Hi, I'm Kate Walker. I live in Australia and write books for Children & Young Adults. I've been writing since 1977 and I LOVE IT! Writing is the only thing I want to do when I get up in the morning. And I'd write all day long if I could. But sometimes you have to stop and cook a meal, scrub your socks, put out the garbage, that sort of thing.I write all sorts of books. Picture books. Chapter books. Novels. Silly poetry. Deep & meaningful short stories. Non-fiction educational books. Call me fickle but I hate doing the same thing twice. I love the excitement of a totally new venture. I never go looking for stories, they find me. Usually I'm reading something - the newspaper or someone else's story - and a single idea or a line of dialogue suddenly grabs me. Something about it resonates with something inside me. It's like my stories are asleep deep within, and as soon as I hear a line that's even faintly like one in a story of my own, the 'beast' begins to stir. Then slowly, ever so slowly, it wakes.It's a good thing I like writing so much. I'm one of the slowest writers on the planet. It takes me an AGE to write anything. So it goes. Maybe as I get older, I'll get faster.Though to watch me at work you wouldn't think I was speeding up. After 30+ years of writing I've found that the most important thing I can do, the most helpful practice I can observe when writing, is to start by sitting doing nothing for at least half an hour. In other words I meditate. I wouldn't think of writing a word without meditating first. If I didn't meditate, I couldn't write. Simple as that.