A Word on Words; 4121; Judith Viorst

for years a public television's best to delay and celebrated authors literature and ideas for more than three decades but this is a word weren't any jobs is bill on gun figure though welcome once again to a word on words my guest today june of europe he's a journalist and author writing in areas such as science children's books adult fiction nonfiction poetry three musicals is that best known for the alexander series featuring alexander the terrible horrible no good very bad day he's here today to talk about lou walked though the second in our series of imitating middle

grade novels that have both your characters we can all appreciate welcome to the fourth world war and they were dead here feel it in the air so nice that you've come to natural for the for one of the first books and it's so nice to have someone who writes from from a different perspective typically someone of interest in in middle school children and what their in revenue come from well lulu come from a lot of a lot of different people who are not too nice i got i like characters so i called hard likes you going oh i can eventually but not so fast in fact were low is being spoiled well fall major pain in the my kids love to hear about hasan them by and so she comes from a combination of i have to say me

when i was so wilker owner of pain about it and mike sons of a character named mary in the secret garden who was very difficult to like i'm a great comfort to marry because it's hard having everybody be wonderful and books and so goodin says wait so she came to she came from my dark side well and you know she is a bit of a needler and so nice and i'm going to take a thorough series around amongst or coming the brontosaurus was was a young id i have a grandson of fifteen when jack was three and four and five and eight he was telling me whole range of prehistoric animals you know the kids are amazing and that they know so much about about dinosaurs particularly

and my first but i'm a dinosaur book i was very careful to explain that a bit brontosaurus is not called a brontosaurus a more they earned isn't natural history is that designated if an attack the source and the reason i put that and was when some little girl heard that i was writing about brodeur so she said you know they change the name i certainly i know i know and she said you know they never lived on earth at the same time is that putting in all of my work i'm covered i'm going to say you don't want to mess with any of misinformation because some aid you're always going out with you every type well i listen for the new york times once wrote about t rex and my grandson will lower to toss it made an era got a little back room of that direction but it was never a correction in the wee wee fear those letter writers let me yeah you know i notice

during the book that in telling the story you will make a statement that might be born on questionable noah most inquisitive mind are out there eating and john and then you say ooh well it's us is i'm writing this book i'm telling the story exactly what one one of the things i had a very good time doing and both of the lulu books was not just telling the story of lou lou anna faris case the brontosaurus in the second case with three dogs she is trying to walk i'm also telling how you tell a story so about and narrator in their boys say opinionated constantly slightly irritated narrator who is saying the brontosaurus is women a far as still worm snakes live here i don't know i'm putting them there yeah like it stop reading aloud along every

mile of aria that's right and then so it shows how you how you can just put in things or make up things and learn how you can with all things in a man who walks the dog to have all kinds of comments that i make as the narrator and then i say i really don't feel like discussing that right now i try to sell my grandsons have gotten more more annoyed with me which is exactly what i want i wanted him very involved in not just the story but in the story telling the storyteller months years ago when he was on a book or something and he said writing humor is very tough work it's hard work and the world are so course they in washington where everything is funny law that makes it very easy but actually writing you are can be hard work and my guess is

writing children's books and a real challenge how do you make sure you're not condescending that in writing down then you're writing to level bum of the rental arm and never enters my mind to write down or condescend already even say you can i didn't write on this topic can i use this language i write i did about half my books for grownups and half my books for kids when people say isn't it hard to switch from one to the other but it's not that much of a switch i'm writing about what's going on inside people and what's going on in their relationships with each other some talking about the loneliness that was for intimate say competitiveness all kinds of belongings and fears that are part of the human condition so i don't have like one category for grownups and one category for kids

the most i would say i do differently as i stand in a slightly smaller parishes when i'm when i'm writing for kids third graders the other day committing you can condescend to them they raise their hand they say you're right in many different areas what genre do you got here that and then another kid raised their hand she said to me i'm writing a book about my parents i don't need any writing tips about that amish is about how much to get it published so i said i'm finished the book jaime and then you know if you have any trouble getting a publisher's very respectable these days to publish it yourself it's no longer she said i'll find his of their well a real publisher picked it up why am i wrote it about it so i thought that's a very mysterious at the rumor

what you it as no eye do you think there's a change in the top level intelligence of children today strikes me that the my grandson is so much more than i was in bed will actually much fun would set you so much more room i was amazed by how quickly kids gathered how early they read and i you know i think it's it's remarkable and so it's not surprising that you dont write down or writing a condescending way my guess is they get it there is an uneven they get they get it they get it faster of they they they talk to each other and compare notes that they are there and sometimes that makes me sad how much they know so young how much they know

