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" Writing for young children I find I often use particular jokes with words and exaggerated, funny events, but some of these haunt the more complex stories for older children too. "
Margaret Mahy
Funny
Children
Writing
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" I am really chained to my computer these days so I work in my bedroom, which is a room I have worked in for years and years. It is just as much an office as a bedroom, and during the day, my bed is rather like an extension of my desk. "
Margaret Mahy
Bedroom
Work
Office
" Ellis's understanding of himself and the world around him certainly develops because of his adventures, and part of that development comes through recognizing other people for what they are. "
Margaret Mahy
People
Other
World
" I was able to work out all sorts of attitudes to style and event and character, all of which affected the way I came to think about my own writing. I believe that all good writers are original. "
Margaret Mahy
Style
Writing
Work
" When I was a child I had a best friend who lived across the road from me. When her mother died unexpectedly it was like losing a member of my own family. I think I am still affected by the memory of that loss. "
Margaret Mahy
Best Friend
Family
Child
" They are imaginary characters. But perhaps not solely the products of my imagination, since there are some aspects of the characters that relate to my own experience of a wide variety of people. "
Margaret Mahy
People
Imagination
Experience
" When you are reading, someone has done a lot of work on your behalf, someone has had ideas and has then written and corrected and improved them so that they can be shared. "
Margaret Mahy
Ideas
Reading
Someone
" In a way, the characters often do take over. "
Margaret Mahy
Way
Take
Characters
" By the time ordinary life asserted itself once more, I would feel I had already lived for a while in some other lifetime, that I had even taken over someone else's life. "
Margaret Mahy
Life
Feel
Time
" I once knew a house rather like The Land of Smiles - an old house occupied by a varied collection of young people, mainly students. However none of these people were true models for the characters in the book, though their way of life may have been. "
Margaret Mahy
True
Life
People
" It is a good idea to know which publishers publish which stories. For example, there is no sense in sending a picture book text to a publisher who does not publish picture books. "
Margaret Mahy
Good
Picture
Book
" At the same time, I think books create a sort of network in the reader's mind, with one book reinforcing another. Some books form relationships. Other books stand in opposition. No two writers or readers have the same pattern of interaction. "
Margaret Mahy
Stand
Create
Mind
" At this stage I am not involved with young adults as closely as many other writers. My children are grown up and my grandchildren are still quite young. "
Margaret Mahy
I Am
Grandchildren
Young
" I hope I am not too repetitive. However, coming to terms with death is part of the general human situation. "
Margaret Mahy
Situation
I Am
Human
" The novels take longer to write than the picture book texts, and they do take a different sort of concentration. However, a very short, simple story that works well is just as exciting to me as any longer and more complex book. "
Margaret Mahy
Picture
Story
Simple
" I had to wait for a long time before I could support myself with writing. However, being a writer is what I have most wanted to be, from the time I was a child. "
Margaret Mahy
Time
Writing
Myself
" I don't think I prefer writing for one age group above another. I am just as pleased with a story which I feel works well for very small children as I do with a story for young adults. "
Margaret Mahy
Writing
Children
I Am
" Of course there are big differences in length and character and vocabulary, but each level has its particular pleasures when it comes to the words one can use and the way one uses them. "
Margaret Mahy
Character
Words
Way
" There are certainly times when my own everyday life seems to retreat so the life of the story can take me over. That is why a writer often needs space and time, so that he or she can abandon ordinary life and 'live' with the characters. "
Margaret Mahy
Me
Time
Life
" I've never actually been a fighter myself - fighting tires me out and I'm not an efficient fighter anyway - but I have certainly seen other people have great complicated goes at one another. "
Margaret Mahy
Great
Fighting
Myself
" It can certainly happen that characters in more sophisticated stories can 'take over' as they develop and change the author's original ideas. Well, it certainly happens to me at times. "
Margaret Mahy
More
Change
Ideas
" Every writer has to find their own way into writing. "
Margaret Mahy
Find
Writer
Every
" When you are writing, of course, you have to do all that writing and correcting for yourself. When I was a librarian it was expected that I would know about a wide range of books. "
Margaret Mahy
You
Books
Yourself
" Anyone interested in the world generally can't help being interested in young adult culture - in the music, the bands, the books, the fashions, and the way in which the young adult community develops its own language. "
Margaret Mahy
Help
Music
Culture
" Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act. "
Margaret Mahy
Be Different
Me
More