Geraldine McCaughrean

Writing is writing to me. I'm incapable of saying no to any writing job, so I've done everything - historical fiction, myths, fairy tales, anything that anybody expresses any interest in me writing, I'll write. It's the same reason I used to read as a child: I like going somewhere else and being someone else.

I never dreamt I could be an author when I grew up. It just didn't occur to me, because I thought you had to be a) academic, so go to university, things like that, and I didn't think I was clever, or b) dead because I just assumed all the authors in the library were dead.

Never apologise for not being someone else. You're bound to find something you're good at, even if it's only writing stories.

I'm not one of those people who had a burning passion for 'Peter Pan' all my life. Although I can't remember a time when I didn't know the story, I didn't carry around with me an ambition to one day write the sequel.

I still keep thinking someone will penetrate my guilty secret - that I have been masquerading as a writer all these years while all I was really doing was enjoying myself, pursuing my passion.

It isn't that I don't tackle issues; it's just that they're secondary to giving somebody an escape route from the banal routine of everyday life.

When people write fan-fic sequels to one of your books, it gives you a very strange feeling. It is very flattering but strange, as if the characters have come to life again without you knowing.

Well, unfortunately, my father passed away before my first book was published, so he never lived to see me as an author. But I think my mum was suitably pleased because she was mad about words. If she ever came across a word that she didn't know, she would always look it up in the dictionary.

Most of my central characters lack confidence but overcome their timidity or low self-esteem to win through in the end, so I suppose there is a kind of wish-fulfillment at work.

The chief thing is to make children feel good about themselves. They want to step into the shoes of a hero who is bigger and stronger, to face tremendous dangers and come home safely for tea.

I like working in children's books because it gives rise to such a variety of jobs. One month it may be a picture book, the next a retelling, the next a play, a short story or the start of the next novel.

I wept my way through teaching practice.