My natural tendency is to write about zombie bunnies, but one of my first writing teachers got incorporated into my writing superego, and I keep hearing his admonition to make things feel more real the weirder they get.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I sort of like writing about weird characters, I guess.
I surround myself with bizarre people. They're more fun to write about.
For all its ups and downs and challenges, I love writing. We only grow through adversity, so I welcome the difficulties, knowing bumps in the road are my greatest teachers.
It was my fifth grade teacher who introduced the idea that writing could be more than a hobby for me.
I always tend to write about outsiders. And what's been fun for me is, as I travel around and visit schools, is that other kids that feel the same way relate to some of my characters, and so I hope in some way that's helping them when they want to read about somebody that they can relate to.
I wrote ghost stories because I'd always enjoyed reading them, and they seemed to be fizzling out... I don't take them terribly seriously. It's like a cake, with ingredients.
Back when I taught middle school and wrote adult mysteries, my students often asked me why I wasn't writing for kids. I never had a good answer for them. It took me a long time to realize they were right.
I started writing stories in sixth grade. But writing wasn't cool, like being good at sports, or being part of the in crowd, or winning fights on the playground.
Every writing teacher I ever had except for one told me I was an awful writer, had no idea what I was doing, and should stop immediately. It only took the one to tell me something different to light a fire under me.
I tried writing fiction as a little kid, but had a teacher humiliate me, so didn't write again until I was a senior in college.