On developing talent in the pre-internet era

A recent conversation with a writer friend reminded me that before Twitter and WordPress and Facebook and direct emails, before I got sucked into the world of branding and cultivating an audience of readers and understanding market trends, I was a lonely kid who sat in her bedroom writing stories on the back of old office memos from my mom’s work.

I wrote short stories and novels. I designed covers for my books. I reimagined them as movie trailers with Don LaFontaine narrating (although I didn’t know his name and didn’t know “book trailers” were a thing). I created series and drew maps of the neighborhoods my characters inhabited. And – this was my favorite thing ever – I drew blueprints of the houses my characters lived in.

I might have done more ancillary work than actual prose writing, now that I think…