A Q&A With Misha Handman

Q: When did you first realize you wanted to be an author?

A: I’ve always enjoyed writing – when I was in elementary school, I would draw comics for my friends. But I remember being on a trip when I was fourteen years old. We were sitting on the beach, watching a campfire, and I felt an idea inside me. I ran to the house we were staying at, pulled out some scrap paper, and started writing right away! By the end of the week I had twenty pages of my first attempt at a novel written. It was a very bad novel. But the experience of writing it convinced me that I wanted to keep trying, and I never stopped.

Q: Does writing energize or exhaust you?

A: There are days when ideas flow through me like lightning. It’s inspiring and reviving and I couldn’t stop if I wanted to. Other days, it’s a struggle to even start working, and every sentence is like pulling weeds. On those days, the process is exhausting, even when the results are worthwhile.

Q: Do you write every day?

A: Very nearly. Sometimes it’s just scraps of ideas, or mini-stories, or just outlining, but I’m always putting something together.

Q: What does literary success look like to you?

A: To me, literary success is every time that someone comes to me and tells me that they were moved, or inspired, or that my work helped them in a hard time. Reaching more people is a part of that, but the important thing is touching their lives in some way.

Q: What drew you to write books about Neverland?

A: I’ve always been interested in the common stories that we tell, and the story of Peter Pan is that in two ways – obviously it’s a common story itself, but it’s also about an island of stories, and about both the beauty of adventure and the danger of enshrining a fabled innocence. My Everland adventures are about growing up in the shadow of other people’s control, and other people’s dreams. The exact nature of the monsters may change, but the core of the land is eternal, and you thrive through understanding it.