Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
In West Philadelphia, born and raised--wait, no, sorry, wrong story. I grew up in a metro-Atlanta, Georgia city called Riverdale. No relation to the one from 'Archie', trust me. My childhood, unfortunately, contributed a lot to my writing. Even from a young age, I found myself often alienated from my classmates due to my love of reading. I used to walk down the hallway between classes with my nose in a book, dreaming of fantastic landscapes and handsome heroes. I began writing at the tender age of six or seven, mostly just diaries, and then I got into fanfiction as I grew older. My life was unspectacular, and that was why I wrote so much. I wanted to imagine somewhere without the limitations of the real world. I wanted adventure. So I wrote my own.
When did you first start writing?
Around first grade or so. It started out with just diary entries of my thoughts about school. I was actually a lot like Harriet the Spy, before I even read the novel. I was a bit of an oddball kid so I felt recording my thoughts would be important because I wanted to remember everything the way it happened. All through my childhood, I only considered my writing to be a hobby, never something I could do for a living because of the "starving artist" stigma. I didn't realize until years later that it wasn't something everyone did, or had the ability to do.
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