A Quote by Cynthia Kadohata
'Weedflower' was already in the copyediting phase when I heard about the Newbery award, so it didn't really influence my writing of that book, but since then, I have become more aware of having an audience.
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At the time I was writing 'Weedflower,' my friend Naomi Hirahara was writing a book about Japanese-American flower farmers. She knew quite a few elderly farmers and put me in touch with four or five of them who had been in camps during WWII. Some, like my father, were reluctant to talk about their experiences.
I'm not writing necessarily for an audience. I think about the audience at the end, once I have a complete book. But, when I'm writing it, I really need to feel like I'm learning, and I'm investigating something that I'm personally interested in.
I was only loosely aware of [Georgia] O'Keeffe's work. Primarily, I had seen her famous paintings of skulls with flowers, which are not my favorite. I didn't really become familiar with her work until after I started writing the book, but the more I learned about her the more I admired her.
Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.
The difference when I'm writing a story versus writing a joke is that writing a joke is so much more about the structure and it's less about the conversation. To me, the thing that I love about stand-up is the intimacy between performer and audience.To get it even more conversational was something that really appealed to me and that I really enjoyed doing. My early experiments with it, with just telling a story from my life on stage, it was so satisfying to do. And seemingly for the audience as well. It's a different thing, and it's a different feeling and a different vibe.
I feel more pressure when I'm writing for teens. I'm very aware that my audience is impressionable. Therefore, I'm far more careful about what I say and the language I use.
I think what's going to happen with linear television is it's going to become more linear. It's going to become more about events and more about award shows, live sports - all those things that, really, you can't replicate.
We're at an interesting phase of Asian and Asian-American writing, where we might succeed in having readers look at us as creative individuals who write with fury and fire about the world, and in new ways, without having them say things like "I read a really good Indian book," or "That Malaysian fellow writes very well." So I hope by identifying as Indian I can get people who don't usually read "ethnic" or "Indian" literature to read that literature and enjoy it.
I enjoy journalism; anybody does. You see the results immediately; you've got an immediate audience instead of having to wait for your audience as you do if you're writing a book, and you get a bit of money coming in, and you can see more clearly how you're paying the bills. But it's not a good position for the serious novelist to be in.
Some people work hard in this business and become really popular, really big stars but they never receive an award from within the business. Somehow, when your colleagues and friends believe in you to the point of handing you an award it means so much more.
I tend not to think about audience when I'm writing. Many people who read 'The Giver' now have their own kids who are reading it. Even from the beginning, the book attracted an audience beyond a child audience.
I tend not to think about audience when I'm writing. Many people who read "The Giver" now have their own kids who are reading it. Even from the beginning, the book attracted an audience beyond a child audience.
A good writer cannot avoid having social consciousness. I don't mean this about small pieces of writing, but about a big book. If it's a big book, there has to be more than one undertow.
Intelligence is an interesting word. It is also something which, in my opinion, is misunderstood by many people. There are those who believe that we go to school to become intelligent. Or, the more experience a person has on a particular job, the more intelligent they become. This notion is not so. All knowledge is one hundred percent evenly present in all places, at all times. Aware is what you and I want to become. The more aware we become of this truth about intelligence, the better off we will be.
The challenges of writing a book are very different from writing a blog or tweets. I've been writing a blog since I was in the 6th grade, so I had this style of writing that was definitely not proper for writing a book.
A really good day for me is to write my book for about four hours, go to the writing room for about four hours and then maybe come back to the book to finish the day for a few more hours of it.
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