Blake Nelson
Q: Where do you get your ideas?
A: From my brain. Actually, no I think I get them from the air. I am totally serious. The best ideas just kind of land on my head. They drift in through the window. Paranoid Park came to me while I was laying in bed looking out the window at a dark sky. I thought: "A kid, feeling terrible angst and guilt. He killed somebody."
Q: How many books have you written?
A: About fifteen. Eight have been published.
Q: What happened to the other seven?
A: They are around here some place.
Q: Does it take a lot of discipline, to write so much?
A: To be honest I am kind of a workaholic. I am also a person, who prefers the separate reality of making up stories to going out and having awkward conversations with actual people.
Q: What inspires you?
A: Other good books. Movies. Music. My friends who do interesting things. Sometimes a visit to a good art show will really jar me loose creatively. I love museums and art galleries and art parties. I also love to go see bands. I find that at a show, when it's too loud to talk, I get a good sense of solitude. I can kind of space out. I like to find places to sit high up, so I can really see the band and watch all the people.
Q: You're from Portland, but you live in New York, are you an east coast person or a west coast person?
A: For writing purposes I am a west coast person. Most of my writing, especially for teens and younger kids is set in Portland. I think Portland has that perfect all American quality, so I'm lucky to have my childhood memories there, and I go there enough that I can fill in the gaps in between my memories and the current reality. As for west coast/east coast, I definitely know the parts of me that belong to each. Socially I am a west coast person. I am pretty easy going and shy. In my professional life I am more east coast. I can talk business with editors and agents and all that (I didn't used to be able to, I used to be terrified of all of them). I would even say I have come to love the business of publishing. And the special fun of YA publishing is you deal with librarians all the time, who are really my favorite people of all.
Q: Who are your favorite authors?
A: For YA and kids books, I love Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume and Gary Paulsen. Mostly Beverly Cleary though. That's hometown pride. She's from Portland too. And I love how she sounds sort of angry in her bio when she says she got sick of reading books about rich girls and their ponies at boarding schools. So she wrote her own stories about small town kids from Portland. The Ramona the Pest books are my favorite. I also like Francesca Lia Bloch and Rachel Cohn. Gingerbread is a recent favorite. There's so many good books out there right now, so many good writers, it's a miracle there's room for my stuff.
Q: Did you study writing in school?
A: No, not really, I studied history. I did take a workshop thing after college, with Craig Lesley, a great Oregon writer and I liked that. But I was already working pretty seriously by then. It was more just a chance to be around another serious writer.
Q: How did you know you could make a living as a writer?
A: I didn't. I just hoped for the best. My dad convinced me to go to Law School when I first graduated from college and I was going to do it--for about an hour. Then I went back to being my weirdo self and writing goth songs on a two string guitar. I mean, if you're a freak, you're a freak and you gotta do what freaks do.
Q: What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?
A: I really have no advice. It's such a personal thing. You have one life. What are you gonna do with it? If you go into the arts, that's a big risk. There's no certain reward. You are really sort of throwing yourself at the mercy of the fates. But if that's really what you feel called to do, then you do it. That's the thing, when I see normal people, who aren't compelled to do something artistic, who are calm and content with themselves, I feel jealous. I wish I could be like them. And then they tell, me, "I wish I was creative like you." So what can you do?
Contributor: TOR Publishing
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Added 07/02/07
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