Jeff Kinney

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Feature Cover Story Jeff Kinney: Diary of a Bestselling Author by Melissa Fales Sales of the books in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series have been anything but wimpy, with over 150 million copies sold worldwide since the first one was published in 2007. Jeff Kinney’s latest effort, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School is due out November 3. According to Kinney, the adventures of the series’ selfish, yet undeniably likeable protagonist, Greg Heffley, are not exactly autobiographical. “There are definitely some shared references,” Kinney says. “I would say that Greg’s story is similar to mine. The DNA is there.The basics are all there, but the particulars have changed.” 4 StoryMonstersInk.com | NOVEMBER 2015 | Story Monsters Ink
Feature Cover Story Kinney grew up in Fort Washington, Maryland, as part of a family that appreciated a good story, especially one with comedic elements. “We’d always indulge my grandmother and listen when she’d start one of her own tales,” he explains. “She’d tell and retell the same stories again and again, and we’d never say ‘Gram, we’ve all heard that one a million times.’ We’d just listen.” Thanks to Kinney’s mother, an educator, his childhood home featured a library of awardwinning books for him and his three siblings to read. However, it was Kinney’s father who provided his favorite reading material. “He brought home lots and lots of comic books,” says Kinney. The comics left a lasting impression on him. While attending the University of Maryland where he studied criminal justice, Kinney started drawing “Igdoof,” a cartoon for the school’s newspaper. While Kinney had been a top student in high school, he found himself just getting by in college as he devoted more and more of his time to his comic strip and spent less time on his studies. “I had my priorities,” he says. Kinney credits his decision to pursue a career as a newspaper cartoonist to the confluence of his lifelong interest in his father’s comic book collection with the pop culture prominence of cartoons in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “I came of age during the height of Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes,’” Kinney explains. “I wanted to be a part of that.” After college, Kinney spent three years unsuccessfully trying to get his comic strip syndicated. “It was clear that I needed to head in a different direction,” he says. During this time, Kinney actually did keep a diary. “The idea behind the diary was the hope that it would motivate me to keep working on my comic strip. Instead, it gave me the idea for a new format.” In 1998, Kinney came up with the concept for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a book peppered with his simple but effective illustrations. “I consider this to be long-form cartooning,” he says. Kinney worked on that first draft of Diary of a Wimpy Kid for years. “I was originally writing it for an adult audience, as more of a nostalgic thing,” he explains. “Then I brought a draft with me to the New York Comic Convention and found a publisher who liked it, but he envisioned it as a children’s book instead. The rest is history.” An online version of the book came out in 2004. Due to popular demand, the first print copy was released three years later. Each book takes at least six months to create. For Kinney, it all starts with the jokes. “I typically come up with about 350 jokes before I begin writing each book. I do all of the drawings as the last step, but I usually have them in my head all along.” Kinney attributes much of the series’ success to the inclusion of what he sees as universal, pre-adolescent experiences. For example, the series’ compelling recurring references to the moldy slice of cheese left behind on the schoolyard and the social curse of the “cheese touch” affixed to anyone who touches it. “Every group of kids has something like that,” Kinney says. “Of course it’s not always cheese. Maybe there are all orange chairs except for one that’s yellow. If you sit on the yellow chair, you’ve suddenly got this condition. You’re the outcast. You’re basically a pariah. That’s how kids are.” With two sons of his own, Will and Grant, Kinney says he feels fortunate to have a window into their realm. “It’s nice to be able to have a second look at childhood StoryMonstersInk.com | NOVEMBER 2015 | Story Monsters Ink 5
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Jeff Kinney

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