SIX MINUTES WITH MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX:
Today LitPick welcomes Margaret Peterson Haddix for Six Minutes with an Author! Margaret is a prolific author, with her 35th book, Palace of Lies, coming out in April. Her books include the Shadow Children series, the Missing series, The Palace Chronicles, plus other stand alone younger reader, middle grade and young adult books. Margaret, who came from a long line of farmers and bookworms, grew up in Ohio. While growing up, she counted Harriet the Spy, Anne of Green Gables, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Anne Frank, and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm plus many, many others among her friends.
How did you get started writing?
The first step dates back to third grade: I had always loved books, and that year my teacher really emphasized that there were actual real live human beings behind the books, authors who got to create the books. I thought, well, of course that’s what I want to do! So I started making up stories and writing them down. In college one of my majors was creative writing, but I detoured into working as a newspaper reporter after college, partly because it seemed like a more stable career than being a novelist. But writing about all that reality kept giving me ideas for made-up stories that I thought might be even more fun to write about, so I was always also writing fiction on the side. Eventually I wrote my first book, RUNNING OUT OF TIME, based on something I’d reported on, and ultimately switched entirely to fiction.
Who influenced you?
Everyone! I owe a huge debt to the authors who wrote all the great books I read and re-read as a kid. But I was also influenced by the authors whose works I didn’t like, because I would think, “Okay, that’s how I DON’T want to write.” And I’m influenced by what people in general tell me they do or don’t like in books and in life.
Do you have a favorite book/subject/character/setting?
No, because it is way too hard to choose.
What advice do you have for someone who wants to be an author?
Read a lot, because that’s the easiest way in the world to improve your writing.
Write a lot, because “Practice, practice, practice” improves writing just as much as it does athletic prowess, musical skill, etc.
Play around with different types of writing and maybe even keep a journal, even if you think your life is boring. You might find out that it really isn’t.
Make sure you have time in your life to think and imagine and pay attention.
Where is your favorite place to write?
I have my own office, although it doubles as a guest bedroom when we have a lot of company visiting. And I think I am the last writer in America still using a desktop computer. I like being able to see a whole page at a time, and so I have a huge monitor. That would be utterly ridiculous on a laptop.
What else would you like to tell us?
I have two new books coming out in 2015—PALACE OF LIES, which is the third book in the Palace Chronicles, comes out April 7; and REDEEMED, the eighth and final book in the Missing series, comes out Sept. 8. PALACE OF LIES is set in a fairy-tale-style kingdom with a very troubled royal history, and REDEEEMED is a time-travel novel.
Margaret, thank you for spending six minutes with LitPick! Congratulations on the two books you have coming out this year!