I love that. I love the question how do you know what form to write in because yes, I write in a lot of different forms. For me, the form comes before the story. Before I sit down to sort of, you know, tell this story of two boys who play basketball, I know that the story is going to be told in verse.
Before I sit down to write a book about — I was in Tuscany and I’m walking up this gravel road and on my right is this farm and on the farm are these chickens and the chickens are sort of playing and they’re — and I sort of say to myself wow, these chickens, are they having a party and if so, what kind of music are they listening to? Well, of course it’s going to be jazz music. I was in Tuscany. And if there’s jazz music, then who’s playing it? Well, of course it’s going to be — if it’s on a farm, it’s going to be Mules Davis and then we’re going to bring in the rooster’s cousin, Duck Ellington.
And so those kind of things happened my second week in Tuscany. The first week I knew I wanted to write a children’s picture book. So, I knew the format. I knew the genre. And then sort of the thing happened that inspired what that genre was going to — what story was going to be told. So, for me, I sort of because I have a 7-year-old, because I have a 24-year-old, because I go into middle schools and high schools and as a writer I like to be observant of what’s going on around me constantly, I sort of know what I want — how I want to write. And I have to be inspired to sort of figure out what idea I’m going to write about. So the form comes first.
