Ask the Author: Daniel Barnhart
Answered Questions (6)
Daniel Barnhart
Deadlines. Seriously. I have 15 Messy Anne books in my head that I haven't written down. I've got two chapter books, three film scripts, about two dozen cartoons and handful of other children's picture books. I let this stuff percolate and evolve and the only way it gets onto the paper and I set it in stone is the necessity of it all. Otherwise, I'd be revising and reworking it forever.
Daniel Barnhart
The rest of the Messy Anne series. Other series that I've created. Incidental musings that come to me and might become something worthwhile.
Daniel Barnhart
Working in your underwear. Having the best kind of coffee exactly the way you like it. Not having to listen to corporate HR inspirational speeches that you know are trying to distract you from the fact that the CEO who made a $22Million bonus last year is trying to justify asking you to "work harder" for their lack of leadership focus (and frankly, not having a clue as to how the business and the work actually gets accomplished).
And the Best of the Best is: getting to play with your daughter on the first snow day by calling her in sick from school. Taking a break to wath sunshine filter through the leaves and not have to apologize for it. Feeling like you're doing something besides making money for someone else and wasing your life in a cubicle.
And the Best of the Best is: getting to play with your daughter on the first snow day by calling her in sick from school. Taking a break to wath sunshine filter through the leaves and not have to apologize for it. Feeling like you're doing something besides making money for someone else and wasing your life in a cubicle.
Daniel Barnhart
Give up. Don't do it. Seriously. If you can accomplish this, then you've learned that you don't "have to be a writer".
But if you find yourself writing, then write because it makes you a better person, it helps you work something out, it amuses you and it's fun. If you're writing "because you have to" then you have a neurosis. If you're writing because you hope to make a lot of money and be famous, then you're playing the lottery.
Just do it because it's a hobby that you enjoy. In that case, you'll always try to get better at it, and won't starve doing it.
But if you find yourself writing, then write because it makes you a better person, it helps you work something out, it amuses you and it's fun. If you're writing "because you have to" then you have a neurosis. If you're writing because you hope to make a lot of money and be famous, then you're playing the lottery.
Just do it because it's a hobby that you enjoy. In that case, you'll always try to get better at it, and won't starve doing it.
Daniel Barnhart
I've never had it. I think "writer's block" is a response to not being organized or ready--either mentally or emotionally--to write.
When you're ready, it flows.
When you're ready, it flows.
Daniel Barnhart
It's a long and personal story, but the short answer is, "my wife." She's the inspiration for Messy Anne. And my daughter was the inspiration to actually write and publish it as a way to give her a strong female character to identify with positively.
My "most recent book" is always going to be (I hope to remain forever unpublished) memoirs. I've had a rather diverse and far ranging life. And I realized--especially after I lost my wife--that my daughter was going to continue to get further and further away from who I was in partnership with her Mom, and have no clue about all the things that led to me as she knows me--sometimes diminished and sometimes amplified.
So that will always be my "most recent book", something for her to have to remember and to learn about parts of me and her mom that she didn't ever get to know.
My "most recent book" is always going to be (I hope to remain forever unpublished) memoirs. I've had a rather diverse and far ranging life. And I realized--especially after I lost my wife--that my daughter was going to continue to get further and further away from who I was in partnership with her Mom, and have no clue about all the things that led to me as she knows me--sometimes diminished and sometimes amplified.
So that will always be my "most recent book", something for her to have to remember and to learn about parts of me and her mom that she didn't ever get to know.
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