Mo Willems ("Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus") expressed a few thoughts about his writing process to the Boston Globe Magazine recently:
"I’m just writing about emotions. I like to say: 'Love, jealousy, hatred, wanting to drive a bus — the fundamental, core things.'
As I’ve evolved, I’ve started to realize that every book that I write is a philosophical question that I don’t know the answer to. And therefore it interests me. If I know the answer, I won’t make a book out of it.
I don’t write my books for children. I write my books for people who have not learned how to be embarrassed yet. By and large, those people are children.
My credo on a visual level is that if I draw the book, every character can be reproduced by a 5-year-old that’ll reasonably look like the lead character.
My credo for my writing is always think of your audience but never think for your audience.
You don’t have ideas. You grow them. So it’s planting the garden and tending the garden and being patient, just coming back in a year or two years. I’ve got tons and tons of ideas that are in different stages."