about the tough world of divorce and death and really difficult things but it's it's in the air the thing that they certainly no more than you and me but to get there is everything about the world of the internet and i like to try to excite i had just totally humiliates periods the other day i was taking night eight year old grandson i've been asked if i was buying him an ipod for his eighth birthday i don't know about ipods i don't know i mean i don't know about them so i said well what why don't i so you just go to best buy buy an ipod i say well i don't have to get a battery theirs is dead silence and my eleven year old granddaughter looks at me roles rice of that is so twentieth century uh huh yeah they

now an office it goes wrong with my computer i just call somebody a lavender under a company out in writing about the look and the dough is you know there are moments when we wonder about a child of an animal a pet how they bond if they bond how did hamlet was committed but in real life as well says lulu at lulu is a very thorny iraq has as her companion fleishman flight set up fleischer said you're not the nicest person in the world which is fine with that because you think as nice as boring so she hasn't been the nicest person the world and these three dogs are also difficult dog the first one is a great big slobbering brute named bruno so nuts are downed

rules all over her and the second one is this little fuzz ball named pretty low her idea being walked is she's carried the dog walker walks she's carry him and she set down a strategic moments under trees and the third dog cori delia was a doctor named very very conceited hi so the timer won't come out until you know lavished her with clattering words so in this case the girl and the dogs get what they deserve and i'm the bonding that takes places difficult an unsuccessful without the assistance of the us really irritating dog expert fleishman know what you do about a great employee no parental relationship that is a real life and still loving well again the judge about their

heritage parents she is on and i'm going to make every base behavior by the time i finish you know i promise you won't pay your lover is a lover you will ever but mr torres with rob woodall is when you were eleven so fast you got to get used to her but she is a she has a very spoiled year old she was when she was when she was at and in the first book she throws the kinds of tantrums that break the light bulbs with her screaming and she has parents who has the idea of love not my idea of love but his idea of love is to give everything she wants and it was slightly terrified of her they did not want to mess with lulu because when louis that happy the hall where against the very unhappy up a lot so she she is very nice parents weren't a whole i would not promote as the ideal parents because they they did not set any limits with their daily limit they ever sat

where there was she could have a brontosaurus for a pet which does not seem like a really unreasonably called a lot of things that don't know but they did lower go wandering in church you know was there brontosaurus and those words that was a question they did exploration moves and they gave her a free running biking or free range on but i think it was said that she would she leaves the house they're having sung some brownies incentive to take the loan that they were so nice and peaceful way out there you know how upset they wear that she was gone well for those you just tuning in i'm talking with youth yours about the crew walked the dogs come in what fun we talked about fleishman you want to read a little bit about so many interviews is to a yes to this

year's gathering marvelous all monster yeah i mean i'm a device you is this perfect person i mean here is your ego perfectly birds here is here is here as lulu describing them he was such a goody goody such as sweet little kind will help a little boy that lew could almost a row up when she heard and saw police say the lady down the corner you don't have to thank me mrs carey it was an honor to hold your shopping bag were you paid me too much for a reiki near lee's mr rossi take back a dollar and keep it for yourself and when in addition the neighbors would say have accused how adorable looking fleishman a lot lou lou was secretly wish they were trip on his shoelace and knocked out his front teeth now that you think evolution be wishing says richard wicked thoughts and maybe you're right but haven't you ever met someone who on the moms and the dads in the world thought was jazz perfect

someone you'd never be as perfect as someone who no matter what kind of excellent stuff you didn't always do more of it and do it better i knew was someone like that when i was a kid and i still can almost throw up just thinking about iraq another dimension of nine eleven officials about we had our up all of the fish and she was a she was the one of the mothers with look at her leg away she's turned out not a radical quite affecting kid out that we won the killer in fact a nickname for her was so bad that she was sound clean up so well i'm not a millionaire i still am at a job at the fact that it was going somewhere but fleishman is interesting character in the to play off against each other you to keep him and i don't know some time i go i

bought a dinosaur little bit into this book and i don't know that if i'm writing a third parties he'd he's mentioned and that is actually mentioned in it but he's he's is not taking over our god somebody else who was that was also i didn't abandon the second time around is as a single less a sequel so it's a militia fought it is english the surrogate so as you follow the follow where you're probably gonna bump into the beginning and you knew our guests are armed animals you know but before the season in june third no one keeps some some kind of continuity and um um i'd add i just do need to mention that the orders for this book lane smith is this is a genius writers like to love and maggi fiction on our issue like to imagine what the characters would look like you wish you could draw them so they would be exactly the way you want and then he comes along

