ChallahCrumbs: How did you get started as a writer?
Laurel Snyder: I was about eight years old when my best friend and I started writing stories, and making them into little books. Of course, I also dreamed of becoming a ballerina and a movie star, but from that point on I never stopped writing. My dream was to become “rich and famous writing books for children.” I planned to buy a mansion and fill it with all the stray dogs and cats in the city of Baltimore.
CC: What is your work schedule like when you’re writing?
Laurel: The “when you’re writing” part is key here. I find my writing moves in waves. I have seasons when I’m very industrious, especially when I’m finishing a novel. During those weeks I might write as much as 12 hours a day. I get up early and write, or write after the kids go to bed. But then I have other times—I’m in one right now—when I can’t seem to get going. I scribble lots of ideas, but the solid writing time doesn’t happen. Often this happens when I’m traveling a lot. It’s hard to get a schedule set when I’m leaving all the time.
CC: You’ve written such a wide variety of books. Do you have a favorite?
Laurel: I love the very beginning of a new picture book. When the idea seems fresh and perfect, and it comes spilling out. I also love finishing a novel. It’s like I imagine it feels to complete a marathon (not that I’ve ever done that. I’m lazy!)
CC: What are some of your favorite children’s books?
Laurel: Oh, this is always such a hard question. For picture books? Eloise, Mister Dog, In the Night Kitchen, Frog and Toad. For novels? I love books with magic in them. Half Magic is a favorite. The Thirteen Clocks is about as perfectly written as a book can be.
CC: What book would you want on a deserted island?
Laurel: Oh, now that’s IMPOSSIBLE. I have a lot of books I reread often, but one book for the rest of eternity? Probably poetry. Maybe Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Or Berryman’s Dream Songs. I could live with those forever and take something new from them each time. If I say the Torah, can I have the whole thing? Certainly I could spend a lifetime with it, and never be done.
CC: What are you reading now?
Laurel: I’m rereading the Leonard Marcus biography of Margaret Wise Brown (who wrote Goodnight Moon, Runaway Bunny, Mister Dog, and a jillion other picture books). It’s called Awakened By the Moon, and it’s wonderful.
CC: Tell us what you are working on now.
Laurel: Well, I’m reading up on Margaret Wise Brown because I want to write about her, I think. But that’s just in the early mulling-about-it stages. I’m also outlining a novel called The Orphan Island. A middle grade book about ten children who live on an island, but don’t know how they got there. And I’m finishing up the edits on a picture book biography called SWAN, about the Russian ballerina, Anna Pavlova.
I tend to have things in different stages of done-ness.
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