`They're from my life. All my ideas are from my life," said Gary Paulsen, referring to where he gets the ideas for his books.

Looking at the trials and antics in Paulsen's 54 years, it's easy to understand why his novels are so popular, especially the Newbery award-winning Hatchet and Dogsong.

Children's Express interviewed Paulsen in April when he came to Indianapolis on a book-signing tour at Kid's Ink bookstores.

The adventurous Paulsen smiled as he told us stories of when he raced sled dogs in the Iditarod, of how last summer he put 18,000 miles on a Harley-Davidson, and how he plans this fall to sail around the world.

The smile wasn't there, though, as he discussed other experiences from where his ideas come. He talked about his childhood and how he dealt with his parents, "the town drunks," by hiding in the basement. He passed through high school with a D-, a characteristic that would make it seem unlikely for a person to become an author.

Education in the woods

His upcoming book, Father Water, Mother Woods, is about the many days Paulsen spent in the woods.

"I would skip school all the time," said Paulsen.

Education in the woods isn't a very good background for success in college, and when Paulsen started, he flunked out after less than a semester. The possibility of authorship seemed even less likely, but Paulsen said he was able to turn his life around by joining the Army.

"A sergeant in the Army squared me away," he said. "It took him three days. That was back when they could touch you. . . . He just beat the teewadden out of me and I couldn't touch him.

"I had been fighting my whole childhood, and I just couldn't touch him. And he said, `You've got to square yourself away.'"

Paulsen did. Immediately after leaving the Army, he went to work in the aerospace industry as an electrical engineer in Barstow, Calif. "I had a company car, had married, had 2.6 kids," he said. "I had become a real straight arrow."

It wasn't enough. He had a midlife crisis at the age of 27 and quit his job. As he left he told the guard, "I ain't coming back. I'm going to be a writer."

"I went home and told my wife," said Paulsen. "I had been making $500 a week in 1964. . . . On the way to Hollywood I made up a resume saying that I had been an editor for years."

He landed a job at a magazine as an editor and a proofreader. "They didn't check the resume and I got $400 a month. I went from $500 a week to $400 a month.

"I wound up getting a divorce."

Paulsen was only in Hollywood for a year before finding himself back in Minnesota, writing in the winter and selling his first book in the spring.

"I was just coming into 28 (years old) and I've been writing ever since," said Paulsen. "I'm 54 and I've got about 130 books published. Most of them," he added, "aren't very successful."

He wasn't able to make a living from Day 1. He worked various job, including construction and trapping.

Reluctant trapper

His trapping experiences became the inspiration for another of Paulsen's books, Winterdance.

"I was on the run," Paulsen explained. "I got ripped off by a publisher and had a bunch of judgments against me. I got sued.

"I just went under financially. So I headed for the woods in northern Minnesota. My wife and kid and I had this old metal lean-to. We got there in November, and we wintered in it, and I started trapping for the state."

Paulsen's job was to trap coyotes that were killing sheep and beavers because they were damming up the roads. He wasn't allowed to trap using a car or four-wheeler, so he started using sled dogs.

"I started looking at them and I realized dogs have some intellect. They have intelligence, humor, compassion, they lie, they do everything we do. So I decided I could never kill a dog. So I thought, `Well, if you can't kill a dog, how do you kill coyotes, because they're dogs?' "

Because of a heart condition, Paulsen no longer runs dogs as he once did. His books have changed, too - today they are successful. He has released 17 books this year alone.

"I'll write until I die," said Paulsen. "I love to write the way you fall in love."

At the end of our interview, we asked Paulsen what advice he could give us.

"Just read," he responded. "Read all the time. Read like a wolf eats."

EDITED BY: Joe Huser, 16