Writer Casey Scieszka, whose first novel, The Fountain (Harper) is out this week, joined her father, children’s author Jon Scieszka, for a freewheeling discussion about their most frequently asked questions.

Jon Scieszka: Let’s start with, who are you?

Casey Scieszka: I’m your daughter! And my debut novel The Fountain just came out with Harper this week. It’s about a secretly 214-year-old “young” woman who comes back to her hometown in the Catskill Mountains to figure out what did this to her so she can reverse it and finally be released. I also run the Spruceton Inn: a Catskills Bed & Bar and artist residency. Who are you?

JS: I’m your dad! Jon Scieszka. The first National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature and author of a bunch of books like The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs [both illustrated by Lane Smith].

CS: So here’s an FAQ I get a lot: Did Jon teach you how to write? Did he teach you everything? All of this?

JS: You always had your own voice. You developed your voice starting in second grade when you were writing little things. That’s why it’s hard for me to explain when people say, Wow, how did Casey do this? Well, she’s been doing this a long time, and she’s good at it. And you had all sorts of good back and forth with teachers who really supported the writing and the reading.

CS: And you can do your best to kind of nurture and show that writing is a mystery, but it’s also a discipline and a job. Like, there’s no mystery to the fact that I just knew, well, you have to go sit down at a desk sometimes, and you have to write by hand sometimes, and you have to type it sometimes, and you have to be okay with other people’s suggestions. Like, editors have good ideas, even as much as sometimes when you first hear them, you go, No! Don’t touch my perfect idea! [Jon laughs.] Flash forward, five minutes later, Oh, they’re totally right. They’re totally right!

JS: Yeah, that would be the thing I think you probably learned most viscerally, which is really hard to explain to people without sounding like you’re just being weird—that thing where you just have to sit down. So many people come up and say, like, Oh, I have an idea for a book. And I say, Well, have you written anything? But you have to make yourself do that hard work of sitting down, writing it, and then having people read it and make suggestions that could be really good—or bad, you have to filter those out—and then do more work.

CS: Yeah, always more work. Your work has a very strong voice and a very certain sensibility. I think most people could pick a Jon Scieszka manuscript out of a pile even if it wasn’t labeled. But I think it was very important to watch you both stick to your guns on some things and know when an edit was important, or something that feels like a compromise initially that then winds up bringing you somewhere cooler.

JS: Well, yeah, and you got to hang out with me and Lane just goofing around.

Casey: That was the very fun part too, especially when this was like the heyday of picture books. When authors and illustrators actually hung out together and weren’t just, you know, living on opposite sides of the country and communicating through an art director. Which is not to say what everyone does, but I remember going to Lane and Molly’s studio, and you guys were playing ping pong, and you were like, literally batting around ideas.

JS: Here’s another FAQ for you: Which of my books is your favorite? Do you get that one from people?

CS: Yes, people will ask me which of your books are my favorite, and then I have to play librarian-slash-sales-person. [Both laugh.]

JS: Yeah, yeah.

CS: They have changed over my life as well. Like, I feel like there’s a Jon Scieszka book for every mood, you know? When I’m very sentimental, I love The True Story of the Three Little Pigs because it’s the OG, it’s the beginner. You know, it was you coming to my kindergarten class and doing a presentation. But do I have a really soft spot in my heart for Math Curse? Heck, yeah, even though I think that came out when I was not really kids’ book age, Not to mention all of the Astronuts…

Actually, ere’s another question that people do ask me, and Dad, don’t be sad, but—people will say, Is he still writing? [Both laugh.]

JS: Oh, I get that one face to face, too.

CS: But those are always people who basically haven’t read your books since they were little! And they don’t have children so there’s no reason for them to be in the scene of the kids’ book publishing world. And that’s when I say, Oh, heck yeah! All the time!

JS: Well, good. I’m going to steal that answer, because people ask me more like, Which is your favorite book of yours? And, Oh no, they’re like my children. I love them all.

CS: I do remember I have seen you answer that question—which is your favorite book—and I feel like you heard it from another author once. Where you said, Whatever one is next, or The one I’m working on right now.

Sometimes a piece is done and it feels like it was a part of you forever ago. And what is so exciting—your favorite thing—is the next thing you’re working on. Like, even if you don’t know it at all yet.

JS: Yeah. And that’s the part that’s like, making the sausage, and it’s ugly and awful and smelly—but there’s also those incredible joy moments of like, Oh, I love this idea. It’s the best thing ever. I’m going to set it right here, where I live in the Catskills. I’m going to use all the people around here and the things that have happened to me in the last four years. [Both laugh.]

