Writer’s Personalities & Projects

Writers share some quirky habits while we work on a variety of stories. What are we working on right now?

As fiction writers, we have many quirks that only other writers can understand. We stay up until all hours writing and re-writing, crafting the best characters we can or finding just the right plot twist. We play movies over and over in our heads until we know just how the dialogue should sound. We have the freedom of working our own schedule, but also the isolation of working alone. And sometimes we get strange looks for muttering to characters who only exist in our heads!

I started writing more than 20 years ago (beyond childhood poems and journals) with a course on Writing for Young Readers from the Institute of Children’s Literature. I published several short stories, but it wasn’t until six or eight years ago that I got really serious, and in the last two or three years, it’s been taking over my life! (Check out my profile for publication details.)

Writing for Suite 101 has required me to stay focused on keeping a bit of balance in my life. I’m exited to be the new Feature Writer for Writing Fiction now, but balance will be more of a struggle. I currently have four short stories out at children’s magazines, a middle-grade novel waiting for a publisher’s response, a humorous chapter book undergoing final revisions, and in June I’ll find out if I will receive an Indiana Arts Commission grant. It’s a busy time, and I wait eagerly for the mail each day!

What are you working on? Short stories or novels? Children’s or adult? Literary, mainstream or genre, and which genre? Let’s start building a community of writers—go to the discussion board and tell us what your current projects are. And don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feeds for articles, blogs and discussions - you don’t want to miss a thing!