I’ve been doing my own side projects with creative writing and storytelling since I can remember. One of my biggest influences oddly for good creative writing has been music. My ear will latch onto a song that conjures feelings and images in my head and it’ll give me something interesting to draw or illustrate and later write about.

When I was a teenager I lived way more inside my head then I do now. I was anxious, nerdy, independent, brash, and insecure in the special way only teenage girls are. But writing gave me a refuge from parental problems, feelings of confusion and inadequacy. I tended to be more interested in science and cartoons then makeup and hair and because of this I tended to be the odd girl out. Despite my issues with anxiety I was totally sure that when I grew up I was going to do something related to the arts for the rest of my life.

So far, after many years of hard work I now have a pretty solid footing in producing animation and other art full-time and have for the last three or four years.

Creative writing is my other love. I love weaving stories with words and always have. Now a days I have less time to daydream with music and think up ideas for stories and write them out. I have chores, a boyfriend, a job and all of this equals less free time. Now music plays less of a role in my creative process. It’s switched to times of reflective silence on my drive to and from work in the morning and evening to think of ideas, or just let my brain sit, relaxed in boredom. I tend to come up with the most delicious and sticky ideas for dialogue, scenes, actions and character motivations when I let myself do this.

I take the time to daydream about stories still, but I choose a time of the day now where the world is quiet instead of my ears being barraged with sound. I am not sure how that happened, but when I look back it just seems like the natural progression of things.

(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)