VERMONT VOICES: Katherine Paterson
your critic is your worst enemy if you’ re a real reader.
What I want aspiring writers to know is that you have to play. If you take it too darn seriously, you’ re clutched. It’ s like making mud pies. You can always revise, but you can’ t revise something you haven’ t written. Just write whatever you can, however you can. Send the critic off on vacation and make your mud pies. When you can release yourself to have fun with it, it’ s not going to be what you want published, but you have to start. Some writers just write, not knowing where they’ re headed. I’ m not that way. I sort of have an idea of the end of the book before I really start working on the beginning of the book. I believe that each book teaches you how it needs to be written, and you have to listen to the book itself.
Megan: What were some of the books that impacted you when you were growing up?
Katherine: I was born in China. We lived in a city where there were, of course, no English bookstores or libraries. So, the library was in our house. We had a wonderful fairy godmother who had sort of rescued my father when he was an ambulance driver with the French in World War I. She always kept in touch with my parents, and every year or so, she would send a box of children’ s books to us in China. We had all of A. A. Milne, Kenneth Graham, Beatrix Potter, Robert Louis Stevenson. We had all the great English books in the Golden Age of children’ s writing. The Secret Garden was the first book I remember reading to myself; I was probably 9 when I read it.
Megan: I’ m guessing that once you became a parent, books were still an important part of your family.
Katherine: Oh, yes. I tried to be at least a“ C minus mother,” but I did love them all, and I did read to them.
Megan: Bridge to Terabithia is turning 50 in a couple of years. Why do you think it is still relevant for children-
Writers- share your Vermont experience in poetry or prose!
The annual Vermont Writers’ Prize celebrates Vermont and the written word.
• One $ 1,250 prize for poetry
• One $ 1,250 prize for prose
Winners in each category are also published in the Summer edition of Vermont Magazine. To enter, write an essay, short story, play or poem about Vermont- its people, places, values or history in 1,500 words or less.
The deadline to enter is January 1, 2026. Enter today at vermontwritersprize. submittable. com / submit / 86155 / vermont-writers-prize
For details, visit greenmountainpower. com, vermontmagazine. com or call( 888) 835-4672.
Entries must be unpublished. Must be a Vermont resident. Previous winners and employees of GMP and Vermont Magazine cannot enter.
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