Where do you get your ideas for books?
Most of my story ideas come from my own life in one way or another. If I’m writing about school, I remember the years I spent as a student myself, the years I spent as a teacher, the years I have spent as a parent of children in school. And I dig around. It’s like being a miner. I dig around in this huge pile of memories, find a little chunk of an idea, and I work on it and polish it up, refine it into something useful or interesting.
How did you come up with the idea for Things Not Seen?
Invisibility is not a new idea—it’s actually as old as God. And books about people who become invisible—that’s not a new idea either, but most of these earlier books were either science fiction or scary, mad-scientist stories. I just wanted to explore what might happen if a normal kid woke up invisible one day. Would it be pure fun, or would there be another side to the experience? And that idea got the story started.
Are any of your characters similar to you? Did you ever do any of the things they do?
When I was a fourth-grade teacher and kids would come up to me and ask, “Mr. Clements, how do you spell ‘pancakes’?” and I would say, “Go look it up in the dictionary!”—Mrs. Granger in Frindle says that a lot. So in a way, Mrs. Granger is sort of like me. Yes, there are little bits of me in all of my characters.
What was your favorite book as a child?
When I was very young it was the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A. A. Milne and The Little Fireman by Margaret Wise Brown. Later, I loved The Call of the Wild by Jack London, Kidnapped and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, the Sherlock Holmes mysteries—all sorts of books. I read a lot.
When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
I knew I loved reading and books early on, but didn’t realize I was a good writer until a high-school English teacher named Mrs. Rappell made me work at it. Once I’d figured out I was a pretty good writer, I went through years and years when I wrote short things—mostly poems, descriptive sketches, song lyrics. I wrote short things because I didn’t make the time to write and because writing for me is not easy—which is true for most people, and which is especially true for most writers. I taught school for years and was good at that; I worked as an editor for years and was reasonably good at that, too. Knowing I wanted to be a writer was not a lightning-bolt moment. I simply discovered over many years that writing is what I seem to do best.
If writing is not easy for you, why do you do it?
On a windy, drizzly fall day in New England, I stacked firewood for five hours straight, three cords of wood—it had to be a couple tons of the stuff. It was difficult, but come winter, there would be a cheery fire in the fireplace, and toasty warmth from the stove in my writing shed in the backyard. I like cheery fires and toasty stoves enough to want to do the hard work of stacking wood.
I know from my own experience that reading a good book can be a life-changing event. So I’m willing, actually happy, to do the work of stacking all those words so they’ll give off some heat and light in another’s life on a winter afternoon or a summer night. And if I have the ability to perhaps make that happen, then the work becomes fun.
Where do you write?
Most of the time I write in a little shed in my backyard. It’s small, only ten feet wide and twelve feet long. It’s about seventy feet from the back of the house, and it’s quiet out there. There’s no phone, no e-mail, no TV, no music system. There’s a door and two small windows. There’s an air conditioner for the summer and a woodstove for the winter. There’s a three-feet-by-six-feet plank-top desk, a comfortable desk chair, and the laptop computer I carry back and forth. And there’s also a folding cot that my wife and kids gave me for Father’s Day. And that’s it.
With whom do you share your writing first?
My wife, Rebecca, is my first and best critic. After she’s read it, it goes to my kids. When work is ready to leave the house, it goes to my agent and the project editor, sometimes one before the other, sometimes simultaneously.
Do you read reviews of your own work?
Yes. It’s hard not to. You learn to be grateful for the good ones. You learn to be tolerant of the ones that completely miss the point. You learn to resist the temptation to fire off an indignant e-mail. When reviewers write, I nod politely. I hear what they have to say. But when librarians and teachers and parents tell me what they think, I listen. And when kids tell me what they think, I really listen.
Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
First rule: Read, read, read. Read all the good books you can to learn what good writing sounds like and feels like. And think about what you read. Remember that everything you read in a book happens on purpose. Try to figure out why the author chose that particular word at that spot in the story—because he or she did choose that very one and not all the other possible words. Then, you have to write yourself. And find good teachers to help. Read books about writing. Read what authors say about their own writing. And above all, be persistent.
What’s the best question a reader has ever asked you about your writing?
A boy once asked me, “Aren’t you afraid you’re going to run out of things to write about?” I thought about that one carefully. But the answer has to be no. One of my greatest discoveries has been that there is no shortage of good ideas.