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" When you're a child, you crave formal recognition; you crave ceremony, celebration, certification of proof. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Celebration
You
Recognition
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" For my 11th birthday, I asked to be adopted. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Asked
Birthday
Adopted
" I like to work out every day, so that takes up some time. "
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Up
Time
Every Day
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
" I always felt a little bit of an outsider, especially because I grew up on Oahu. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Always
Up
Outsider
" 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
" 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'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
" 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
" 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
" I loved 'Belzhar' by Meg Wolitzer. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Loved
" I felt like I haven't had the typical experience of a novelist whose book becomes a movie. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Like
Book
Experience
" One day during filming, George Clooney was wearing his surf shirt and board shorts, and my six-year-old daughter was in the background as an extra, playing in the sand - playing herself. She and Clooney suddenly looked equally Hawaiian, equally related to the place I call home. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Home
Daughter
Day
" 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
" 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
" What's great about teen fiction is that it's all mixed up - there's highbrow and lowbrow! "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Teen
About
Up
" The best thing about being a fiction writer is that where the truth is inconvenient, I could veer away. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Writer
Truth Is
Truth
" 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
" The entire island knows our father, Fred Hemmings, Jr. - kids, adults, surfers, the governor, grocery clerks, gang members who call our house at night and threaten to kill us as soon as they get out of jail. Fred was a world-champion surfer and is now a well-known, controversial politician. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
House
Father
Now
" 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
" It's useless to criticize things that people love and something that speaks to them. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Things
Useless
Something
" Setting shouldn't just consist of describing nature or a landscape, or of saying where something takes place. It is the world of specific people. It's not enough for it to feel vivid or credible; it should feel necessary. "
Kaui Hart Hemmings
World
Saying
Landscape
" 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