Aha! Today I shall become an author! And I will auth and auth and auth and make a squillion dollars, whoopee!

I sometimes think it ironic for an ex-seaman, longshoreman, truck driver, policeman, bus driver, etc... to find success writing children's novels.

I wrote about a bird that cleaned a crocodile's teeth. The story was so good that my teacher could not believe that a ten-year-old could write that well. I was even punished because my teacher thought I'd lied about writing it! I had always loved to write, but it was then that I realized that I had a talent for it.

Bad writing, it is easily verified, has never kept scholarship from being published.

Je choisis des mots simples et concrets... J'essaie de faire des phrases courtes et j'évite les inversions autant que possible. Je ne mets pas un mot très bref à côté d'un mot de plusieurs syllables... Si un mot finit par une consonne, je lui trouve un compagnon qui commence par une voyelle. Et je lis mon texte à voix haute pour entendre comment ça sonne.

Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.