and draw something beyond your wildest dreams so i feel i feel very very lucky emmylou it was just this really ticked off irritated looking little girl the time he's got it just right you handled your husband my friend the singer journalist for as long as i can remember i've known rule of rios is a journalist and all ms bier look awful lot of talk about writing and how you're right in each review you're into it in different ways and sometimes the same way and he's so did i know we wrote our names for so long and outrageous and now he's in the history how's work out my house or were the two writers alone both excellent writers both excellent

critics they get that when i go i am not well luckily we were both human beings and naturally possess some degree of competitiveness but fortunately we work different sides of the streets he writes about politics he writes about the middle east i write about the feelings and experiences for children and outs of what if we don't play well and each other's feels i think it could get very testy around a house but that isn't what happens and we do we all of each other stuff sometimes with a little tension i mean how henry something and i'll say you know that the optics play where's such and such as i have no idea where this and you will look at me and say must tackle it wang says thank you very much

and then i'll give him out given something and i'm going to back to be a saint very funny mind is not to laugh line is to criticize so you're almost feel we were together had dinner last month a group of people like i said something that i've said done according to a fifth is that talking about the alleged torture of writing yes send them veteran composer and finishes like that may be out in the backyard and ship it wrong again in touch with someone who read me say that barry is that i think it's the most delightful thing for building better is sex and then but i bet if we talk d office in that room you found different experiences not everybody would agree with the sticky on

truman capote i don't i don't think it's choose one i think i think it's a combination when you're sitting there and you're having like one viable word and now we're dead or awaken of the work is going very very slowly in everything is going into the trash family are digging through the trash can maybe there was something you know it is it is torture it is hard and then when you when all of a sudden everything can vaccine got your ideas and you just are your role it's delicious but it's not one or the other i mean you spend a lot of time in your room with the door closed struggling to make something happen that you think is going to have to be built by anybody else except a dog and m and then you're not having a good time you were not having a good time when it

rolls along with is just clicking and i am i mean i will sometimes get up in the morning and i said to myself don't start him in mind i guess don't start because i'm so into it that if i start i've never been a brush my teeth and never gonna get out of my nightgown i'm not going to have practice and i'm dripping on up and do anything on supposed to do prison cell into it was a fabulous feeling so why pick one i can't believe that anybody who's a writer has experienced both sides of this year's we'll talk from and it may never happen to use boats and at times right is say yes there comes a moment when it just won't come some beautiful writer's block you know the news is no new show whispering in your ear you know i you know i i want to be a writer since i was seven years all i got a chance to be a writer serve at the same time my first child was

born like centuries after my first dreams and i was writing and i was taking care of it was a new baby i cannot have time for news says i do not have time for the ideal location i just had a right when the kid went to sleep or you wrote yeah where i grew up when my husband was helping him iran i don't have right moods i didn't have right locations i cannot even begin to tell you some of the locations of where i had written in the circumstances i didn't have a life to have a room for writers but that doesn't mean that they didn't take me sometimes a very very very long time to write one good sentence i was always writing i was always writing does write it down because the bank is going to wake up and start screaming and i'm not going to have the right type of i want my dream to come through ghana lately been so it comes

but how important they're not challenging them the necessary is really when i talk to kids about being a writer i said actually we should be called writers we should be coldly writers were all re writers it re write and rewrite and rewrite it weeded out loud and i'm i rewrite in the shower i really i mean all this past wednesday i drove into exit passed by exit because i was re writing in verse of a palm i was working on in my head i just drove right by an injury writing desk he could re write anywhere but you know i was at a certain point you hear something that feels like from the second game and i know it's a cat and i can stop re writing and go on but has a huge amount of re writing

seventy six for you back and are you moving to another world in another sphere well i'm having an absolute one i'm actually in the middle of writing a musical based on the first lunar book is a beautiful theater called imagination stage a stay the art children's theater in maryland and i re written the book the play of lou lou the brontosaurus and i written lyrics for around seven songs and my fan showing markham from california who i worked with on many projects as written the music and i'm just issued by the expression rewriting think a long life a rewrite that tinker at getting care will get it right in you are going be a lyricist i love writing lyrics and so routes will lose

my french la has a guy who lives in la i mean we're like mickey rooney and judy garland and the ice and in the lyrics or he calls me up and he plays piano and sings to me and i feel like you know is an anna let's put on a show a musical that had a weight and like a waitress at an audience and see that musical verify that come to washington we have run out of time have our flaws it's been so great to have you here to think you're so wonderful and they going forward and words and john simpler it's been it's bad