That's basically it, but then they're very interested, say, in Sarah, Plain and Tall . What we usually end up talking about is how I use the things in my life in my books. How, for example, my children say something, and that starts a book for me and then becomes something else. I think the children often think they don't have very exciting lives that are worth writing about. We change our lives in our books in a way, and that's the most exciting thing about writing about your own life.
Kids get very excited when they hear that because they can change their lives in their stories.
So we talk in the car, we talk in the bathtub, or in the shower. I have conversations with my characters. That's probably why I'm fairly good at dialogue. In writing a screenplay, it's almost all dialogue, and people have to speak in a way that makes sense to the listener or the reader. When I was a child, I had plays with all these imaginary characters.