My name is Allison Sterken, and I love to write.
You probably expected
that.
I've been writing, in some form, for as long as I can remember. One
of my earliest memories is stapling together a bunch of drawings to make a
picture book. I've always had a real passion for stories, and I've always wanted
to be one of the people inventing and sharing them. That's what I do as a
creative writing major.
On the other hand, I've always had a passion for
books. All books fascinate me, from the font they're written in to the paper
they're printed on. The sight, smell, and feel of books has always been so
significant to me. That's where the professional and technical writing major
comes in.
Because of this, I have a pretty broad spectrum of things I
enjoy writing, from essays to short stories to news articles. I love anything to do with books, design, or fiction. I'm
actually really stoked to be able to do a blog where I can talk about my
favorite kinds of writing, as writing about writing basically just doubles up on my favorite thing.
I've always been a pretty big geek, and that's
a big part of my writing life. Even when I feel like I'm stuck and can't find
any inspiration in my life, I can turn to comic books or television shows
instead. One of my goals for my blog posts is to show people that writing can be
fun, valuable, and important, even when you can't think of something off the top
of your head. I hope I can show people how to take the things they love and use them
to make writing more enjoyable and interesting for themselves.
Another
thing I hope to help readers with here is presentation. A lot of people - sometimes even
people who have been writing for a long time - forget that how a piece of
writing looks can be almost as important as the writing itself, depending on the
situation. Though it may not seem like it at first, I can guarantee that things
like font choice and spacing can help improve the quality of a lot of documents.
And hey, you might even find out how fun it can be to play with margin settings
and font size (although I know I'm probably in the minority on that front).
Even though I am excited and willing to help students with
any kind of writing they bring to me, my heart belongs to literature and the
writing profession. If you have a creative work, a technical document, or a
literary analysis, I am more than happy to take a look.
