Writing an autobiographical portrait is hard. I’ve done it before here and there, and here’s yet another, focused a bit on writing.

My name is Erin. I write.

erin the precociously annoying child

I’ve always loved telling stories. As a child I’d act out epic narratives with my toys, usually stretching the same story over months of play. I’d continue planning out the stories at night, as I lay on the verge of falling asleep, creating characters and moving the plot forward. Despite this enthusiasm for storytelling, while I was growing up I wanted to be an illustrator, an animator, an artist, or an actor (I had distinct phases). But when I realized that illustrators, animators, and actors are not the ones to create the things they either illustrate, animate, or act (unless, of course, they wear multiple hats), I struck out on a new path: that of writer, of creator.

Somehow out of this came the idea that I had to write novels. I wasn’t exposed to short stories (unless they were fairy tales) until I was much older, and having grown up reading novels and acting out epic narratives of my own with my toys, I found I simply thought in a long format. A creative writing assignment in fifth grade also turned me off of short stories: when asked to write a “creative story,” I wrote a short story about an inch-tall girl who had adventures, traveling around on her dog’s nose. (It was heavily in the spirit of my favorite movie of the moment, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids with a distinct tinge of Thumbelina.) My (strict) fifth grade teacher handed back the story with a large C on the top with the note: This could never happen in real life. I remember sitting in the classroom, crying furious tears and feeling cheated. “It was creative writing! Creative! Why would she ask for us to write something creative and then mark us down for doing just that?” I bawled to my parents, who were nothing but outrageously, energetically supportive of me. I’d never been the kind of kid to let anyone else tell me how to think, though, so I brushed off the comments and plunged back into stroytelling with a fervor.

It was around this time, from fifth to seventh grades, ages ten to twelve, that I started experimenting with writing some of my exciting toy narratives down in chapterized format. But having been seared by that fifth grade teacher, I hid them. (I still have the battered old folders marked in squiggly handwriting, “FOR ERIN’S EYES ONLY.”) I got in the habit of writing for myself and not showing that work to anyone, ever, a habit I maintained throughout middle and high school, as I kept writing for myself — in between reading voraciously and doing schoolwork. In tenth grade, I received a card in the mail for a summer creative writing program at Columbia University. I knew I had to do it — I had to stop hiding my writing and start learning how to get better. I knew that would mean criticism and possible rejection, but nothing worth having in life is easy, I told myself, and applied. I was accepted.

erin the writing student

That program started me on the path of learning how to be a better writer. That path took me to a summer undergraduate-level course at Yale University the next summer and eventually led me to major in English and Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University. At Carnegie Mellon, I approached my education knowing I wanted End Result: Novelist. Each class I took I aimed to tilt the coursework toward my own interests, leading me down research paths which explored children’s, fantasy, and a lot of pre-20th century literature, approaching my favorite genres through the different lenses of the various schools of literary criticism and coming up with some interesting results.

In writing classes I was initially terrified, having a first love of the genres of young adult and fantasy literature and realizing (as I had at Yale) that they really don’t have a place in the undergraduate environment. That environment is geared toward learning how to write well, and if you’re distracted by world-building well or science fiction terminology infodumping then, well, you’re not thinking about the most important things that go into a good story or novel. First you have to be able to write compelling characters, write dialogue that reads realistically, learn how to pace a scene — and more. Taking this approach, I wrote literary fiction and worked on perfecting my use of various devices and styles, rather than focusing on the genre I was writing. (I still wrote fantasy novels for myself in whatever spare moments I could snatch.) I took poetry classes and got my spine ripped out by criticism that made me a better, more observant reader and writer, and even got two of those poems published in the undergraduate literary journal. By senior year I was finally in a place with my writing and my own comfort level that I finally flexed my genre muscles and wrote two screenplays and several short stories with distinctive fantasy and historical tilts. I adapted one of my short stories into a screenplay which ended up winning a first place Adamson Award, the student writing awards. I graduated Carnegie Mellon with University and College Honors along with my Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Creative Writing.

Also during my senior year, I completed an honors thesis entitled “Girls Who Save the World: The Female Hero in Young Adult Fantasy” which postulates that all protagonists (even the young female ones) whose adventures fit the heroic cycle presented by Joseph Campbell are worthy of the title “hero,” regardless of gender. Some of that thesis is discussed and excerpted here on the site.(If you’d like to know more about it or read it in its entirety — it’s almost book-length itself — please contact me.) The thesis reflects my beliefs and loves in fantasy fiction, and gives a closer look at what I love to write.

erin nowadays

Now, I live in New York City with my husband. I write full-time (or whenever I can) while I work part-time. I still jump around, eagerly telling stories to anyone who will listen, but now I also sit down and hammer away at the keyboard with them toward the goal of being published.

I have a lot of distinct novel projects, some of which are current drafts of some old (old) projects, some of which are much more recent. They don’t have titles because I don’t title things unless I absolutely have to and, well, I haven’t absolutely had to title them yet. Pfft. Also, in case you were curious, I don’t work on them all at once — yes, that would be called crazy — but as none are yet published, I cycle through edits for each of them as I get myself ready for the first push into the querying world and that of publishing beyond it. (I haven’t started that yet.) But with my cheeky optimism, I know any and everything is possible if I work hard enough.