The natural thing when speaking to a writer with Valerie’s track record is to ask for a bit of advice on the craft. She advised to simply keep writing: listen for the voice of the story. Pursue it, until the end of the story presents itself.

Look for beginnings and endings in the body of your project.

“Some people know how a story is going to end before they write the first word, while I have just the vaguest idea. Most of my stories are character driven. When I start writing, the characters are quite well developed, but the stories are barely developed—It's almost like a theme more than a plot. I usually have a general idea of how it's going to end, but it's a loose idea. And if I did not write the ending until I was 100% sure how to do that, there would probably be a lot of unfinished work here on my computer.”

Rather than struggle to get the powerful opening paragraph right, she suggests looking for the beginning somewhere in the first few pages. “At least for me, I also find the ending in the right place. If you just keep writing, listening to the voice of the story, all of a sudden, you'll just know.”

Capture ideas before they evaporate.

Valerie writes ideas down as they come to her. In the days before smart phones, she dug around for a scrap of paper and pen in her handbag when lightning struck. The biggest danger, she says, is to not capture them. “It's easy now because you could just say it into your phone. Capture them right away. I've yelled out from the shower to my husband, ‘write this down!’”

Be consistent with your writing time.

In the early days, Valerie would take two or three months to write a young adult book, which explains her long list of published works. These days she isn’t quite so driven, “but I do try to write something every day. I'm more inclined now to look deeper and see where things aren't working.”

Kill your Darlings.

Valerie’s trusted editor once sent her a note regarding her writing. “He said, ‘I can see the author in this.’ That was the first time he ever said that to me, and I knew immediately what he meant.” Trying to be impressive with language did not serve the story. “The words that we get so enamored actually ruin things because it's just not the authentic natural voice of the story coming through. “

The Specific Challenge of Writing for Young People.

Valerie believes the way a story reaches readers and touches them, how they connect to the writing, is the measure of its importance.

“I think that's the challenge in writing for young people. You must make sure that you're connecting with them in a way that is relatable. I guess that's true for any kind of fiction, except that when you're writing for young people, you've got a very short window of opportunity to reach that child at that time with that story and be able to connect with the child in some way.”

Buy Canadian!

It’s unfortunate that Canada has a terrible habit of loading their schools and libraries with American books, Valerie says. “The percentage of books that are Canadian authored in schools, is abysmally low. I do know so many Canadian authors who write for young people whose work is amazing. There's no shortage of good, solid work by Canadians that never get picked up. It's very hard to make a living, you know, and we're very much overshadowed by American culture.”

Challenge yourself!

Valerie has written a couple of books in free verse. Counting Back from Nine (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2012), was already written in prose and submitted to publisher, when she approached the editor. “I’d like to rewrite this in free verse,” she said. Her editor agreed to let her try.  “I had a few sobby days when I didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing,” she says, but overall, the experiment was worth it. Later, she wrote Standing on Neptune (DCB Young Readers, 2023), which was a completely different experience, since that story “was pulled out of thin air” rather than extracted from prose. The challenges that come from trying new forms can keep you interested in your projects.

Don’t write for the money…

Nobody should become a writer because they think it's going to lead to great riches, Valerie says with a laugh. “Chances are that it absolutely is not, and I have a large body of work and a certain degree of success, with positives from the critics. I do nothing that even remotely resembles earning a living, I just don't. I'm willing to,” she says with a wink.

…Write for the Joy.

If you don't love the creating part of writing, even the difficult parts that you're slogging through, it’ll be too easy to give up. “For most people that I've spoken to, including me whenever I'm writing a story, I get about two-thirds of the way through the book, and then I think, ’This is garbage. Nobody in their right mind would ever want to read this, it’s just trash.’

There's a certain weariness that can overwhelm a writer and threatens to make a person lose faith. “You can become dispirited,” Valerie says. “The only thing that can cure that is to put it away for a week or two and then pick it up again. It will give you a good boost to your confidence because you'll see what you loved about it, all of its strengths—you’ll find them again.”