LS: Well, I imagine it has. It will be more than five years since a novel for adults has been published, so I've just changed.
I guess one thing that is handy about writing for children is that books tend to be shorter, so I've written a large number of books in a short amount of time, and that's good training. But in terms of specific things about writing for adults versus writing for children, I don't think there's that much of a difference.
AC: What have you learned about writing fiction for children since you started, especially since you did not set out to write children's books?
LS: Well, I've learned a lot about children's literature since I started writing for children because I hadn't read anything for children since I was a child, and now I read them all the time. I'm grateful for that, but I don't really find any difference in actually doing it.
AC: Your adult fiction tends to take on some fairly daring themes, incest, for one example. Does the success of the Lemony Snicket books allow you to be more experimental with your adult work?
LS: I don't think the content has necessarily been affected. It's nice to not be stressed out about money, for sure. But I was always writing what I wanted. I never tried to write anything that could be popular because I didn't think I would be good at it. I don't want it to sound like the money has had no effect on me, like I live in the same crappy one-bedroom place. So it has had an effect, but I don't think the market for literary fiction has that much to do with content. I mean, I don't think that writers who tend to be as experimental as I am do worse than others. I don't think Denis Johnson sells fewer copies than Ann Packer. I think there's enough room, within the very limited appeal of serious fiction, for all kinds of experimental stuff.
AC: Scattered throughout the books and especially in the "Unauthorized Autobiography," there are a number of adult jokes. Do you use that technique mainly because you know that adults will be reading the books with their kids, or just for the kids, knowing that they will identify with them more and more as they grow up?
LS: I guess the latter. Those references are mostly in there because they're interesting to me. But I like the idea that years from now some child will pick up my books again and say, my lord, this makes more sense to me now than it used to. But it's not specifically written for an adult audience.
AC: Do you write for adults and children simultaneously?
LS: Yes. I've been working on this new novel continuously since the last book, "Watch Your Mouth," came out in 2000. But certainly when a Lemony Snicket book comes out, then there is a priority of deadlines, and I also have to do things like this.
AC: Obviously you have a very strong Lemony Snicket persona when you're writing these books. Do you feel the need to have that persona or is it strictly for the kids?
LS: When the books were first published, the publisher asked me a very sensible question, which was, if you're going to take on the persona of the narrator and not the writer, what will you do when you go out to speak to people? So I went to see another children's author speak and I thought it was very tedious. She said she wanted to remove the mystery from writing, and I thought, why in the world would you want to do that? I thought I would like to put more mystery into writing, and that that would actually be more interesting. So that was the angle that I went for. I just assume that if you're going to get up on stage, you might as well do something interesting. Even when I go to speak about my adult books, I try to be more interesting than I am in normal life. I mean, in normal life, people listen to me talk for free.
