Edward Cole was a bookseller in Melbourne in the late 1800s and was famous for creating his celebrated ‘Coles Book Arcade’ book store. Cole was both a tireless self-promoter and a passionate advocate for literacy. As part of his belief that readers are created by associating their first books with pleasure, he produced two books: Coles Funny Picture Book 1 and Coles Funny Picture Book 2. I can’t calculate how many hours I spent as a child lost in the inexhaustible pleasures of these books. They are vast repositories of Victoriana sourced from newspapers, magazines and other children’s books: nursery rhymes, poems, fairy tales, jokes, stories, puzzles, glossaries, and funny pictures—thousands of funny pictures—all grouped into various ‘lands’ such as Girl Land, Boy Land, Dolly Land, Naughtiness Land, Monkey Land, Funny Land and Puzzle Land to name just a few. The books are alternately amusing and disturbing and sometimes a weird fusion of both, but always fascinating. It’s perhaps no accident that my books are full of funny pictures and feature rhymes, songs, cartoons, stories within stories, and all sorts of general nonsense just like the funny picture books I loved as a child.

Homework by Geoff Dyer. An exhaustive and highly entertaining autobiography of the first 18 years of his life by one of the world’s funniest writers. What a laugh-out-loud joy it is to read Geoff Dyer excavating his childhood in forensic detail—the good, the bad and the ugly. I guarantee he’ll dislodge long-forgotten aspects of your own childhood. I’m reading it slowly, savouring every paragraph, and it’s great fun to read aloud.

I work at home with my wife, Jill, who both edits and collaborates on all my books. I have two offices—one in a small room above a garage, which is packed from floor to ceiling with all sorts of weird and wonderful toys I’ve collected over the years, as well as shelves full of graphic novels, comics, books and music. This room connects me with my childhood self and it’s where I go to do the fun but messy free-associative work of coming up with ideas and generating first drafts. I have a second, larger, and far more orderly office inside the house, which is more conducive to the orderly, structured business of editing and rewriting.

Educate yourself, be mindful and simplify your life as much as possible. Guard against excessive busy-ness, over-consumption and succumbing to other people’s ideas of how you should be spending your time (yes, including this idea!). If you can, support a climate action group—either through volunteering or donating. It’s hard to think of a more important investment in our—and our children’s—future than in doing everything we can to  reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and transitioning as quickly as possible to renewable energy.

Keep doing exactly what you’re doing—reading, writing and listening to music for no other reason than the pure joy of it. And when adults ask you what you’re going to do after you leave school, just smile and shrug and have faith that if you love something deeply and fully enough, the future will look after itself (and if it doesn’t then, well, you can always read a book to learn what you need to know to get back on track).