Ask the Author: Mike Vago
Answered Questions (4)
Mike Vago
The Voting Rights Act was struck down. As a result, Donald Trump became president.
Mike Vago
If you have an idea, don't wait for ideal conditions to start writing it. Write it on scraps of paper, on your phone, anywhere. Just get your ideas down as fast as you can; you can organize and polish them later. The two books I've put out, and the one I have on the way, all started out with a scrap of cardstock, folded up to approximate the format of the book. Most of the articles I've pitched to The A.V. Club started as one-line emails I sent to myself from my phone, so I wouldn't forget to flesh them out later. Once you have an idea down, you can refine it and expand on it and turn it into something great. But don't be afraid of starting out with a mess and then cleaning it up.
Mike Vago
Several things, as I tend to start a project, full of excitement, and then either procrastinate or get distracted by a newer project. But I have a new book for kids coming out with Workman in early 2016, which I'll be able to say more about later this year. And I have another kids book idea backed up behind this one, and half-finished novel that's been up on blocks for far too long.
Mike Vago
Left to my own devices, I usually don't deal with it, I just leave things unfinished and get distracted by a new project. The one thing that usually helps me is input from someone else. The next book I'm putting out with Workman is an idea I had while working on Miniature Golf, but I got stuck engineering it, and it wound up sitting on a shelf for five years. When I met Daniel Nayeri, my editor on the book, I quickly saw that he had a great head for the mechanics of books and thought he might be able to help me work out the problem. It only took us about ten minutes to hash things out, and a few days later I had a working prototype and we were off to the races.
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