Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Writing With Two (or More!) Personas-- With Special Guest, Anna Staniszewski!

If you know me really well, you'll know that I write under several different pen names. Some I am open about. Some I am not. The top question I get is, "Why?" So I thought I'd invite another author who writes under more than one name to explain what it's like to have more than one "writing persona." Please welcome Anna Staniszewski to the blog!

I’ll be honest. Writers tend to have multiple personalities. We not only spend a lot of time talking to ourselves, but many of us also work on projects that are so different, they might as well have been written by different people. For some of us--like Cyn--we even write under different names for different genres.


When I first set out to get published, my work was DARK. Think isolated villages with corrupt leaders and post-apocalyptic landscapes. Ultimately, one of those projects was able to get me an agent, but none of them managed to find a publisher. Luckily, I had another part of my writing personality--one I hadn’t really explored yet--that “wrote funny.”




As my agent and I were struggling to sell one of my dark projects, I was writing aprank list cover 2 wacky story about fairy tales. I was very lucky when we found a publisher who not only liked it but wanted me to write more. Since then, I’ve written several more “funny books” for Sourcebooks, but funnily enough, each of my series has gotten a little darker. In The Dirt Diary series, the character is dealing with divorce, bullying, and identity issues--all told in a light, funny way.


Meanwhile, the book that I’m working on next, I’m With Cupid, is about a girl reaper and a boy cupid who accidentally swap powers. Dark? Yes. Funny? I hope so! I guess it’s taken me a while to find a way to combine my dark persona with my funny persona, but I’m excited that it’s finally happened. I think my dark projects might have been taking themselves too seriously before; maybe they were waiting for me to develop another writing personality that would finally make them work.






Anna's Bio: Anna StaniszewskiBorn in Poland and raised in the United States, Anna Staniszewski grew up loving stories in both Polish and English. Currently, she lives outside Boston with her husband and their crazy dog. When she’s not writing, Anna spends her time reading, daydreaming, and challenging unicorns to games of hopscotch. She is the author of the My Very UnFairy Tale Life series and the Dirt Diary series. Her newest book, The Prank List, released on July 1st from Sourcebooks. You can visit Anna at www.annastan.com .




So what do you think? Do you write under more than one persona? Why?