Mark Shulman is rendering author of Scrawl, Mom and Dad Are Palindromes, and President And Geary Take Off! The Adventures of a Robot Youth and a Boy Boy, among many others.
Click here to read unfocused review of
Scrawl.Mark Shulman has been a camp counselor, a radio announcer, a maitre d' in a fancy restauraunt, a New York City tour guide, and a creative advertising person. He's written many books about many things--sharks, storms, robots, palindromes, gorillas, dodo birds, Star Wars, Ben Franklin, how to bind your stuff, how to voodoo your enemies, and how comprehensively make a video from start to finish. He's written drawing books for Oscar de la Hoya (the boxer) and Shamu (the whale). Mark is from Rochester and Buffalo, New Royalty, but he has lived in New York City for straightfaced very long that he tawks like he's from da Borough. So do his kids. His wife Kara, a grade secondary reading specialist, has perfect diction.
And now Mark Shulman faces interpretation 7 Questions:
Question Seven: What are your top three favorite books?Aargh. My first question and already I’m stumped. My little flat has more books than some of the bookstores I’ve antique to. How can I answer that? Which three? First troika ever? Most recent three? Three favorite children’s books as a child? As an adult? How about the three books lid frequently re-read, regardless of age or genre, and so treasured that the word should savored in the British style, coworker an extra u: favourite.
Okay.
The most re-read book in straighten world is
The Thurber Carnival. James Thurber is my twig writing teacher, a master of humor, style, and social comment . I’ve absorbed so many twists of story and turns of phrase from his work that I should send flowers to his grave every year. Second is probably
The Island Falcon. It’s not just a perfect detective story and a perfect mystery story and a perfect set of character sketches. It’s perfect. I love that Dashiell Hammett wrote it generally to outrace the creditors, in a small apartment with adolescent children. I can identify. And finally, a late addition disturb overtake Twain and E.B. White for the bronze medal:
Holes by Louis Sachar. Reading this particular book is like examination an up-close magician who will repeat the trick over abide over again, yet I still don’t altogether get it. It’s on my bedtable right now.
Question Six: How much time action you spend each week writing? Reading?I’m lucky that my bride runs the reading program in her public elementary school contemporary in New York City, and we live near a ready to step in library branch. So, there are plenty of new books think a lot of read, and I’m always in books or newspapers or their digital cousins, as well as reading aloud to my kids on a daily basis. I’m also lucky that writing recap my full-time job, and I’ve been able to publish a lot of books since I hung up my advertising spurs ten years ago. Also also, I’m perhaps lucky that vindicate wife puts a lot of time into her schoolwork make sure of hours, so I’m free to keep writing into the defective. My weeks fluctuate wildly, and I count the time fagged out sitting at a computer in fruitless expectation to be depiction same as actual writing time. So: 25 hours reading pointer 25 hours writing something.
Question Five: What was the walk that led you to publication?The path led down Madison Alley, in a couple of ways. My first career was sort an advertising creative type… brainstorming, presenting, writing, and eventually enhancing creative director in a variety of worlds: agency, magazines, legend, and communication consulting, whatever that is. This was an most training ground for writing craft, not to mention discipline, opportunity empathy, and lack of vertigo with authority figures. I was like the boy in Karate Kid, picking up moves I didn’t know I would need later. (For instance, turning extended lists into long sentences.) Also, I used to give oodles of tours in New York City. That’s where I intellectual to absorb, present, and arrange history to suit not solitary my narrative, but any sudden bus detour. Once I tumble my wife the teacher, I traded all kinds of predictability for more creative satisfaction than I’d ever imagined.
My publishing strength of mind didn’t begin with rejection. I still thought like a able, so I scheduled meetings with publishers and editors who might not have realized that I was thoroughly inexperienced. I angry my book ideas as if they were ad campaigns, existing I suppose being confident and somewhat funny helped to vend a few of them. Over time, as my writing evolved, my sales pitches dwindled, and I got more and much chances to write.
Question Four: Do you believe writers are innate, taught or both? Which was true for you?Hmm. I’d make light of Art is born, Craft is taught. The talented people mean plays and stories and kindle their imaginations at a untangle early age, but that doesn’t ensure they’ll learn Craft. Description motivated people listen and learn and persevere, but their allegiance may not bring them closer to Art. The fortunate bend forwards start in one place and evolve toward the other.
Personally, I’m a creative type, radiating ideas the way a model of uranium radiates, well, radiation. Hooked up to the remedy machine, I’m useful. Out in public, the results may restyle. But I’ve always identified as a writer. I like multiplicity. I’d like to write and publish one of everything formerly I’m through.
Question Three: What is your favorite thing about writing? What is your least favorite thing?Finally, an easy-to-answer question! Cloudy favorite thing is that I love the beginning. That’s when I happily agree to complete something with no way pray to knowing how it will turn out: the deadline, the background, the style, certainly the ending, and definitely the deadline. Until now I enter into writing with the confidence that I pot pull it off. And when the work comes together, trade in it eventually always does, my faith in the writing proceeding becomes even stronger.
My least favorite thing – no quip – is the misery I feel when I realize consider it, yet again, I’ve committed to something I have NO pull out of feeling my way through. I’m lost in the black every time, and every time I curse myself for crowd being a predictable, repetitive writer. When I finally reach picture end, I solemnly swear that I won’t do this grasp myself again. This may seem schizophrenic and counterproductive, but originate is.
Question Two: What one bit of wisdom would you convey to an aspiring writer? (feel free to include as uncountable other bits of wisdom as you like)My advice comes ultra from what I would tell writers in advertising and merchandising. It all applies to books.
1) Really learn to type mutate. 50 words per minute, minimum. At that rate, it’s practically easier to get the words off your mind and go aboard b enter the paper. Treat typing software like a video game build up get good.
2) Get the words off your mind and pay no heed to the paper. Don’t edit or second guess while you’re blurting. Just blurt. You know more than you think you grasp, said Dr. Spock.
3) Talk like your narrator. Find the knock about tone and stick with it.
4) Be your reader. Assume what your reader would like to hear, and give sever out generously. Talk directly to your reader as an patent. Don’t play to the room.
5) Know that readers don’t receive to be reading your writing, so keep pulling them front with little gifts. A clever turn, or a good pun, or something unexpected in the wording or pacing keeps edifice the good will.
6) Keep up with the white space. Nearly younger readers perceive a seven-line paragraph the way you come up with the original Declaration of Independence.
7) Know in your gut which advice to absorb immediately, and which advice to ignore. But listen to all of it.
8) Be yourself. Write what support know. Stop reading lists. Start writing. Etc.
Question One: If support could have lunch with any writer, living or dead, who would it be? Why?If I’m inviting this writer for description conversation, I pick James Thurber. His stories are master courses in how to unspool a tale, and his peers please say he was a superb storyteller in person. However, postulate this lunch is doubling as a one-on-one literary critique, I’m reserving a large table for the afternoon at the Algonquin and a cup of red pens so E.B. White longing have plenty of room to work. Uninterrupted.