Envious of: Iggy

What's enviable: Iggy is a prolific writer. She published three chick lit books under her name.

When did you find out you could write well?
As a kid I always liked to read, being read to, and making up my own stories. Around age 9 I started keeping a diary, and for the longest time my writing was really just limited to my personal journal. It was only in college, in my ENG106 (Creative Writing) class that I found out that my classmates liked what I wrote and actually encouraged me to write more. 

Does it run in the family?
My family's very artistic. My mom paints, I have some uncles who draw and paint, my dad writes well, both my lolas sing, my aunts love to do crafts and I just discovered my brother's blog - and he's actually good! So I guess creativity runs in both sides of the family.

What was the first piece you ever wrote?
I had little stories and scenarios in my diaries, but the first complete short story I did was for ENG106. I forgot what the title was but it was about a female bodybuilder and her overly dependent dad. Very boring stuff, and my prof said that it read like a feminist manifesto. The second story I did, "Lysol", was about a guy with obsessive-compulsive disorder who goes to live with his crazy cousin. My classmates liked that one a lot. At that time I wrote a lot of fantasy-type/urban-horror stories. I started doing chick lit after getting married and being a whole lot less angsty about stuff. :)

How do you build your vocabulary?
I read a lot, and I read all kinds of books, from graphic novels and fantasy to non-fiction and young adult, and I pick up a lot of nifty words from them.

What books do you usually read?
I don't have a preference for a particular genre or author, but I do like plot. I'm quite traditional in that I want "story" stories that go somewhere, so some of the newer authors like Dave Eggers I don't really like. But my standby - as in the stuff I read when I want to feel comforted - is definitely fantasy.

Favorite authors?
Neil Gaiman - a lot of the spines of the books on my shelf have his name; Jeffrey Eugenides; JRR Tolkien; and Jane Austen - she's the Holy Grail of chick lit.

Any rituals?
When I start a book I'm so excited about it that it's all I can talk about. I bore my friends senseless about details and plans. About after five chapters the steam runs out and I have to psyche myself up to keep the momentum going. I read book reviews and author interviews to kind of encourage myself, like, "you're not going to get any interviews if you just sit around procastinating!" Sometimes, I also have to switch up how I write. I usually write on the PC, at the office (sshhh!), but that gets monotonous and I do have a tendency to edit myself as I write, which can result in three really great chapters but not a whole book. So sometimes I just write bits of dialogue for a future chapter on Notepad, or on a real honest-to-goodness notebook. Most of the time the dialogue doesn't make it to the book, but it's important in that I know that there's a future plot goal that I'm working towards, and this helps me stop from revisiting and re-editing finished chapters.

Tip for writers or aspiring writers.
Just keep on writing. If you have trusted friends whom you know will not ridicule your efforts and will give you solid feedback, show your work to them. When I wrote Pink Shoes I would send the chapters to a couple of friends, and they were really instrumental in getting that book off the ground. I really think that feedback is the best resource in honing the "craft", so steel yourself for criticism and be responsive to comments. And the last bit of advice contradicts what I previously wrote - if you really, truly believe in something - whether it's a plot device or a character or even a story idea - go ahead and write it and don't mind what the naysayers say. They'll be blown away by the finished product.