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" I loved 'Belzhar' by Meg Wolitzer. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Loved
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" I like to work out every day, so that takes up some time. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Up
Time
Every Day
" For my 11th birthday, I asked to be adopted. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Asked
Birthday
Adopted
" In putting setting to work, I like to think about long shots and close-ups. The long shot is the overall view of the place in which the characters live - the island, the town, the wide sweep of place. Then we narrow in. The close-up, the tight focus, makes the place different from anywhere else. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Long
Focus
Place
" I'm proud of being from Hawaii, and I'm proud of being Hawaiian, but I'm more than that, too. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Than
Being
Hawaii
" Tragedy brings change, and that's what I'm interested in most - how people plunge into change and try to fight, then eventually move with it with grace. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Change
Fight
Grace
" It's useless to criticize things that people love and something that speaks to them. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Things
Useless
Something
" Two days a week, I go to my office at The Grotto, a writer's collective in San Francisco. I get there at 8:15 and write until around 1 or 2 P.M. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Office
Two
Go
" I've never gone back to the stacks after my book's expiration at the front of the store. Not because I'm above it or anything, but I'd be mortified if someone caught me looking for my own book. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Back
Me
Book
" I try to think of it not as writer's block, but a time where you just need to live life and experience things so you have something to write about. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Time
Live Life
Live
" I always felt a little bit of an outsider, especially because I grew up on Oahu. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Always
Up
Outsider
" I like to add props to render the specificities of place - paintings, food, clothing, signs, infrastructure, music, sayings and slang particular to the region and particular to the character. And props shouldn't just sit there; they should get used. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Clothing
Place
Music
" Nothing has changed that much, even during filmmaking for 'The Descendants.' I wrote. I took the kids to school. I cleaned the house. And I had dinner with George Clooney. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kids
Filmmaking
School
" My seven-year-old daughter knows old songs and how the neighborhoods got their names. There are little things: Businesses receive blessings from Hawaiian priests before opening, and everyone's kids have their debut luau. You can't really get through a day without doing something Hawaiian. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Daughter
Blessings
Little Things
" I love film and have taken a stab at a screenplay. I love writing dialogue and found it highly enjoyable. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Found
Film
Love
" I feel like having details from their day and having a plot and action and things to do is much more revealing than having a character sitting and thinking to themselves. When I'm writing, I want people to actually have a goal, something that's dragging them forward. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Action
Day
People
" I wasn't creative enough to imagine my first novel becoming a film directed by Alexander Payne. Nor did I consider the possibility of seeing Hollywood stars moving through my personal version of Hanalei town: going to Tahiti Nui, rehearsing a scene in front of my cousin's cottages, driving the snaky roads. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Roads
Driving
Stars
" The beauty of cinema is that it can do some things that novels just can't. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Some
Beauty
Things
" Jonathan Franzen seems like the grumpiest guy, and he doesn't seem to like much of anything, so I really don't care what he has to say. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Seem
Say
Like
" What's great about teen fiction is that it's all mixed up - there's highbrow and lowbrow! "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Teen
About
Up
" Especially when I write, I want to get out of people's heads and have them speak and have them get dressed and have them go to work. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Want
Dressed
Go
" When a place comes across vividly in a novel, it's often compared to a character. I can remember writing teachers who encouraged me to treat setting as if it were a character, to give it three dimensions, to make it come alive, jump off the page. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Me
Character
Writing
" I just try to write what I think would really happen, and with grief and tragedy, there are these naturally occurring moments of levity and humor and absurdity. I think that's what life is really like. Sadness gets interrupted, and happiness gets interrupted. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Humor
Grief
Sadness
" Hawaii is so complex; there are so many points of view, and there are so many experiences to see and to find. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
See
Hawaii
Find
" Disney's Aulani Resort has really developed the southwest coast of Oahu and led to it getting more attention. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Getting
Led
Southwest
" Sometimes I loved the disruptive student in class who livened up lectures with wisecracks - it put a spin on things, added flavor, made me laugh. Other times, I wished the heckler would just shut up so I could learn something. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Me
Learn
Student
" People go surfing before work and paddling afterward. My husband is from Wisconsin, and he goes to work in his Hawaiian shirt. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Shirt
Work
People
" Writing has never been like therapy for me, but blogging comes a little closer - I can smack-talk freely and frequently, and this is good for me. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
I Can
Writing
Therapy
" After college, I moved to Breckenridge, Colorado, and went snowboarding every day. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew what I didn't want to do. So I applied to grad school for writing, and I just gave it a shot and took it from there. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Know
Writing
School
" With families, no matter what kind you inherit, at some point you want to announce that you belong to it. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Matter
Belong
You
" I can't speak for all Hawaiians, but the reality is that we depend on tourism. Locals might not want to go to the spots like Waikiki, but we do want tourists to experience more of the islands. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Depend
Speak
Experience