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Walter Dean Myers
"I so love writing. It is not something that I am
doing just for a living, this is something that I love to
do."
"I came to Harlem from West Virginia when I was three,
after my mother died. My father, who was very poor, gave me
up to two wonderful people, my foster parents.
Thinking back to boyhood days, I remember the bright sun
on Harlem streets, the easy rhythms of black and brown bodies,
the sounds of children streaming in and out of red brick tenements.
I remember La Marqueta, in East Harlem, where people spoke
a multitude of languages. I remember playing basketball in
Morningside Park until it was too dark to see the basket and
then climbing over the fence to go home.
From my foster parents, the Dean, I received the love that
was ultimately to strengthen me, even when I had forgotten
its source. It was my foster mother, a half-Indian, half-German
woman, who taught me to read, though she herself was barely
literate. I remember having her read to me every day from
True Romance magazine. Eventually, I was able to read
magazines or newspapers to her. My father and my grandfather
used to tell me stories. My father would tell scary stories.
My grandfather's stories he was a very religious man
were Old Testament, God's-gonna-get-ya kind of stories.
I read a lot of comic books and any kind of thing I could
find. One day, a teacher found me. She grabbed my comic book
and tore it up. I was really upset, but then she brought me
in a pile of books from her own library. That was the best
thing that ever happened to me.
Books took me, not so much to foreign lands and fanciful
adventures, but to a place within myself that I have been
exploring ever since. The public library was my most treasured
place. I couldn't believe my luck in discovering that what
I enjoyed most reading was free.
I was a good student in that I could read well, but I was
a behavioral problem. I had this very severe speech difficulty,
and I arrived in school ready to conquer the world, but no
one could understand a thing I was saying. That was very frustrating
for me, and I responded by being angry.
One of my teachers decided that among many of my speech problems,
I couldn't pronounce certain words at all. She thought that
if I wrote something, I would use words I could pronounce,
so she said, "Why don't you write something yourself?
Whatever you choose to write." I began writing little
poems, and they helped me because of the rhythms. I began
to write short stories, too. My writing was about the only
thing I was praised for in school.
By high school, I'd identified my own "avenue of values"
as an intellectual, because I couldn't speak well and had
a limited social life. But I knew my family couldn't afford
college for me. So I dropped out of high school, at age 15.
I was brought back to school, but I dropped out again at 16,
and on my seventeenth birthday I joined the army. When I got
out of the army, I didn't have any skills, I had no confidence,
and I had speech problems. So I loaded trucks. Then I worked
in the post office, and I wrote at nights.
I wrote for magazines, I wrote adventure stuff, I wrote for
the National Enquirer, I wrote advertising copy for
cemeteries. Then I saw that the Council on Interracial Books
for Children had a contest for black writers of children's
books. I won the contest and that was my first book
Where Does the Day Go? Eventually I got into writing
for teenagers. Actually, I had done a short story about teenagers.
An editor read the story, thought it was the first chapter
of a novel, and asked how the rest of it went. That sounded
like opportunity banging at my door, so I made up the rest
of the story on the spot and I got a contract. That was my
first YA book, Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff.
It changed my life because I had no real education, and I
needed something to validate myself. I needed to find value,
and publishing gave me that value.
I so love writing. It is not something that I am doing just
for a living, this is something that I love to do. I get up
early, between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m. I have a vest that I wear
that weighs 20 pounds, and I walk with that on for about five
miles a day. I'll try and get home by 7:00, shower, and start
to work. I try to get ten pages done. Once I do my ten pages,
that's it.
When I work, what I'll do is outline the story first. That
forces me to do the thinking. I cut out pictures of all my
characters, and my wife puts them into a collage, which goes
on the wall above the computer. When I walk into the room
I can see the characters, and I just get very close to them.
I rush through a first draft, and then I go back and rewrite,
because I can usually see what the problems are going to be
ahead of me. Rewriting is more fun for me than the writing
is.
My ideas come largely from my own background. I write a lot
about basketball, and I've played basketball for years and
years. I was in the army and I wrote Fallen Angels.
I lived in Harlem, and I write about Harlem. I'm interested
in history, so I write about historical characters in nonfiction.
Other ideas just fall into my hands. For example, when on
a blustery day, a used book dealer in London handed me a packet
of letters, I didn't know what to make of them. They were,
he said, letters concerning an African princess who had been
protégé of Queen Victoria. The story sounded
fascinating, and after more research the princess, Sarah Forbes
Bonetta, became the subject of At Her Majesty's Request:
An African Princess in Victorian England.
If I accomplish what I set out to do, then I'm happy with
the book. If I've compromised, then I'm unhappy. Ultimately,
what I want to do with my writing is to make connections
to touch the lives of my characters and, through them, those
of my readers."
Walter Dean Myers lives with his wife, Constance, in Jersey
City, New Jersey.
Check
out books by both Walter Dean Myers and Christopher Myers.
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