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As I was growing up in Chicago, it never occurred to me that someday I would write books for anyone to read. Strange as it may sound, not
until I was twelve did I realize that books were written by people, even though I had started reading before I went to school.
I never thought about where they came from. All I cared about was that they existed and I could read them. Then one day I read a book called The Silver Inkwell by Phyllis Whitney. It was about a girl who was trying to become a writer and sell her stories. That was my first awareness that the words "By So-and-so" meant something—that there was a real person behind all the words that I was reading in books.
As a child, I read all kinds of books: poetry, plays, nonfiction ("true" books I called them); but mostly I read stories.
Stories became even more important to me in third grade, when I started writing them to tell my classmates at recess. I was still writing stories when I went to college, and I continued writing afterwards. It was almost as if I needed to write in order to breathe. However, it wasn't until after I was married and had three children that I thought about making writing my life's work.
Settling down to work in earnest, I quickly discovered that I wanted most of all to write for young people. I had written some stories for adults, but I found that I was getting no real
pleasure. They were exercises in form, more than anything else. Writing stories for children, on the other hand, gave me a great deal of pleasure. Interestingly, I wasn't able to sell any of my
stories until I understood that—funny or sad—a story had to begin with something that really mattered to me.
I work nearly every day, at least in the morning. I'm an early morning person:
after I have coffee, read the paper, and do the crossword puzzle, I'm ready to go to my desk. If, at 11:30am when I stop to eat something, my work is going well I'll go back to it. If not, I do
something else, anything that takes my mind off my work.
Over the years I've learned to let a story idea simmer in my head for a long time before I try to do anything with it. What I care about,
what I wonder about, what touches me, what makes me sad, what strikes me funny.
These are the things I write about, even though it might not be apparent. And I need to know the end of a story—almost to the exact wording—before I begin it. The ending is my "road map," because it tells me where I'm going. Unfortunately, it doesn't tell me how I'm going to get there. That's where the work comes in.
Writing is work—and I love it! •
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Photo by Marilyn Sanders
About the Author:
Sue Alexander, a full-time writer, is the author of many highly praised books for
children, including Lila on the Landing, There's More . . . Much More, and Nadia the Willful, and is the recipient of the Dorothy C. McKenzie Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field of Children's
Literature. The mother of three grown children and the grandmother of Megan and Ryan, she lives in Canoga Park, California with her husband Joel.
Please Visit Sue Alexander's website
Recent Books
One More Time, Mama
Written by Sue Alexander
Illustrated by David Soman
Published by Cavendish Children's Books
To contact this author or illustrator, please use the information for his or her publisher provided on our list of CBC member publishers.
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