Author Shares Her Creative Writing Process

Alethea Eason Talks About Creative Writing for Children

Dec 4, 2008

Curious about how professional writers develop their stories? Children's author Alethea Eason reveals her creative writing process.

Alethea Eason’s first middle school novel Hungry (HarperCollins 2007) received rave reviews. She has published over twenty-five poems and a dozen short stories/children’s stories in various magazines and journals. Suite 101 caught up with Eason via an email interview on December 1, 2008 and got her to share her creative writing process with readers.

Getting Started and Developing Characters

Suite101: Please describe your creative writing process – how do you begin writing a book?

Eason: More often that not, I let myself just begin typing, hoping something interesting comes up. I usually hate beginning a book. I don't like not knowing how I'm going to get from A to Z. I've got a pretty critical editor in my head, so I have to get past her.

Once I know I'm on the right path – and that's usually about a quarter of the way into the book – I start to enjoy it. I can't wait to get home from work to write. The story starts to unfold, I start caring about my characters, and then I enjoy finding out all the stuff I was worrying about when I began.

Suite101: How do you handle character development in your books? Are your characters based on real people?

Eason: I bring in shadings of people I know for my characters but for the most part, my characters develop on their own as I write. When the story starts to come, it’s almost like I’m taking dictation. I “hear” the words in my mind and just type.

Marketing Your Book Through Online Web Marketing and Independent Bookstores

Suite101: What do you find are the best ways for writers to promote books and their other creative writing?

Eason: Use of the Internet is really important. Try to be creative in getting your name out into cyberspace. School visits are also important.

I found that some book signings were very successful and others were not. Independent bookstores seemed to work better for me and I know the owners did a lot of hand sales.

Eason: I’ve written with and without outlines and have been pleased and frustrated with both methods. I feel getting started with an outline is important for a longer work like a novel, but I need the freedom to let the story surprise me as well as I work on it.

Eason: I constantly revise as I work. I go back over what I wrote previously every time before I start a new day’s work. I go back to previous writing to tweak it to fit in with what has happened to the plot. I do a lot of line editing.

My writing partner Mary Benson will often read my writing to me. When the draft is done, I go over the book several times. It’s hard for me to slow my reading down enough to find typos, but I’ve discovered that a colored background makes it a lot easier to see my mistakes than the white field of a Word document.

Suite101: Any final creative writing lessons or advice you’d like to offer writers?

Eason: Put anything on paper to begin. Scribble and write about the story of your scribbles. Cut up an email, a class assignment, a diary entry and paste it together randomly. Type it over. Is there a place where the words grab your attention, even if they don’t make sense? Go with them and see where they lead you.

Writers need to believe they have a unique story to tell and be willing to sit there, even when they feel uncomfortable. At some writer’s conference I went to someone said when you feel the need to squirm and to run away from your writing, that’s the precise moment you need to carry on because often something good is coming.

Visit Alethea at her website and read her creative writing online by checking out her new online novel Heron’s Path.

The copyright of the article Author Shares Her Creative Writing Process in Writing YA/Chapter Books is owned by Michael Jung. Permission to republish Author Shares Her Creative Writing Process in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.