A Quote by Patricia Polacco

Generally, what adults want to know is my background, why I write what I write, and very personal insights that some say are inspiring. — © Patricia Polacco
Generally, what adults want to know is my background, why I write what I write, and very personal insights that some say are inspiring.
The one concession I've made as I've gotten older is that my children are now adults and they're in their twenties and thirties and so I'm careful about how I write about them. I may write about them as a child, but I'm not going to write about their current struggles because they're adults and they can do it for themselves. I want to give them some space in a way I didn't when they were younger.
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 write books for young adults because I truly connect with them on some very deep level. They are our hope, our future, and inspiring them to be the best they can be is very important to me.
The only piece of advice I've ever given anybody is learn to write songs and write as many songs as you can. Because it's never gonna hurt, and when you run into that problem of, 'God, I don't know what I want to say,' or the opposite problem of, 'I know exactly what I want to say, but no one has written it,' then you can just go write it yourself.
When I write music, I know a lot of artists like Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran tend to write from personal experience. I write from personal experience, of course, but I don't limit myself to that.
Business is very personal. For me, everything is extremely personal. With actors, the fact that I write helps, because when you say to an actor "Oh I want you to do it a little bit more ...," without saying what you want more of, then the actor doesn't know what to do. But if you can put into words exactly what you want, then the experience of writing is helpful with that.
I didn’t do anything. I don’t have an explanation, I don’t know why I wanted to write. I did some short stories at that time, but very infrequently. I quit my job just to quit. I didn’t quit my job to write fiction. I just didn’t want to work anymore
It's very much a piece of myself when I write a song. I don't mean to say it's very personal, like the lyrics mean something personal to me. When I write a song, that's my taste in music - my taste in chord progressions and melodies.
The power of music is still with me, every day. It's one of the most inspiring things available in the world. I write with music. I write scenes in movies that hopefully can earn the use of some songs that are powerful to me. But, I think it just came from being affected by strong, personal art.
The most common thing I find is very brilliant, acute, young people who want to become writers but they are not writing. You know, they really badly want to write a book but they are not writing it. The only advice I can give them is to just write it, get to the end of it. And, you know, if it's not good enough, write another one.
The people who review my books, generally, are kind of youngish culture writers who aspire to write books, or write opinion pieces about what they think of Neil Young, or why they quit watching ER or whatever. And because of that, I think there's a lot of people who write about my books with the premise of, "Why this guy? Why not me?"
A lot of times students will come up to me and say, "Well, I can't write because I don't know what I think about such-and-such." And I say, "That's why you have to write." You don't wait until you know, because then who cares - it's static.
When you write, you want fame, fortune and personal satisfaction. You want to write what you want to write and feel it's good, and you want this to go on for hundreds of years. You're not likely ever to get all these things, and you're not likely to give up writing and commit suicide if you don't, but that is -- and should be -- your goal. Anything else is kind of piddling.
I write because it is while I'm writing that I feel most connected to why we're here. I write because silence is a heavy weight to carry. I write to remember. I write to heal. I write to let the air in. I write as a practice of listening.
When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.
It's hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don't want to write.
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