Ask the Author: Katherine Ketcham
Answered Questions (6)
Katherine Ketcham
I got my idea from real life -- the life I lived with my son and our family in the most tumultuous and heartbreaking years of our lives.
Katherine Ketcham
I read and read and read. My father gave me a subscription to the Landmark book club collection ("Young Readers of America" issued monthly for $1.50 plus shipping monthly) and I devoured them in days and could hardly wait for the next book to arrive. I filled in the gaps with Archie and Superman comics and my mother's entire collection of Nancy Drew books, stuffed in a huge box in our attic.
Katherine Ketcham
I just finished a book about my journey with my son through his addiction and recovery (Ben is now 10 years clean and sober). I often tell people it's as if I stepped into the pages of my own books for I started writing books about alcohol and other drug addictions in 1979, seven years before Ben was born and twenty years before he began using drugs in his early teens. I'm currently working on blogs and excerpts from the book in an effort to reach family members, who are all too often the "forgotten ones." Shame and guilt isolate us -- we need to know we are not alone, that hundreds of thousands of mothers, fathers, and siblings are struggling and suffering as we try to help their addicted loved ones.
Katherine Ketcham
Write. Just sit down and do it, even if "it" ends up in the garbage. I go through somewhere around 15 drafts before I end up with something that I feel good about. Getting words on paper is the first order of business and then messing around with those words and seeing how they fit together with other words and ideas is the fun part. Or at least the "more fun" part.
Katherine Ketcham
Being my own boss.
But that can sometimes be the worst thing, too, as writers are great critics of themselves.
But that can sometimes be the worst thing, too, as writers are great critics of themselves.
Katherine Ketcham
I just sit down and write, even if I am just holding the pencil and writing disconnected thoughts on the page. I often type ideas into a Word document on my computer. Sometimes I send myself an email with the subject line "Just Thinking." Often I'll talk to myself out loud -- advice from my very first editor, almost 40 years ago -- and then type or write what I just said. (I talk to myself a lot -- one of the perks of being a writer and shutting yourself up in a room all by your lonesome!)
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