A little bit about me...
Writing is often painted as a solitary activity for the misunderstood loner, but I think that the best writing is done in community. That's the spirit I bring to my freelancing work.
Writer
I honestly can’t remember when I first considered myself a writer. Was it when I was ten years old, and I set out to become the youngest-ever published author? A quick Google search would’ve told me that spot was already taken, but I set to work, hand-writing my manuscript in a pocket-sized composition book. My cousin was my first reader, deciphering my fifth-grade handwriting under the dinner table. Spoiler alert: I got about three chapters into my debut novel before realizing it was a straight-up ripoff of the Percy Jackson series.
Maybe it was in middle school, as I posted angsty poetry to my Tumblr profile, or in high school, during my first-ever writer’s workshop at Pratt Institute’s Pre-College Program. Never mind the fact that I called my mom crying in the middle of my first class, begging her to let me go home. In my defense, everyone was so talented, the coursework was so intimidating, and they wanted us to share our work with the class (can you imagine?).
Reader
I do know that, before I was a writer, I was a reader. Children’s books that my mom read so often she learned them by heart. Bill Wallace’s entire collected works by the time I was in third grade. The Twilight series, my grandmother reading alongside me when I was in fifth grade (why did she let me read Breaking Dawn at ten years old?).
These days, I like to think my work is inspired by writers like Helen Oyeyemi, Hilton Als, and Barbara Kingsolver. Other voices had a hand, too. Lesser-known authors in my classes and workshop groups. You could make the argument that they had more effect than the big names that everybody knows. They showed me where my blind spots were, they were honest when my endings sucked, and they trusted me to help shape their own stories.
Editor
I wish I could say that I decided to become an editor for purely altruistic reasons. Sure, I love working with other writers. I love talking about craft techniques, get satisfaction from smoothing out a sentence, and feel grateful for the trust that my clients instill in me. But I also learned early that helping other writers makes me a better writer. It helps me to think critically about my own work, knocks me out of creative ruts, and constantly inspires me to pick up the pen.
I keep thinking about how those early words of encouragement, whispered behind hands at the dinner table, emboldened ten-year-old me to keep writing. Now, it's my turn to embolden other writers to keep on picking up the pen. And, hopefully, you'll do the same for me.