A Quote by Graham Nelson
Then in my early teens, when the home computer bubble was blowing, I had one of the first, an Acorn Atom, and used to write primitive adventures on that.
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What I have in mind when I start to write could fit inside an acorn-an acorn, moreover, that rarely if ever grows into an oak. Write fiction and you relinquish reason. You start with an acorn and you end up with a mackerel.
Until I reached my late teens, there was not enough money for luxuries - a holiday, a car, or a computer. I learned how to program a computer, in fact, by reading a book. I used to write down programs in a notebook and a few years later when we were able to buy a computer, I typed in my programs to see if they worked. They did. I was lucky.
I used to write on pads with a pen but had trouble reading the words the next day. Years later, Bob Dylan taught me to just write and write on a laptop computer. Then I'd print that out. When it was time to write a song, I'd go through the pages and sing melodies to words that moved me.
You can go back to tulip bulbs in Holland 400 years ago. The human beings going through combinations of fear and greed and all of that sort of thing, their behavior can lead to bubbles. And it may have had and Internet bubble at one time, you've had a farm bubble, farmland bubble in the Midwest which resulted in all kinds of tragedy in the early '80s.
Older teens tend to write to me and say, 'Thank you for not writing down to teenagers.' And then there are the letters from adults who say, 'This is such a good book; why did you write it for teens?'
I first tried a novel when I was 14. First finished one when I was 16. First started working on stuff that had a chance of being salable in my early 20s, then didn't write much fiction at all because I was in grad school.
When I have a first draft, I have a floor under my feet that I can walk on. And then, especially with the help of the computer, rewriting is so easy to do with the computer, much easier than it used to be with the typewriter. So the books go through numerous drafts.
When I have a first draft, I have a floor under my feet that I can walk on. Then, especially with the help of the computer, rewriting is so easy to do with the computer, much easier than it used to be with the typewriter. So the books go through numerous drafts.
My biggest challenges when I first started out were not having a computer or camera or Wi-Fi! The computer and the camera had to be borrowed, and there were times that I used the computer at the library, and I literally sat outside people's houses to steal their Internet connections.
I used to sit home with my computer and write. After the Newbery, I probably spend more than half my time on the road.
I knew then that I wanted to go home, but I had no home to go to-and that is what adventures are all about.
I work full-time in a used bookstore. I get up. I drink a cup of coffee. I think, The last thing I want to do is write. Then I go to the computer and write.
People should have all their big adventures while they're still under the age of fourteen. If you don't, you start to lose your passion for big adventures. It just begins to fade away bit by bit and then you forget you ever wanted adventures in the first place.
I felt I had a very innocent childhood and I feel privileged by that. But as an adult, I know that there were people who didn't have that. There are a lot of teens who haven't had as easy a childhood as me, and having literature that explores these "darker" parts helps relieve the burden and stress they may be feeling. As a writer, there is often a temptation to draw back when we write for teens - to preserve their innocence. But the reality is, if someone has already had that innocence taken in their life, then not writing about it is just brushing it under the rug.
The computer industry began with home-brew boxes that everyone had to program for themselves, but that was a huge hassle. The computer revolution didn't explode until the first Macintosh arrived, with its point-and-click simplicity.
The first thing I think, I was building computers, I started to build a computer when I was 17 or 18 at home, an IBM compatible computer, and then I started to sell computers, and when I sold a computer to a company called Ligo I think, and they were selling systems which became blockbuster.
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