I’m almost halfway through N. D. Wilson’s Outlaws of Time: The Legend of Sam Miracle. It’s a great read. On some level, it’s comfortable. On another level, though, it is different and engaging with a great open-ended feel.

Last week, Wilson talked with Publishers Weekly about writing. When asked about why he started writing for children:

I could try to give all sorts of philosophical answers, but the truth is, that’s where my imagination lives. When I sit back and think of adult stories, I think of film. But when the itch shows up to write a novel, inevitably it is for kids. You could say my imagination stopped in the sixth grade. My reading level increased, but not my imagination. Writing for kids has provided me with more than enough scope for the stories I love to tell – magical doors, time-walking priests, snake arms. I think I have too much fun to write for the grown-ups.

It’s an interesting concept, that your imagination “stops” at a particular age. I don’t take it to mean that you stop imagining so much as the kind of stuff you enjoy imagining the most settles down.

One of my favorite moments from the book so far involves Father Tiempo, a priest who travels through time in order to save (and save and save again) Sam Miracle from those who would “steal his heart.” It’s all about Time and Time’s Author:

Father Tiempo laughed, and his voice rattled off the canyon walls. “I’m beginning to understand why the old man liked you. Time is beyond your comprehension. Time is a wind. Time is an animal. Time is choices. Time is light woven into song. Time is the Poet speaking the next word. We are small, and so we hear and live only one works at a time, living in the way that you would read a book. Outside of the book, where only the Author exists, there is no time at all. It is not even a book. It is one endless, ever-growing but already-grown page. Most people live in the lines, but I march in the margins. I am sent to make the edits, the notes, the corrections. You and I and all creatures are ink on the page, but I can lead you through the white space between the words, where time is thin. I can lift you off the page until only your shadow is dragging behind.

Makes you wonder how well he would get along with the Doctor, for sure.

You can read the rest of the Publishers Weekly article here.

(image from christandpopculture.com)