How agreeable are you?
I’m fairly agreeable, but I’ve realised over the past few years that I’m actually an introvert, so I need to tuck myself away every few hours to be my best self. I get slightly disagreeable when my socialising battery has run out.
What is your middle name, and what do you think of it?
My middle name is Patrick, which is a very Irish name, obviously, and a reminder of my Irish roots. My mother gave me that middle name, but she also gave it to my older brother, and then she totally went for it and made it my youngest brother’s first name. When she did that, my older brother and I realised we weren’t the important Patricks in the family any more. Family legend has it that on their first date, my mother and father gave names to six non-existent kids, and Patrick was one.
Where is your favourite place in Ireland?
I’m not that well-travelled in Ireland, to be honest, but having visited Dublin a few times, I’m going with that for now. I particularly like Trinity College’s old library, which houses the Book of Kells.
Describe yourself in three words.
Restless, ambitious, creative.
RM Block
When did you last get angry?
I live in the US, so I’m angry every time I read the news or turn on the television. In my day-to-day life, however, I’d say it was this morning in my hotel shower. On the little bottles of shampoo, conditioner and body wash, the words are printed so small, and, of course, in the shower, I never wear glasses, so I’m holding the little bottles up to my eyeballs so I can read them. I curse the people who make the words so difficult to read on these bottles. There’s always the fear that you’re going to put body wash on your hair and conditioner on some other part of your body. What’s going to happen then? Is hair going to fall out?
What have you lost that you would like to have back?
When I was a kid, I got this toy motorcycle for my birthday. It had a rip cord with it, so you could pull the cord and then the motorcycle would speed off across the floor. On its maiden voyage, it went straight across the floor, hit the bottom of the oven, took a hard left and went into a small opening in the wall, never to be seen again. I always think when they take down that house in, maybe, 200 years, they’re going to find a mint-condition toy motorcycle behind the wall. If I were the builder, I’d be very confused by that.
What is your strongest childhood memory?
My first childhood memory is when I was about two or three years old, and we moved into a house where I spent most of my childhood. There was a very large, dead tree in the backyard that, for some reason, I got very attached to in a very short space of time, but, as a safety measure, my parents took it down because it was in danger of falling on the house. The removal of that tree, however, was the most traumatic experience of my life. I was completely traumatised when it was no longer there; you would think I had planted it myself.
Where do you come in your family’s birth order and has this defined you?
I’m the third of four siblings – I have an older brother and sister, and a younger brother, but the family agrees that I’m the middle child, and as such, that has definitely defined me. My older brother was the rock’n’roll guy, sometimes a good influence, sometimes a bad influence. My younger brother was the golden, flaxen-haired child, the “accident” child that my parents had. I could see that everybody loved him, so I had to figure out what my identity was, and I think it came out in my books.
[ From the archive: Diary of a Wimpy Kid series dominates most-borrowed listOpens in new window ]
I always felt like an invisible kid, and I would be willing to bet that if you asked almost any of my teachers about me, they wouldn’t remember me. I thought of myself as a person who was observing the situation, not really living in it. If you can imagine it, I felt like my 54-year-old self now, but stuck in the unfortunate situation of being housed in a 12-year-old body. I make a joke about it in my first book, where Greg says, “One day I’ll be rich and famous, but for now I’m stuck in middle school with a bunch of morons.” That’s how I felt growing up.
What do you expect to happen when you die?
I’m betting on there being something, but I don’t know what it looks like. When I get there, however, I can’t wait to tell all the people who didn’t believe that I told them so. I’m going to really rub it in.
When were you happiest?
When Covid ended, or effectively ended, I was so happy when my high-school senior, who had been shut away for two years in the house, finally got to live the life that had been snatched from him and his friends. For me, personally, I’m often anxious, rarely satisfied, always reaching for that next thing. It’s not material things or anything like that; it’s just that I can’t settle down. For example, if I’m on a vacation with my extended family, everybody’s in the pool and relaxing, but I’m pacing and pacing. I don’t know why that is, but I’ve always been that way.
Which actor do you think would best play you in a biopic about your life?
Oh, I don’t know ... Somebody once told me I look like Marilyn Manson without the make-up. That was slightly horrifying to me and not at all complimentary. I’m still waiting for somebody to give me a better compliment, but no one has yet.
What’s your biggest career/personal regret?
My biggest regret is that I didn’t learn to tell a good story sooner. I think my first dozen books were just a collection of jokes strung together, and I didn’t get the hang of telling a good story until maybe my 12th or 13th book. In my opinion, I didn’t get good at it until my 19th book.
Have you any psychological quirks?
I’m a tangle of psychological quirks, so much so that I don’t actually know if there’s a real person at the centre. One of my quirks is that I write in my car in a cemetery in the middle of winter. I live in a little town called Plainville, Massachusetts, with a population of about 9,000. I’ll drive to the town’s cemetery, switch off the car engine, get a blanket from the back seat, get some cookies and jelly beans, and get to work. It’s one of the only places in my life that I can find total peace. I stay in the car until it gets too cold, but I can hang on for up to four hours. It’s where I do my best writing.
Jeff Kinney’s latest book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Partypooper, is published by Penguin Random House
