An Interview with Gary Paulsen

What do you think is one of the biggest misunderstandings people have about a writing career?

PAULSEN: I've actually had a young writer say to me, "I didn't know it would be that much work." A lot of people want to have written. A lot of people want to have run the Iditarod or sailed to Fiji on a boat alone, but very few people actually do it. A lot of people want to have done it. They want to be discovered while they're sitting in a bus depot writing poetry on a napkin, but it doesn't happen that way.

What is your first piece of advice to writers?

PAULSEN: You can't learn to write in a work­shop. You can't learn in school or through a class. Writing is not going to help you learn to write. Writing is talking, and on can never learn anything when you're talking. You have to read, and I mean three books a day. Read them all. Reading is the thing that ill teach you. Make it an occupation. Read all the time. Literally, two or three books a day, And read them over again. Read some hooks eight or 10 times.

I've read Moby Dick eight or times, and it changes ever time you read it. One way, it's a about whaling, The next way is metaphysics. Or you can look at it as a love story in kind of a sick way. Stein, Pound, Hemingway‑if on haven't tried to figure out the rhythms and pacings and lion that brain of theirs works, you can't start writing.

Once a writer has studied and is ready, what is your advice as far as writing that manuscript and getting it published?

PAULSEN: It's really simple. Double‑space. 1‑inch margins and no errors. You can't base a misspelling. You have to compete with me. If you arid I send a manuscript to Random House, they are going to pick me because I'm popular and they cart sell a lot of books. That means, right out of the box, you've got to be better than these other guys who've got 200 books published and have won all kinds of awards. You've got to be better than Hemingway or Steinbeck on your first book. On your first book you've got to be that good! It's a hard business. Absolutely brutal. And it's all you. You don't have a boss or someone telling you what to do. It's all about your own self‑discipline. Steinbeck said the hardest thing was getting your ass in back of that typewriter.

from an interview with the children's author Gary Paulsen in THE WRITER June 2004