The real world is horrible.
There's a special gut-check moment the first time you write a scene in which somebody casts a spell.
When I was 35 I realized that I was still thinking a lot about what it would be like to go to Narnia. To really go - not just in a daydream, or in a children's book, but what it would actually feel like, physically, psychologically, every other way. The idea was haunting me.
It's natural for a child to assume that his or her own childhood is unremarkable.
It turns out that there is something that can compete with free: easy.
Josh speculated about the hypothetical contents of an imaginary porn magazine for intelligent trees that would be entitled Enthouse.