CS: People do say, Write what you know, which was definitely a frustrating thing to hear when I was younger, because I was like, I’m pretty sure don’t know enough yet.

JS: I know when lunch is?

CS: But I know enough to know that I don’t know enough. That’s definitely what I found—I have always wanted to write a book. I have always had a soft spot and a love for novels, and it took me until I was 40, despite knowing how the sausage was made and all that. And that’s okay with me! Like, you get here.

JS: Yeah, what do you say? I have a hard time answering that question when they ask. Even The Fountain itself was like, how many rewrites? How many drafts? How much time—

CS: I know, and then time where it’s just spending time on other people’s desks, like with your agent or with your editor, or with the copywriters, or, you know, all these things. My neighbors have been very sweet. They’ll come to my little bar at the Spruceton Inn every Friday—it’s this cute little happy hour scene— and nobody really knew me as a writer when I moved up here. They only knew me as this woman who opened up the hotel—

JS: Yeah, which was weird enough.

CS: They were like, Who are these crazy kids from the city? And then I was pretty private about my writing process, because this is a frequently asked question that can be hard to handle sometimes, which is, How’s the book going?

JS: [Laughs.] Yeah.

CS: Which I did not want to have to answer every day at the bar, as sometimes it’s going great, sometimes it’s not going at all. So much of writing is rejection when you’re trying to find the right agent, when you’re trying to find the right editor, and that’s normal. You only need one yes, really, when you think about it. But that’s a very hard thing to share with a lay person in a remotely positive or exciting way. I didn’t tell anybody until I had a book deal. And they were kind of like, How was your week this week? And I was like, Well, it was actually pretty great. I just sold a book! and it was like a record scratching, like, What do you mean?

JS: And that is hard to explain to people how gigantic that is. I remember you coming out of your house, putting out the garbage—

CS: [Laughs.] Yes! You guys were driving away. And I was like, I got an offer! Holding garbage.

JS: It kind of is perfect too, though, because it just comes in the middle of all the other life that’s going on. Which leads nicely into another question I get all the time: Wait a minute. Casey runs the Inn, she has an artist residency, two kids and a husband, and she wrote a book? She wrote a novel? [Laughs.] Like, Yeah, you’ll have to ask her how she did that.

CS: Yeah, people have asked, How do you have the time for it? And it’s just one of those like, again, no satisfying answer. You’re like, I don’t know, I squeezed blood out of stone? In retrospect, it seems wild, but sometimes, you know, there’s the saying: If you need something done, give it to the busiest person.

One last frequently asked question I get a lot is, What’s one piece of advice you would give to aspiring writers? Do you have any brilliance to share?

JS: No. [Both laugh.] I’ve tried so many different answers, but I think the one is just: Sit down and write. It seems the most not clever, and it’s a little brutal, but it’s so true. I have to tell myself that! I have to say, Just sit down, quit dicking around, and just write.

How about you? Have you got something you tell people? I’m going to steal from you more.

CS: I think that one is the number one: just write. Just do it, just try it. And be in bookish community, whatever that means to you. Like, find other readers, find other writers. For some people, that’s having an accountability group, that’s wonderful. For other people, it’s going deeper into Bookstagram, or it’s showing up at more library events. Whatever it is, so much of writing is so lonely. It’s just you and the page alone in a room somewhere, probably. But ultimately, the whole point is that you want to be sharing these stories with readers. So be in that kind of sharing space well before you start asking people to read your stuff.

JS: Yeah, and the other one I’ve stolen from a bunch of other writers, I think, is: Use revision, even if you hate it. [Casey laughs.] I still hate it. And, you know, Steven and I still hope—we send our stuff off and go, Boy, this is genius, and that’s all we want to hear coming back.

CS: Well, it helps that you both are pretty genius, so—

JS: Not always! [Both laugh.] But we love that start and then there can be the other stuff after that.

Casey Scieszka’s The Fountain. I love that your name is as big as the title on there.

CS: I was shocked when that came in, but I’m in love with the cover, I think it’s so fun. It’s so fun that was—

JS: It looks so good, and it gives the same thrill that Lane and I got when we first saw The Three Little Pigs when it came out, and we just stood at the Barnes and Noble in New York and it was in the window, and we were just like, Oh, man! That’s just what we wanted! A book!

CS: It’s real! It’s a real book!

JS: And The Fountain is real.

CS: Yeah. March 17th. You’ll see where I get all my ideas! [Both laugh.]

JS: And who you turn into characters, and if you’re in there yourself.

CS: Well, thanks, Dad. I’m sure I’ll send you some new draft of something soon. Be gentle.

JS: It’ll be genius! I’m sure of it.