Word After Word After Word

What a fine title!

Click here for a great interview with Patricia MacLachlan. I'm a big fan of a lot of her books. They are well loved by kids and the adults who share them. The 3rd graders at the school where I last worked read Baby, the 4th graders Sarah, Plain and Tall. We had some memorable discussions about those books. I'm looking forward to reading this new one.

When Publishers Weekly interviewed her about the novel being published just this month, Word After Word After Word, they asked how it happens she writes so sparely and can squeeze so much into her shorter works. I love her answer, maybe because having grown up in the South, I tend to use way more words than I need! Revision/ reduction is key. But wouldn't it be nice if I could start off knowing just the right words to use...

Here's her answer to the question about writing sparely. Be sure to read the entire interview. Good stuff.

I think what happens is you write how you grew up. And I was born on the prairie and so everything is kind of spare on the prairie. And so I’m just used to writing in that way. Sarah, Plain and Tall was that way. And most of my fiction is. I like writing small pieces. Somehow it just suits me. My writer’s group laughs that I start to faint when I get to 200 pages—so that’s kind of a standing joke.