Meet a Mighty Pen: Taylor Tracy!
Hey team! Meet the final winner of our fabulous 2017 raffle–Taylor Tracy! Learn more about Taylor through the interview below, and congratulations lady! Way to be awesome.
Tell us a bit about yourself!
Hello everyone! My name is Taylor Tracy and I’m a 23-year-old writer from New Jersey. I’m currently studying Intersectional Feminism in Art and Literature. I love to read, write, crochet, knit and paint. And my favorite color is purple.
What is the name of your NaNoWriMo17 project
Ace of Cake!
Give us a elevator pitch of the project.
Lucie, an anxious, panromantic asexual girl with ARFID who loves the idea of love and baking the perfectly frosted cupcake, gets set up on a series of blind dates by her best friends to find her a new prom date after her boyfriend dumps her in French class.
Include your favorite snippet from NaNoWriMo so far.
I love writing the moments where Lucie is baking different orders at the bakery she works at:
“I fidget with my glasses and then get a sheet of sugar glass going. I let it cool and then I break it into pieces. Each cupcake gets a little piece of jagged, shattered sugar. None of them are exactly alike and they’re not supposed to be perfect, like so much of baking is. So much of baking is about precision. I love how the irregularity of these decorations adds to the beauty of them. Especially with the green dyed shaved coconut that Dex is whipping up, the food dye staining his flimsy rubber gloves. He mindlessly scratches his temple leaving a streak of green across his face.
I decide not to tell him. It would ruin the fun.
Decorating these cupcakes, all thirty nine of them because baker’s dozens, goes a little like this: sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle, STAB. Dex is doing the sprinkling of the coconut. I’m stabbing the sugar into the perfectly swirled frosting.
I already made a promise to myself that if the bakery is going to close, then every last thing I make while it’s open is going to be downright legendary.
I mean, as legendary as a cupcake can be.”
What do you find harder to write, the first line or the last line?
The first line. I’m a master at the false start so I’ve just started doing whatever I need to do to get started and then rewrite it like twenty-five times later on.
What is your favorite part about writing?
I don’t outline, so I love the moment when you’re writing and aspects of the story and plot and character start clicking into place as you’re going along. Sometimes you get to a scene and without even meaning to, you put the whole arc of the story into perspective and discover something new. It’s a little like magic.
Do you have a commonly used phrase when you write that you love (or hate, lol)?
I’m not really sure, but I would love to see more of the quirks of everyday teen language to make it into YA books. Not exact phrases because that might make the novels feel dated, but the spirit of fun, creative language.
What is your favorite genre to read and why?
I love reading contemporary YA novels because I love reading stories about everyday life and real issues that teens (and really, all of us) face.
What’s the last book you read?
I haven’t finished a book in a LONG time because grad school is a little hectic (just a little!), but I’m currently reading Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman.
What inspired you to start writing, and what inspires you to keep writing?
I started writing stories in first grade because I was bored in class and it seemed like a fun thing to do. I keep writing because I love the community that writing gives me and I have stories to tell about queer, mentally ill, resilient girls.
I (Kat) feel you about Grad School! It kicked my butt too. But we’re so glad you were part of the team, and Ace of Cakes truly sounds really clever and fun. 😀 Thank you for joining us!
