Blogfest 2009

Thanks to PopCandy I discovered Blogfest 2009: 40 authors, 14 questions, 2 weeks, 1 blog. Simon and Schuster got together several of their young adult authors to answer different questions every day for two weeks. The questions range from "Have you ever just wanted to give up?" to "Is it harder to write the first book opposed to the second?"

I've read through the first two days of answers, and they're pretty cool. I'm not familiar with many of the authors as I don't read too many young adult novels, but I like how their answers really vary. I also like how some are long-winded as you'd expect a writer to be, and others have really short answers.

My favorite answer so far came from Neil Shusterman on "What was the first thing you wrote?"

The first thing I remember writing was a Halloween story in third grade. My teacher (who didn’t like me very much) gave me a D-minus on it, because in this story, the ground opened up, swallowed my third grade teacher, and closed up again, squirting blood everywhere (I didn’t like her much either.) She used to get so annoyed at me, she would throw me out of the classroom, and send me to the library just to get rid of me. That’s where I developed a love of reading, and eventually writing.

Hilarious! I plan to keep reading for the entire two weeks. I'm especially interested in the answers to the questions "Is it difficult to get a book published" and "Who are your favorite authors and what are your favorite books?" I can only imagine how different the answers will be.