1. What is your name (real or otherwise)?
People call me these things: Brenda, Mrs. Warren, The Great Brendini, Mom, undercaws, Teacher, and Hey Lady!

2. Describe your writing style in three words.
quirky, accessible, prosaic (I don’t know…you tell me.)

3. How long have you been writing online?
Three years— two years at Beyond the Bozone, and one year at undercaws.

4. Which, if any, other writing challenges do you participate in?
The Sunday Whirl–It is a prompt site I host that offers weekly wordles. Tess Kincaid’s The Mag is another prompt site I write to with some regularity.

5. Describe one way in which you could improve your writing.
If I went back and edited some old work…it’s that thing about looking at your work with fresh eyes. In his book, On Writing, Stephen King talks about looking at his work six months after he’s written it, so he can go back and “kill his darlings.” He edits at least ten percent of what he’s written. He cuts the stuff he puts in there for himself, not his readers. We all do it. Our writing contains extraneous crap that we keep in there for personal reasons. I need to kill my darlings and submit some work.

6. What is the best writing advice you’ve ever been given? “
“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings” Stephen King, On Writing

7. Who is your favorite author?
Alice Hoffman, Sherman Alexie

8. How do you make time to write?
The Sunday Whirl forces me to write every week. I started that prompt blog in April 2011. My responsibility to that a community of writers keeps me writing. Visit The Whirl. Join us!

9. Give us one word we should consider using as a prompt. Remember–it must have a third definition.
Whirl.

10. Direct us to one blog post of yours that we shouldn’t miss reading.
Because I love my friend David Arnott, I want you to read Watermelon Train Wreck. There is also a reference there to a poem on my first Internet home, Beyond the Bozone. That poem, The Dead Woman and The Mad Hatter, is my personal favorite. Read them both. Dave is gone. But somehow, he lives a bit in those poems.