I first fell for Richard Peck when I went to a writing conference at Utah Valley University several years ago. He gave the keynote. Today I got to meet him and I'm reminescing over tips I've heard him say about life and about writing historical fiction.
1. Learn a second language other than Spanish.
2. Go to the source for the best research. Using the internet isn't enough.
3. Research begins in the library.
4. He said that when he is researching a time period, he will make a list of all the phrases or products that a person from that time period would be familiar with. Then as he writes the novel, he crosses it off the list when he uses it.
5. He writes with a typewriter instead of a computer. When he goes to edit, he tries to take as many words out as possible on each page. Success in editing is retyping the page and having empty white space at the bottom.
6. He will type up the book and when he gets to the end, he now knows what the book is about. So he throws out the first chapter and writes it all over again.
7. Nobody but a reader ever became a writer.
8. All art is performance art because it descends from storytelling.
9. We write from observation and research--not from memory.
10. Edit, Edit, Edit. How much better a book Harry Potter would have been if it had been shorter.
11. Take acting lessons. (ok, he was just agreeing with another author..he attributed it to someone else.) But I think I might need to try that idea out.
I was struck by how he is aging. I don't know for how much longer he will be with us here on earth. He is one of the greats: Fred Rogers, Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak and Richard Peck.
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