In 2000, I decided to write a middle-grade novel, and I followed the advice of "write what you know."  I have two children, one of whom has autism, and RULES explores that family dynamic.

David is based loosely upon my son when he was a young child.  Some incidents in the book came from real experience:  I was always rescuing toys from our fishtank and my son did love Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad books and used to repeat lines from those stories to communicate.  However, most of the events, details, and characters in RULES came from my imagination. 

Jason was inspired by a boy I saw one day and have never forgotten.  I was waiting for my son to finish an appointment, and a boy came into the waiting room.  He was in a wheelchair and used a communication book.  I glanced up and made assumptions that were blown apart seconds later, when he and his mother had the most amazing and witty conversation.  She spoke out loud; he communicated by touching his pictures. 

All those threads of experience began weaving themselves into a story.  The first line I ever wrote on the first blank page was:  “At our house, we have a rule,” and the story, the characters, the title, all sprang from that seed.

I took the story as far as I could, and after many polishing passes and feedback from my critique partners, I looked through the Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market to see who might be a good publishing match. 

I paused at Scholastic’s entry.  When I was growing up, my teacher would hand out Scholastic Book Clubs fliers, and my mother let me order 3 books each time.  I remember the excitement I felt: the coins rolling back and forth in the envelope as I walked up to hand it to the teacher, and those glassy-smooth covers and the crackling newness of the books when they came.  I still have some of the books I bought as a child through those book clubs, with my name written in big, loopy handwriting on the inside cover. 

But the line “1% of books by first-time authors” in the market book for Scholastic, was daunting.  My husband shrugged when I showed him and said, “Well, someone has to be that one percent, why not you?”

In November 2001, I got the phone call every writer dreams of receiving.  It was an editor at Scholastic saying she’d like to buy my book.  I was too excited to remember much about that call, but I think I said mostly intelligent things like, “Oh, um, wow! Yes, uh, OK.” 

Getting the call may sound like “The end,” but that was also a beginning, a corner-turning to a new hallway.  The revision process is a time of refining, of letting go and holding on, of re-imagining characters and events to bring them into sharper focus. 

It’s been a long road from that first “At our house, we have a rule” to this moment, but it’s also been a glorious discovery, a journey I am both humbled and amazed to have taken.