My favorite book, growing up, was E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. I first read that book in the first grade, and it had a huge impact on my life because I didn’t even finish dinner. I had to read every single page of that book. And at the end, I instantly knew what I wanted to be. I was inspired by Charlotte, the spider, and I realized I have to be a writer. So, I would take pieces of paper and fold them in half and staple them and write book cover titles and then chapter one, and I would just write these books.
I’ve written hundreds of books, and one day they’ll all be published. And in the back I used to draw a little picture of myself with my glasses because I’ve been wearing glasses since I was a kid, and I would write “Paula Yoo, age six, is an elementary school student,” you know, “in Manchester, Connecticut, and this is her first book. Her next book” – and I would even write the title, you know, saying will come out next year.
So, and what happened was by the second grade I ended up writing my first real novel. It was 75 pages long, and I sent it in to Harper & Row because they published a lot of the books that I read as well. Harper & Row would later become Harper Collins. So, I sent it off, and I get a really nice letter back from Harper & Row, and they said “Paula, you’re a really talented child writer. You should send in a story. We have a children’s writer short-story contest for kids ages 7 to 10.”
And I immediately ripped up the letter in front of my parents, and I started crying. And they’re like what’s wrong, that’s a great letter, and I said I’m not a child writer; I’m a real writer. And I did not know that it would be almost three decades until Harper & Row would become Harper Collins and then they would publish my first novel Good Enough. [laughs] So, I think the lesson there was I learned at a very young age that rejection is hard, and you can’t give up as a writer.
And I think the other thing I did as a kid was, I play violin. So, I would also practice. So, when I was not reading or writing, I was practicing the violin, and today I’m writing and when I’m not writing, I read, and when I’m not reading, I still play the violin. So, I really haven’t changed at all in the past how many decades.
