MWG Member Spotlight Q&A
- Name: Carrie Cox
- Place of birth/hometown: San Diego, California
- MWG member for how many years: Two+ (math isn’t my strong point)
- Website/blog/fan pages: www.authorcarriecox.com and www.facebook.com/authorcarriecox
- Books/articles published: My articles that are available online are listed here
http://authorcarriecox.com/articles/
but I also had a personal essay published in “TALL” magazine.
- Who are your top five favorite authors right now?Katherine Paterson, Laurie Halse Anderson, Avi, Richard Peck, and Madeleine L’Engle.
- When did you know you wanted to be a writer and how did it affect your life plans?I started seriously writing when I was almost fifteen. Each year, for four years straight, I wrote a first draft of a different novel, 200-250 pages each. (No, didn’t have much of a social life. And rereading them now is hilarious.) My grandparents gave me a subscription to Writer’s Digest for my sixteenth birthday and when I started college at seventeen, I put myself through The Institute of Children’s Literature correspondence course on “Writing for Children and Teenagers.” During my twenties, I did little writing, but when I hit thirty I realized my dreams where fading and I needed to get back on track. And here I am.
- Do you have any strange rituals that help you get in the mood to work?I like to listen to music related to what I’m about to work on, or movie soundtracks, and zone out playing Free Cell for about ten minutes. Controlling the cards and patterns to win a few games helps me feel like I can tackle my story.
- If you could travel back in time and spy on a writer, who would it be and why?I’d love be in Concord, Massachusetts when Hawthorne and the Alcott’s were next door neighbors—especially when Mr. Alcott would host his transcendentalist friends in his barn-turned-schoolhouse. And I’d love to watch Nathaniel Hawthorne work in his third story writing tower.
- If you could meet any literary character who would it be? Why?Angel Clare from Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I’d hope to catch him before he sails off to Brazil and messes up the life of both his wife and himself. If it was after, I think I’d have to bonk him on the head with a parasol for being a ninny.
