ARRE, Vt.--Katherine Paterson appreciates when people offer her ideas for stories, but she rarely uses them.
"For 30 years, people have been coming up to me, telling me they have a great idea for a story," she said. "I usually say 'Thank you very much.'"
But a few years ago, a friend at Paterson's church suggested she should do a story on the Haxhiu family. Paterson's church had sponsored the family to come to America, after they fled from war-torn Kosovo.
Paterson met with the Haxhius, and decided she would write a story about a family that escaped Kosovo as they had. The result was "Long Road Home," a serialized children's story published by Breakfast Serials and running Mondays in The Free Lance-Star's Life section through May 30.
The author of more than 30 books, Paterson knew how to write a story. But this one presented her with special challenges.
"I've never written about a place I haven't lived," she said. "It's very strange to write about Kosovo, where I've never been."
She spent months researching Kosovo, reading books, finding magazine and newspaper articles, searching online for maps and pictures.
"The history is unbelievable, and most of it is tragic," she said. "There have been wars over religion, land. Power struggles. You read about it and say, 'There are no good guys here. No good guys.' I was appalled by the whole ordeal of what people had to go through."
The older Haxhiu children were familiar with Paterson. They'd read her first serial story, "Field of Dogs," in school, and were excited about a story focusing on a family like theirs.
Since "Long Road Home" is a work of fiction, Paterson wrote it so that a number of events happen to one family, whereas in reality, a single family would have endured only some of the struggles faced by Meli and her family.
In fact, the Haxhius were able to escape the country before things got really bad for Albanians.
The patriarch of the Haxhiu family had served in the Army with a Serbian man. The man contacted him and told him to take his family and leave, because terrible things were about to happen.
The Haxhius left Kosovo for Macedonia, and stayed there until they moved to Vermont.
"It's wonderful how they got out," Paterson said, "that there were people brave enough to do that."
The Haxhius have now moved to Michigan, where there is a large Kosovar community, and Paterson keeps in touch with them.
Despite the artistic license Paterson took with the story, other things, like the history and geography of the country, are precise.
Paterson took pains to study the mountainous terrain of Kosovo--a country smaller than the state of Vermont--so she could accurately estimate how long it would take the family in her story to make a journey.
The Haxhius read "Long Road Home" for Paterson, and said they liked the story.
"When you come from a tiny country no one has heard of except in a negative way, just the recognition that your country will be read about--even if it's not your life--you know the lives of your people are being honored and respected."
Paterson said she enjoys writing serial stories for newspapers. She wrote her first for Breakfast Serials at the urging of her friend, Avi, another writer.
At first Paterson didn't think she had any ideas for a story, but then she remembered an outline she had for a story she'd never finished. It became "Field of Dogs."
Serial stories are very different from the other kinds of books Paterson has written, such as the Newbery Award-winning "Jacob Have I Loved" and "Bridge to Terabithia," and "Jip: His Story," which won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction.
"You write three pages and a cliffhanger," Paterson said. "The next chapter, you clean up the cliffhanger and build up to another one. There's not a lot of room for character development and setting--all the things you think about with a novel."
Paterson is working on a new novel, but said she doesn't talk about a work until it's finished. The new work is in the revision stages.
She writes in a tiny office in the upstairs of her Vermont home, which was built some time between 1830 and 1840. The room is sparse, with some office equipment and a worn chair. There isn't even a window; just a skylight.
She used to work in a large room downstairs, filled with windows. But after her husband, John, retired and was at home more, the room was too central, and she was too easily distracted.
Paterson doesn't write every day, though she said "real writers" do. She began writing when she had very young children.
"I wrote in five-minute snatches whenever I could," she said.
Now she writes when she has ideas; or if she's stuck, she forces herself to write three pages a day until she breaks through her block.
She said she reaches a point in almost every book where she becomes certain that she cannot finish it. But she always finds a way past that point.
Often, John, a retired Presbyterian minister, encourages her.
He doesn't know what kind of story she's working on until she has "a draft I can live with." Then he's her first reader.
"How he reacts is important to me," Paterson said. "He's a good reader, a sensitive reader. If he cries or laughs, I feel like there's hope for this book."
Paterson said ideas for her books come from personal experience and other avenues.
"It's different every time," she said. "It's usually something that bothers me. Something I'm concerned or excited about. A question I need to answer somehow, and I answer it by writing a story."
"Bridge to Terabithia," for example, was written after Paterson's son David had to face the death of a young friend who was struck by lightning. Paterson said the book was her way of trying to make sense of a senseless death.
Paterson said she can't pick a favorite book.
"You have a different relationship with each book," she said. "They're like children, you don't think they're perfect, but you love them."
But she does have a favorite character: Mamie Trotter, the foster mother from "The Great Gilly Hopkins."
"She's the lap all of us long to crawl up on," Paterson said. "She's a person who loves you exactly the way you are."
Paterson said she's much more of a reader than an author. She reads many children's books, and loved A.A. Milne's "Winnie the Pooh" as a child. As a young woman, she loved "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett and "The Yearling" by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
"I adored it," she said of "The Yearling." "I played as though I was Jody and my mutt dog was Flag in the woods behind my house."
As an adult, she said she's a fan of Ann Patchett, author of "Bel Canto," Marilynne Robinson, who wrote "Gilead," and Anne Tyler, author of books such as "Back When We Were Grownups" and "Breathing Lessons." Jane Austen, who wrote in the late 1700s and early 1800s, is another favorite, as is Charles Dickens.
"But I think he needed a good editor," Paterson said.
Parents, teachers and librarians need to work to foster a love of reading among children, she said.
"Some children never find quite the book that sets them on fire," she said. "The book that makes you understand that reading is wonderful."
Paterson's stories have been just that book for countless children.
"You keep writing because you love the process," she said. "It's the most rewarding part. You can never make enough money, never win enough prizes to satisfy you.
"The best reward is being able to create a world, create people that other people care about. It's exciting to me to know that children love children who have come out of my imagination."
To reach LAURA L. HUTCHISON: 540/374-5485 lhutchison@freelancestar.com