line at the supermarket. I’d leave puddles of words everywhere I went.
Lawyer Tula did a good job! I love the BFG too.
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