“You're writing, you're coasting, and you're thinking, 'This is the best thing I've ever written, and it's coming so easily, and these characters are so great.' You put it aside for whatever reason, and you open it up a week later and the characters have turned to cardboard and the book has completely fallen apart," she says. "That's the moment of truth for every writer: Can I go on from here and make this book into something? I think it separates the writers from the nonwriters. And I think it's the reason a lot of people have that unfinished manuscript around the house, that albatross.”

American writer of children's and young adult books

Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for children and young adults. She is best known for Miracle's Boys and for titles including Brown Girl Dreaming, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. Her work has been recognized with a Newbery Honor, and Another Brooklyn was shortlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction. She served as Young People's Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, then became the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature for 2018 to 2019. She also received the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2018, the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2020, and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2020.