Teens are not like the weird, dumb dwarves you have around your house. They are actually you when you were younger. Why not write a book which is as sophisticated as a book for an adult, but is about the concerns that teenagers actually have?
Older teens tend to write to me and say, 'Thank you for not writing down to teenagers.' And then there are the letters from adults who say, 'This is such a good book; why did you write it for teens?'
Sometimes reading other writers helps. You learn some little technique that turns out to be useful, or simply are reinspired by the amazing things others do.
Occasionally people ask me how it is I write different types of things, and my answer to that is it's very natural. You get bored writing one kind of thing all the time.
I've always enjoyed that kind of thing - thinking about the production of narrative and why it is that when we read a novel, we don't notice the fact that someone who might be very close-mouthed or tight-lipped is perfectly willing to tell us a story in 600 or 700 pages.
I feel like it's important every once in a while to estrange ourselves from the familiar to remind ourselves of the potentialities of people, how many different ways there are of being.
Certain elements of teen life that, 10 years ago, were very important to me still, are becoming less so as I get older. I mean, I've kinda gotten over, I guess I'm saying, the fact that I had trouble getting a date for the prom.
All of my books, which are supposedly, I mean they're called YA novels, my hope is that adults would find no reason not to read them if they read them.
