Success comes in many flavors. The book that earned the most money up front didn’t sell the most copies in the end. The one I liked the best didn't get the best reviews. The book that still sells the best isn't the one I'd consider the most literary. So there are several ways to judge success.
I'll use "successful" here in the sense of "which one are you proudest of?" The answer: either my newest picture book, If All the Animals Came Inside, or the nonfiction/memoir about teaching that I just finished. I bet a lot of writers would say that their latest book is their best, because we always keep improving.
There are exceptions, of course. Sometimes a person's first novel is their personal masterpiece, and they never write a better one. Joseph Heller and Catch 22 come to mind.
If All the Animals Came Inside took about three years from first draft to publication. Another book took several years to write and then another 10 years to find a publisher.
2. How easy or difficult do you feel it is to take criticisms meant to improve your work?
Writers can be lousy judges of their own work, at least when the work is brand new. What seems like a masterpiece to us the day we write it might make us cringe two weeks or two years later. So it's helpful to get other people's input, to catch the typos and continuity errors and awkward sentences we'd miss.
After revising the same scene 3,987 times, it's easy to forget how it might look to someone reading it for the first time. That's where workshops and critiques come in handy; they force us see our work again from that fresh perspective. Does criticism hurt? Sure. But it's necessary.
3. Do you prefer online or physical submissions? Do you feel one is superior to the other, and if so, why?
Online submissions streamline the process. No stamps, no running to the store to buy new ink cartridges because the ink started to fade halfway down page 30. Pretty soon no one will know what a SASE is anymore.
That said, you miss the actual paper rejection slips with helpful comments scribbled on them. Whenever I give my publishing pep talk at Chester College, I always bring in a big folder full of rejections slips in all sorts of sizes and colors, and let it fall on the table with a resounding thump. A student recently lamented the loss of the rejection slip. "I won't be able to have a collection like that," he said. I suppose
you could print out email rejections, but it's not the same thing.
4. Roughly how many rejections do you think you received before your first acceptance? A round number is fine.
Dozens, probably. I started sending off manuscripts in high school, and my first paid acceptance (a whole $80, almost enough to pay for a science textbook) came during college.
5. What traits or cultivated habits do you think would best help the aspiring writer?
Persistence. The words won't write themselves. As author Jane Yolen says, if you want to be a writer you need "butt in chair!" To get the work done, you have to treat it as work. You have to write even when you're not in the mood to.
6. What is your favorite world myth?
I'm a fan of Prometheus. He got a raw deal in the end with the torture-by-bird thing. But, hey, Prometheus, thanks for the fire.
7. If you had to pick one writer you were incredibly jealous of- and I mean punch in the face steal their girlfriend beat them in a car chase jealous- who would that writer be?
I'm a painfully slow writer, so fast writers—the ones who can crank out a good book or two every year—fill me with envy. John McPhee, for example. I wish I'd written Encounters with the Archdruid.
8. True or false: you are your own worst critic.
I'm going to be ambiguous and say "maybe." You're your own worst critic (i.e. "least likely to make good critical choices") while looking over a new rough draft, because you're too close to the work at that point. And you’re your worst (i.e. harshest) critic at other times, or at least I am, because I'm a perfectionist who never achieves perfection. It's frustrating.
9. How important would you say writers are now, as opposed to ten years ago, taking into account the sudden onset of e-reading technology?
Words are still words, whether they're etched in stone, written on scrolls, printed in books or typed on a screen. Movie directors need screenwriters, politicians need speechwriters, and everybody needs or wants storytellers. Technology may change how our writing is presented, but writers will always be around.
10. What is your actual writing process like? For example, do you prefer longhand or typing? Desk or bed? Outdoors or locked in a car?
I leave my laptop on next to a plate of cookies overnight, and hope little literary elves will finish the story for me. When that doesn't work, I eat the stale cookies and force myself to sit in front of the computer for at least a couple hours a day.
I hate the actual process of writing, especially at the start of a new project. It takes a while to gather momentum. After that, it gets fun. But staring at that first blank page is torture. So I have to force myself to do it.
I put on two CDs of background music, something non-distracting like Bach, and say, "Okay, you can't get up from this chair till the music stops. No emails, no games, no Facebook. Your only choices are write or do nothing," Usually out of sheer boredom, that forces me to write. And sometimes I get on a roll. Sometimes I look up after dozens of pages and realize it's dark out and the music stopped hours
ago. Other times the music plays for a couple hours and I've still written nothing, so I go take a bike ride instead.
Out hiking, I'll write longhand in a notebook. I think that's a good way to write first drafts, because the brain works differently that way. Most of the time I'm typing, though.
10. Finally, what is your advice to any aspiring writer?
Don't hurry, and don't give up. Like many aspiring writers, I was eager to get published, in a rush. Some of those early works embarrass me now. They could've used another six months of a year of revision before the printing presses rolled. So don't hurry. That story you finished last week will be even better a year from now.
Don't give up. Everyone gets rejected. The most successful writers are the ones with the thickest skins.
