Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published. I wrote four novels that nobody wanted, sent them out all over, collected hundreds and hundreds of rejection slips.

I was very naive, and I thought it was just a matter of writing my first book and sending it in, and for the rest of my life I would be writing books and collecting royalties. Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published.

I'm remembering one book that I wrote, 'Fourth Grade Rats,' that took a month to write, but most of them, full-length novels, I would say about a year.

I wrote eight full-length adult novels in my twenties. None of them were published.

My 20s were a blizzard of rejection slips.

Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them.