Ask the Author: Claudia Mills
Answered Questions (8)
Claudia Mills
Thanks so much for asking, Rachel. Alas, the series has come to its conclusion with CODY HARMON, KING OF PETS. Each of the five main characters got a book of his/her own, so that's that. But oh, I would love to write more about Kelsey, Annika, Izzy, Simon, and Cody.
Claudia Mills
Stevie, you can't know how much your message means to me. The Dinah books, now long out of print, were of all my books the closest to my heart, because Dinah is so much my younger self, from her persistent narcissism, to her love of poetry, and her willingness to engage big, hard philosophical questions. It means so much to me to know that another reader somewhere, years ago, connected with her story. Bless YOU for taking the time to write.
Claudia Mills
Get up early, make myself a cup of hot chocolate, grab my clipboard, pad and pen, and begin!
Claudia Mills
I'm working on a novel about a seventh grade girl who loves to write and yearns to be published - and who then faces a wrenching ethical dilemma when she has to decide what to do when she gets a chance to be published, but the piece is something deeply private about her family. It's a dilemma I wrestle with myself as a writer every day, for how can I write anything without drawing on my life experiences, which include my experiences as a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend? And the best stories often come from the darkest places. But how can I bear it if something I write betrays or wounds someone I love? I'm working on revisions now, and I'm still not sure my main character, Autumn, made the right choice here, or if I'll change her choice to a different one.
Claudia Mills
It's hard not to fall back into cliche here, as there is a reason why the same advice gets given all the time, by everybody: 1) read; 2) write; 3) re-write. So maybe my refinement on that advice is to add: Trust in the process. If you really do those three things, and do them faithfully, with your whole heart, it is truly guaranteed that something wonderful will happen.
Claudia Mills
For me, it's the sheer writing itself. I love curling up with my favorite clipboard (which has no clip, as the clip fell off DECADES ago), and pad of narrow-ruled white paper (I'm very fussy about how dark the lines are, and it HAS to be narrow-ruled), and beloved Pilot Razor Point fine-tipped black marker pen, plus a mug of Swiss Miss hot chocolate. And maybe, if one is available, a cat. And then just to write. That's the best part, right there.
Claudia Mills
My strategy is to write for a short fixed amount of time every day. My goal is to write for an hour and to write one page during that time. My quota is so minimal that I don't ever feel too daunted by it: it's only an hour, after all; it's only one piddly page! But it's amazing how a page a day, written in an hour a day, will add up over the course of a year, and a lifetime.
Claudia Mills
My most recent book is IZZY BARR, RUNNING STAR, the third title in the Franklin School Friends chapter book series, which is set to be published in April 2015. The easy answer to where I got the idea is that I had already written KELSEY GREEN, READING QUEEN and ANNIKA RIZ, MATH WHIZ, so it was obvious that the third best friend in the trio deserved her turn. As the first book features a reading contest and the second book features a Sudoku contest, it was also obvious to me that Izzy's book would feature a race: as a Boulderite, I used Boulder's famous 10K race, the Bolder Boulder, run each Memorial Day, as my inspiration. I'm not sure how I got the idea of making the deeper story line Izzy's relationship with her father and her hurt when he prioritizes attendance at her older half-brother's sports events over hers. But I've always been particularly moved by the dynamic when we act out of our own hurt in a way that ends up hurting ourselves even more. Here: it's when Izzy, in a show of bravado, tells her father that she actually feels less nervous when he doesn't come to her races - and so sets up the series of events that break her own heart more and more until she finally finds a way to make things right. I guess I have a tendency to do that myself, to "punish" others in a way that punishes me most of all, so I was drawn to the idea of having Izzy do that in the book.
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