Author, I Never is a new segment in which I interview fellow authors about the writing process, breaking into the industry, and breaking rules. I try to mix it up a little and ask some hopefully novel questions along with some of the old standards, and finish it up with a round of I Never (kid friendly version) to find out what cardinal writing rules we've broken.
Question the first: E, when did you first know you wanted to be a writer?
It’s always hard to answer this question because I don’t really remember. When I ask my mother it sounds like I never had any doubt. As soon as I realized people wrote books and that was their job, I knew that was what I wanted to do.
Read MoreI am so excited to announce the official unveiling of the cover for People Like Us!
I've been focusing on other work for a while now, so it's great to hit pause for a moment and go back and just revisit this book that burst to life and drew me in so quickly almost a year ago. I remember trying to finish it before November so I wouldn't be querying it during a flood of NaNoWriMo queries, but I've since learned that there's really no "good" or "bad" time to query.
This book was so fun to write. I started it from a place of extreme stress, funnily enough, from the fear of rejection letters. I began writing after being phased out of my job after my maternity leave (that was fun) and between that and my intense dread of querying, I got an idea for a story about a girl who receives a terrifying email. An email that compels her to do bad things. From the girl she's suspected of murdering. It might have started as a short story, with just the very first line, which is often how short stories start for me, just a sentence in search of a story. But this one kept multiplying. It was a mogwai of a line. And I just kept splashing water on it recklessly.
Read MoreAuthor, I Never is a new segment in which I interview fellow authors about the writing process, breaking into the industry, and breaking rules. I try to mix it up a little and ask some hopefully novel questions along with some of the old standards, and finish it up with a round of I Never (kid friendly version) to find out what cardinal writing rules we've broken.
Question the first: Joanna, when did you first know you wanted to be a writer?
When I was about six, I decided I wanted to be a poet when I grew up. That quickly morphed into wanting to be an author (thank goodness!). I wrote my first story at seven, and it was about four female mystery-solvers investigating a string of neighborhood pet-nappings. The villain was a guy in a gorilla suit. For obvious reasons, I never finished it. :D But I continued to write all through my childhood and teen years, and was submitting things to magazines pretty early on. My crowning childhood achievement was getting published in Stone Soup when I was thirteen. I didn’t do a lot of writing during college, but the summer after I graduated, I finished my very first novel, inspired by the discovery of NaNoWriMo. I haven’t looked back!
Read MoreAuthor, I Never: Dana Mele Interviews Eliot Sappingfield. Author, I Never is a new segment in which I interview fellow authors about the writing process, breaking into the industry, and breaking rules. I try to mix it up a little and ask some hopefully novel questions along with some of the old standards, and finish it up with a round of I Never (kid friendly version) to find out what cardinal writing rules you've broken.
Question the first: Eliot, when did you first know you wanted to be a writer?
It was during college. I’d been double-majoring in physics and philosophy for reasons that made sense to me at the time, and came to a realization that I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing. So I decided to work on what I really loved. Plus, physics was really hard.
Read More