Holli Harrison
Writer Interview
Holli Harrison lives outside of Granbury, Texas and loves to read and write. She is currently the willing captive of a sweet cat named Dorian, who has a great case of separation anxiety. Her hope is that her readers will enjoy stories as much as she did in writing them.
Moe: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Holli Harrison: When I began to read romance novels, the storylines and characters in them intrigued me and began to stir ideas. Shows I watched also added to that. I wrote some fan fiction and people who read it gave me a lot of positive feedback on them. My mom then encouraged me to write something I could make money at. I tried my hand at writing original fiction and loved it.
Moe: Describe three lessons you have learned about writing?
Holli Harrison: I tend to work well under a deadline. I learned this when I found the NaNoWriMo in early 2004, which has a deadline of writing a novel in a month. Intrigued by the idea, I gave it a try that November and wrote over 50,000 words that year, and again in both 2005 and 2006. I’m hoping to continue with that success each time the NaNoWriMo comes around. While the novels weren’t completed in November, they were far enough along it encouraged me to keep working on them.
Plotting is one of the best things I can do for my stories. Without plotting, my stories always fell apart with little to redeem them. When I tried my hand a plotting the story, it had a better chance of surviving. Since then, I’ve almost always plotted my stories.
Keep writing utensils with you always. I have a clipboard (one of those you can carry paper and pens in) I carry with me pretty much everywhere I go. My mom can attest to this. When I can’t, I have a small compbook spiral I carry with me in my purse and a cell phone that is also a PDA with a memo function. I’ve had story ideas hit me away from home a lot. If I didn’t write it down then, it left, never to be seen again.
Moe: What are you working on now?
Holli Harrison: I’m currently working on a paranormal romance involving werewolves and a dhampyr (half-vampire) called Omega’s Alpha.
Moe: Do you have a favorite writing related book?
Holli Harrison: I recently read the book Passionate Ink: A Guide to Writing Erotic Romance by Angela Knight and it is already my favorite how-to book for the genre. I love how she used snippets of her own books as examples of what she meant instead of just saying “this is what you have to do; you’re on your own figure out how”.
Moe: What is your favorite writing website?
Holli Harrison: Erotica Readers & Writers Association. I visit it a lot to look at their call for submissions page. I published my first, original short story on a site I found on this site.
Moe: Do you have an important writing tip you’d like to pass along?
Holli Harrison: Write your story as it comes from your muse (or wherever), not from beginning to end. You can organize it later. I write this way, as forcing myself to write from beginning to end seems to kill my creativity. While I do follow my plot notes, I always go for what I want to write first and refer to them later to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything I wanted in my story. I’ve come up with a lot of great scenes I never would have thought of for the story this way.
This interview was first published on the Book-in-a-Week website, July 2007.
